Excellence in Education: Putting Love at the Forefront

For me school was tough, especially grades 5-10. My social-emotional, behavioral and traumatic life experiences made academics and school challenging. From late elementary through 10th grade, I was a lost student who hid behind a metaphorical mask. I was the target of bullying. I was depressed and even suicidal. Like many students, I didn’t fit nicely into a square box.

I didn’t feel loved at home or school.

I believe that love should be part of our everyday vocabulary at school. It can be transformational. Students need to feel loved*. I think of a couple of students with whom I worked a couple of years ago. One, I’ll call him John, seemed to be a very angry and aggressive student. As a transfer from another school, we were forewarned about him. He was very confrontational with teachers and even friends. Each day, I tried to connect with him, and truth be told it wasn’t always easy. He seemed distrustful.

He didn’t want to open up. I felt he was wearing a mask, hiding who he truly was. In attempting to build a relationship with him, I started small. We’d talk about football, clothes, and basketball-- school and family talk would come later; when he was ready. Eventually he opened up to me and his case manager. As he did so, we’d start to see him smile and laugh--the slightest peak behind his mask.

As his sense of self improved, he came around. The referrals stopped. His grades improved. He’s becoming this amazing man--a man that was there the whole time, just hidden behind that mask. His aggressiveness was a mask that he wore enabling him to survive. It was his way of coping and conforming. Right before the covid closure, John and his family thanked his case manager and me, “You two and Monticello have been great for him. The climate and culture here has enabled him to be successful. We thought we might have lost him.” John knew we loved him. John could remove his mask without having to look over his shoulder.

We need to make schools a safe place where students feel protected, nurtured and loved. If we make love the center of what we do, we’ll build a family-like environment which creates opportunities for trust, respect and risk. By establishing a culture where our students--whether they are in Ms. Golomb’s kindergarten or seniors in our high school--can check their masks at the door, they will flourish. We must strive to create a tight-knit community with a shared purpose of showing love, which in turn will ensure the success of every student.

We will establish a culture of excellence and achievement by focusing on open communication, collaboration and building our collective efficacy. We will maintain high student expectations and have even higher expectations for ourselves as we are relentlessly focused on continuous improvement to ensure that each student can meet their goals and live their dreams.

How can we go beyond creating a welcoming environment to instead create one filled with love? How can you show students your love for them?

*I think we--as an educational system--do a much better job of showing love and using the word love with our elementary students than we do our secondary students.

Important Information/Tasks

Flipped Faculty Meeting. Instead of having a traditional faculty meeting this week, I have created a brief video/screencast. The topic of the meeting--and this is a countywide script--is budgeting. Please take about 10 minutes to watch the video and another 10-20 minutes to create an idea/suggestion for how we should allocate our monies to best serve the needs of our students, staff and community.

The video: http://youtu.be/dB3gtn4fmcU?hd=1

Ideas: Idea/Suggestion Guide

Budget Resource Guide

Please review the video and complete the idea by Thursday. By next Wednesday, please take a second look at the Idea/Suggestion guide to ask clarifying questions, add comments, etc.

Meetings this Week Because of the Flipped Faculty Meeting and division-wide PLCs this week, we will minimize our meetings this week. On Thursday afternoon, Dana, teachers in grades 1-5, we will have a meeting with the Innovators Hall of Fame to learn more about the kits that will be sent to our students.

Jabber Phone Installer To enable you to make and receive phone calls from your school computer, please watch this YouTube video

Here’s the Link to the Jabber application installer.

If you have any questions/problems, please contact Howard Hottinger at hhottinger@k12albemarle.org

Wednesday is a half day. Elementary teachers, please plan on attending the Language Arts PLCs this week. We will work with Mark Green and math teams to get the information from the math PLCs. Next time we will flip and attend the math PLCs. We feel this will make it easier for us to get the information as a school

Secondary bell schedule Secondary Half Day Bell Schedule

8:30-9:10	1st Period
9:15-9:55	2nd Period
9:55-10:05	Break
10:05-10:45	3rd Period
10:50-11:30	4th Period
11:30-12:30	Office Hours Sophomores and Juniors PSAT Presentation

October 26: CCRA and PSAT This will impact high school only.

Monitors 2nd monitors were shipped to those of you who are not local. For the rest of you, monitors are available at Center1. These are new monitors and are really nice. Shout out to Christine Diggs and our department of technology for arranging this. Caroline Ryan, the OA on the tech side, will have your monitor.

Elementary teachers please call 434-244-8900 to speak to Rose about setting up a biweekly meeting with me. We will plan for the meetings to last 30 minutes. Secondary teachers, once the elementary teachers are done, we will schedule ours. Feel free to schedule these outside of the 8:30-3:30 time periods.

Middle School Advisory

Here’s the Google Slideshow for this week https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1z_xiuICBa5KRKGq10MjB0UTMJo2vbJFJ33GoyB50Oxo/edit?usp=sharing

Secondary Classes

Friday is an A-Day.

Weekly Check

Please take a second to check in with me by completing this form.

Finally, every Wednesday at 7:45am, I'll have open office hours to meet individually or in groups with you. This is optional. https://k12albemarle.zoom.us/j/7745665415?pwd=dFJIVklsYUM0UGQ5WkpoVDlEU2E2Zz09

Meeting ID: 774 566 5415, Passcode: RGMeet