Traditionally a trip to the Principals' office is not a good thing. It happens as the end result of a poor choice made and at worst - a referral! On Wednesday of this week eight anxious third graders entered my office unsure of why they had even been called to the office. I immediately informed them they were there because they had a received a referral - a positive referral! As part of our effort to create citizens of character we have implemented a Positive Recognition Referral at Chets Creek. Teachers are encouraged to use them to acknowledge students who have:
_____A. Shown RESPECT for self and others: Is attentive and careful of others' feelings and stops and thinks before acting.
_____B. Shown RESPONSIBILITY: Brings appropriate materials and homework daily; has set a goal and has a plan to get there; decides what is important and does it.
_____C. Shown KINDNESS: Treats others the way he/she wants to be treated and cooperates with others.
_____D. Shown SELF-CONTROL: Is trustworthy; listens, follows directions, and chooses to do what he/she knows is the right choice.
_____E. Shown a POSITIVE ATTITUDE: Looks for the best in self and others.
_____F. Has shown GREAT IMPROVEMENT in: _______________________________!
The actions I may take include verbal acknowledgement with the students, phone contact with the parents or public acknowledgement in the school. I loved talking with this first group of students about how they ended up in my office - no one fretted or cried and no dreaded phone calls were made. In fact, we celebrated their outstanding displays of character and everyone left with a big smile on their face and a one of a kind "My Principal is Proud of Me!" pencil. I can't wait for the the next student to get a refferal - the Principal's Office may never be the same again!
All the research shows that male involvement in the education of our youth has a powerful impact. Male role models are needed and appreciated in schools. Six years ago our PTA President and her husband led the charge to get more males involved in our school by organizing the BUDs Club. BUDs stands for Brothers, Uncles, Dads but is inclusive of any male figure of importance to our children's lives. This "tiny little division of the PTA" quickly proved what a BIG impact it could have. In 2007 our BUDs Club was honored with a coveted Parent Involvement Award by the Florida PTA. The small group of charter members has grown to be 100 strong today! Over the years they have shown up in force to help with the heavy lifting, participated as guest readers in our classrooms, and held movie nights. Their biggest and most anticipated event each year is without a doubt the Pancake Pigout Breakfast. The BUDs get up early to cook thousands of pancakes and sausage links, cut up fruit, pour juice and prepare our dining room to host hundreds of Chets Creek students and their BUDs before school. They even let moms, grandmas and aunts eat, too! And throughout all the fun they plan they have accomplished the goal of getting more males involved - our number of males volunteering has quadrupled! And as for me - there's nothing like seeing the happy faces of our children as they proudly introduce me to their BUD!
Today was Team Spirit Day at the Creek! Many donned the colors of their favorite NFL or college teams, and some wore their CCE spirit shirts, but all the Creekers celebrated the fact that they were part of a special team that works together and supports each other. Our PE Team approached me about implementing a Fuel Up to Play program this year in an effort to compete for a $10,000NFL Play 60 grant that will be awarded to 34 Super Schools this year. I immediately became excited about the activities they had planned for promoting nutrition and exercise with our students. They kicked off their program today with Back to Football Friday that included football activities through PE classes this week and culminated in our entire school committing to completing 2 laps around our track immediately following lunch today. This whole school effort resulted in a whopping 700 miles logged during the event! Twenty lucky participants were also awarded either a football autographed by one of our local Jacksonville Jaguar players or a Jaguars program book! Aside from the health and wellness grant the winning schools also receive a visit from a NFL player. The kids were excited to have accepted and exceeded the goal for our first challenge. The Creek's got sprirt - yes we do - the Creek's got spirit - how 'bout you???
I vividly remember the first day I met KK Cherney. I had been surplussed from a school I loved and had been sent to work at a new school being built. I was nervous about meeting my new principal and so uncertain about what my future held. She greeted me with a 1000 watt smile and the warmest hey and sincerest welcome you’ve ever heard at the door of our first assembly as a faculty and my life has never been the same. The pit in my stomach turned to anticipation of something that was sure to be exciting if she was involved. In looking back over the last 13 years, exciting isn’t quite the right word – the experience is more like electrifying! I fell in love with her instantly. I can also promise you that everyone, grown or not, who has met her could share a near identical story.
She understands the importance of relationships and seeks to know and love every child she serves. She is routinely sought out by students for celebrations of a goal achieved, help in completing a difficult task, or for a hug and reassurance that everything will be ok during times of disappointment and sadness. One of the greatest honors I receive is when a child mistakenly calls me Mrs. KK – I wish! She engages authors, illustrators, business partners, and community members in joining our mission to create truly meaningful learning experiences for children. She doesn’t know the word “no” and sees every obstacle to success as a mere challenge.
I have never known an educator more passionate about creating a love of books in children. Her passion for the written word is contagious. From enthralling story times, that almost surely involve costuming or props, to her engagement of students in the use of Web 2.0 tools every child loves the learning time spent with Mrs. KK. Our “Book Fairy” routinely spends every dime of the profits from our Book Fairs each year buying and placing books in the hands of those who might not have them otherwise. She worked this past year to create an offsite library in one of our largest neighborhoods so that families could get their hands on books after the school day and throughout the summer.
I was not surprised to find out this summer that she had been nominated for and selected as one of the five finalists for the Alferd Williams Literacy Award given by Scholastic to honor those who inspire a love of reading. Alferd Williams enrolled in first grade at the age of 70 after a lifetime of illiteracy to make good on a promise he had made to his mother to learn to read. In my book there is no one more more suited for or deserving of this honor than KK Cherney. Please visit www.scholastic.com/literacyaward to place your vote for Chets Creek Elementary’s Book Fairy, KK Cherney!
At Chets Creek Elementary this year we are "Cultivating a Community of Excellence". As a family we have been challenged to till back into the soil on which our strong foundation has been built, yank out any weeds that are threatening our work and plant a crop that will yield our best harvest to date. This will only be accomplished by focusing on and then strengthening each area of our Guiding Vision. During our opening day I shared some simple, but powerful ways that we can grow ourselves professionally as well as personally in each of these areas:
Bountiful Relationships: By understanding one's Emotional Intelligence you can greatly improve your ability to relate and deal with others and in turn improve your opportunities for success. In Emotional Intelligence 2.0, Travis Bradberry and Jean Graves describe EQ in four skills.
1) Self Awareness - Your ability to understand your own emotions and typical reactions
2) Self Management - Your ability to control your reactions to others, or not
3) Social Awareness - Your ability to perceive the emotions of others and understand them
4) Relationship Management - Your ability to use your own emotions and your understanding of the emotions of others to manage interaction with success What have you done to improve or build your EQ with students, parents or colleagues?
Fruitful Risks: In Seth Godin's book, The Purple Cow, he describes how companies create that special marketing idea that dares to be so different from others that it takes the business to a whole new level of success. It requires the risk taker to be REMARKABLE. Remarkably innovative, driven and authentic. Have you dared to be PURPLE?
Grade A Results: In How the Mighty Fall, Jim Collins investigates why highly successful organizations fail. It was determined that over time that they lose sight of lose sight of what made them so unique and special in the first place and get complacent about their successes. To keep from falling into this trap you have to look at the Underlying Factors that affect your work, undertake Disciplined Creativity, participate in frequent and purposeful Fact-Based Dialogue, and embrace the Disciplines of Greatness. What data have you gathered to guide your work? Have you engaged a colleague in conversation about the standards? Have you volunteered to lead or participate in a rewrite of homework or assessments? Which one of our Core Values have you modeled for your students?
The land's been turned... the water and sunshine are ready... the seeds have been placed in your hands... there's 175 days left for this year's growing season...
H.E. Luccock said, "No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it." This year as skilled musicians we have studied, and continued to perfect our craft by working together to put each note in just the right place so that the sounds blended together into something so moving that the listener was changed forever. Music gave a soul to our universe, wings to our minds, flight to our imagination, and life to everything.
This year was about experiencing life through the moves of music. Kindergarten kept it simple as their little ones booted, scooted and boogied into school to a country beat. First Grade did the bump and hustle as they mastered reading and math in the glow a sparkling disco ball. Second grade will faced the bright lights of Broadway and showed their talents to the musical show tunes. Our Resources hit the high notes like the masters of the everlasting classics. Third Grade synthesized all learning styles into a sound as smooth as Caribbean rhythms. Fourth Grade knew their skills so well that they were able to improvise like the great Jazz musicians. And Fifth Grade didn’t stop rockin and rollin us all year long!
We worked on tuning our instruments, read the score perfectly, moved our musicians to deliver each note with just the right timing and put together a beautiful masterpiece the likes of which no one has ever seen or heard. We orchestrated a symphony of student success.
Lao Tzu reminds us; “Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.”
When I look out to where the dream takes us next I see acres of untilled relationships that lie ahead of us just waiting for the seeds of risk taking to be planted. Land capable of producing the most well nurtured bountiful result that could ever be harvested.
Farming isn’t easy. In fact Will Rogers said, “The farmer has to be an optimist or he wouldn’t still be a farmer.” It takes planning, hard laborious work, problem solving, teamwork, creativity, faith and resolve. Sound familiar?
This year we aren’t dividing our farm. There won’t be separate sections for the cattle, apple trees, sunflowers or corn because we’re all members of this big farming family and it will take each of us working together to tend the crops so that we can yield the best results possible.
We started out as a good school, we quickly accepted good as our enemy and made our work with children great, but now it is the time weed out the great and work towards reaping a harvest of excellence. I’m convinced we are never going to get any better unless we dig back deep into the soil on which our foundation was built, bring back some of the basics, weed through the possibilities ahead of us, focus on providing what each little plant or animal needs and look for new and cutting edge ways to grow the next crop.
Next year at CCE we will Cultivate a Community of Excellence. And if there was ever a group of learning leaders who could make it happen - it's this one - I’d bet the farm on it!
Poet Robert Frost once said "Do not follow where the path may lead, Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail." This week a new trail was blazed by true visionaries. For a number of years many of us at the Creek have dreamed of creating a partnership with our largest neighborhood in an effort to provide some much needed support and services outside of the school day setting to our students. A little over 6 months ago our Leadership Team reached out to the management at the community and we held our first outreach day inside the neighborhood in December. The day was such a success that it left nothing but a desire to turn the partnership into something more substantial. Our Behavior Interventionist, Liz Duncan, Media Specialist, KK Cherney, and Community Manger, Jermaine White began immediately planning for the creation of a special "place" where we could meet our kids on their own turf and the Chets Creek Elementary Academic Resource Center (ARC) at Portside was born! American Residential Communities, the neighborhood's management company remodeled the old clubhouse, gifted furnishings and technology for students to access our district's online learning tools. The Chets Media Team contacted our partners Scholastic Book Fairs and Bonanza Books and a mobile library cart was provided and stocked with literature for checkout. The Chets Art Team prepped and painted a gorgeous mural to adorn a special storytelling room and the incerdibly generous Faculty and Staff have agreed to donate time throughout the summer so that the center can be open for our children to visit. Our School Advisory Council and other business partners, Chick-fil-A at Hodegs and Beach, Starbucks at Windsor Commons, the JGCC Women's Network and our Landstar Lunchtime Tutors were on hand along with dozens of neighborhood residents and children at our Grand Opening Ribbon Cutting Ceremony to get a first glimpse at this most incredible resource. The possibilities for where this path may lead us are endless and without a doubt I know the trail left behind will change the lives of all those on the journey.
