Opening Day Remarks

Opening Day Welcome Remarks

August 21, 2014

            I thought it would be appropriate to share (with anyone who would like to read it) my remarks to the entire staff of the Raymond School District on their Opening Day.  These remarks are directed to everyone who works in our schools and includes secretaries, teachers, food service personnel, custodians, administrators, special education personnel, specialists, and more!  We have a fabulous group of people who take care of and educate the students of Raymond in so many ways.  This is how I welcomed the staff on their Opening Day:

            Hello Everyone and welcome to the 2014-2015 school year!  I hope you all had a restful, wonderful summer and had a chance to make great memories with your families and friends.  I want to welcome our new staff members and I look forward to meeting you and visiting your classrooms.

            Every year I start with a little story and I wanted to do that again today.  I want to explain to you how a baseball, a bicycle and a kitten all have something in common.  Many years ago when my oldest son was 11 or so, he had two loves:  baseball and the New England Patriots.  We would go to baseball games in the area and even took in a few games on vacations to other states.  One night, we went up to watch a game at the Old Orchard Beach stadium.  Chris brought his glove along so that he could catch any balls that came his way.  He’d never caught a ball at all the games we attended- but he had a feeling that this would be the night.  This particular game, my Dad came with us.  We enjoyed a fun game with the usual hot dogs, sodas and popcorn, but no baseballs came anywhere near us and Chris was a little disappointed.  Since we had a long trip home and it was getting late, we left during the last inning.  As we walked through the dusty parking lot, out of nowhere, over the bleachers, came a baseball and it landed right in front of Chris!  He was so excited and happy- it just made his whole night.  And of course, as a parent, it made my night too, to see him so excited and happy.

            More recently, this summer, my husband and I have been taking six of our grandchildren on a bicycle rides.  The kids range in age from 3 years old to 13.  The youngest one has her own seat on her big sister’s bike and has her own helmet.  Laura loves riding along with us and we are quite the sight as we travel down a road- you know us, we’re that group of bike riders that you hate to see when you are driving in your car behind us!  Anyway, the last time she had been on a bike at home, Laura had fallen off.  Now, here we are, away from home and she is refusing to get on the bike.  If she doesn’t get on the bike, none of us will go- it all hinges on Laura, who an hour before, was all excited about riding with us.

            A couple of weeks ago, my little kitty disappeared.  She is full grown but is very tiny and anyone would mistake her for a kitten.  She had disappeared before and we found out that it wasn’t just her growth that was stunted:  she couldn’t find her way home!  When it was time to for her to eat, I would click the top of the cat food can and she would come running- from her favorite chair or the windowsill or under the back porch.  The first time, she went missing, I called her and searched all around the yard- this is a cat that the expression “scaredy cat” comes from! Everyday she would travel between the house, the porch and the barn and never anywhere else.  I walked around the yard as she had been missing for 6 days and out she came from under our old camper!  She apparently was afraid to walk back across the yard- or was lost- we don’t know which.  This last time she had been missing for several days and none of my clicking or calling was working.  Then I realized, we always found her at night, as she was afraid to come out in the day time.  So one night, I decided I would look after dark. I was already all set for the night when I decided this.  Down the street I went, calling and clicking (did I mention I was in my pajamas?)  When I got to my son’s house, a couple of doors doors down from ours, he came out and asked, “What are you doing?”  I explained I was looking for kitty.  He said, “Go back home before someone calls the police.”  I ignored him and continued calling and clicking while I searched the bushes.  Nick came out again a little while later and said, “Mom, go home before I call the police”. 

            I'm sure you are wondering how all these little family stories are related and what they could possibly have to do with you?  Remember Chris and the baseball? Remember that I also told you my dad came with us to that game?  Years later we figured out that Dad had thrown the ball that had mysteriously appeared out of nowhere.  It hadn’t come over the bleachers- only over our heads. He never admitted it, but the physics just didn’t make sense to me.  Think about that, he had to plan ahead to bring that ball with him, just in case, Chris never got a ball on his own.  Chris treasures that ball to this day especially now that he now knows where that game ball really came from.

           And Laura, my little granddaughter who was so afraid to get on the bike?  Her big sister Annie, was so kind and gentle with her saying things like, "just let me just roll you a few feet," then, "let’s just try going to the end of the driveway", and "how about if you tell me which direction to go," and so on and so on.  Until soon, Laura was having the time of her life on her little seat and forgot her fears.  Everyone could have been upset with Laura, (after all, Annie is 13), but that never happened. 

           And how about my little Kitty?  What you don’t know, is that my husband Jim got up from sleeping and he came with me around the neighborhood while I looked for kitty- knowing how much my little cat means to me. (And he didn’t even care how I looked.) She was under a neighbor’s bushes.

            By now you’ve probably figured out what a baseball, a bicycle and a kitten all have in common. It’s not the things, it’s the people.  It’s the relationships and the little ways in which we show our families, our friends, our colleagues and our students that we care.  We all remember the great teachers we’ve have had over the years and they are not necessarily the ones who taught your favorite subject or who had a reputation for handing out the easiest grades. They are the ones who cared about you as a student and who encouraged and believed in you.  What matters are people and relationships, and in Raymond, we really truly believe we are here for the kids and show it every day in so many ways. I have seen dozens, no make that hundreds, of so many instances of kindness, caring and compassion in our schools- people who care about each other and their students.  One of the most important things you all do is to make it “cool to care”.  So, today, I wanted to start the year and end my storytelling by thanking all of you for all the kindnesses you show each other and our students- every day in so many little ways. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for making Raymond a place where it is “cool to care”.

Summer

Summer

I have such great summer memories:  swimming; going for bike rides with my friends; visiting relatives (the ones you only see once a year); camping; riding the ferry; cook-outs; some-mores by a campfire; ice cream; Old Orchard Beach, and so much more!  But I also remember summer as a time when I could walk to the library and take out books that were not school assignments.  I would leave the library with an armful of books to read while sitting on the front steps when it was too hot to be indoors or to read while all the grown up relatives talked about "how time flies".  I could choose any book or author that I wanted and had such fun learning about the Hardy Boys, the March sisters, Agatha Christie's English mysteries, and Edgar Allen Poe's dark stories.  I imagined myself as a cast-away and being alone from all the commotion of living in a household of 5 children when I read Robinson Crusoe, The Swiss Family Robinson, or Gulliver's Travels.  And then there the books that changed the way I looked at things:  To Kill a Mockingbird, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities.  

Once I found a story I really liked, I would look for more books by the same author which is why I read all I could find by Jules Verne after reading A Journey to the Center of the Earth and Ray Bradbury after reading All Summer in a Day.  (I credit for my interest in teaching science to my love of science fiction stories and still like to see "new" inventions that were actually written about in these books many years ago.)  Other favorites included Mark Twain of Tom Sawyer fame and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories and I read these over and over!  I remember the adventures I lived while reading The Three Musketeers and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that kept me up until way past lights out- reading under the covers with a flashlight. 

To me, summer is still about family fun and being able to relax but also about having the freedom to enjoy as many books as possible.  I hope this summer brings all of my "Raymond Family" time to enjoy each others' company, some time to relax, and lots of time to read for the fun of it.

Help!

This is one of my favorite Beatles songs and is actually the ring tone for my cell phone.  Most of the time it is very appropriate- people call with a question or a need (often one of my sons or grandchildren).  At one time or another, we all need help and one of the things we need help with is our children's school work.  We all want our children to become independent learners, but we also know that they need help getting there.  I used to worry about this- am I helping too much, not enough, or is my help confusing my sons even more? 

One solution I have found (now that I am sometimes helping one or more of my grandchildren) is Khan Academy.  This is a free web site with help for students in just about every area. I discovered this a few years ago and am more impressed every time I use it to help a student.  It's free and can be used by teachers, parents, students and anyone else who wants to learn and/or sharpen new skills. Once you register (all free), you are able to search the site for help in many topics or use it to practice skills.  Does your student have trouble converting fractions to decimals?  There is a quick video to demonstrate this skill.  Still don't get it?  There are more videos and a question/answer section.  If you want some practice using the skill, there are practice sets for everything from addition to calculus. 

Math isn't the only topic covered:  There are help topics on history, art, computer programming, physics, chemistry and more.  All with easy to understand videos or demonstrations.  Some teachers even use it as a homework site.  Khan Academy won't answer all your questions (why did two of my sons do homework without me asking, while the third was a struggle), but it will make those explanations for everyday academic problems a little easier.  Did I mention this is free?  If you are interested, check out www.khanacademy.org       You can even sign in with a Facebook account!

A Hot Item

This is my first "blog" and I've decided to tackle what has been a hot topic this year- Standards Based Grading.  Four years ago, the administrators in the Raymond School District were given the task of changing our grading system from the traditional one to a more individual system.  The first year our committee consisted of parents, students, teachers, administrators with our Curriculum Coordinator, Jon Hall, leading our group.  We spent this first year researching, reading, and discussing with staff what this change would look like.  We found examples of Standards Based Report Cards from around the country and shared them with our teachers.  Everyone had a say in how we would proceed. Many questions were asked and research was done to answer them.

The second year, our group began the job of putting together a report card that would embody all of the beliefs we hold as teachers:  our students want to learn, the need to fill in gaps in a student's learning, and the opportunity to make mistakes and then correct them.  We asked ourselves and the school community how we could ensure that we had differentiated instruction, a process to fill in gaps, and a better way to communicate with parents about their student's learning achievements.  We began lining up the important standards that need to be met at each grade level in each course.  Teachers needed to collaborate on this and took a good, hard look at our curriculum.  Of all the things that happened over this time, the attention to our curriculum benefited the most.

The third year, 2012-2013, was a year of developing a report card for each school, writing rubrics, piloting Power School Standards Based Grading Reports, and presenting the new report cards to parents.  The Technology Department spent considerable time programing for the new report cards and putting standards into Power School.  They were also responsible for setting up a test server for teachers to try out the new reporting method. 

At the beginning of this school year, all teachers had training on using Power School to report grades.  We knew that this first year of using the new grades could be difficult for everyone:  change can be hard.  We also knew we would need to "tweak" our work to make it better for everyone.  Now we have completed a survey of both parents and teachers and will be addressing the concerns.  If you would like to take part in our Public Forum, it will be held on April 30, 2014 in the Raymond High School Cafeteria at 7:00.  As always, I look forward to hearing from you.

Ellen Small
Administrator in Charge of Superintendent Services