RM Bacon Weekly: December 5

Bears,

PBIS dance party!

Congratulations to all the students who received PAWS UPs in the month of November. As a school, we passed out over 100 of them. Students - great job being awesome. Staff - nice job in keeping your eyes and ears open for great behavior.

Everyone who received a PAWS UP in November was able to participate in a dance party at our PBIS Pep Rally. Let's keep it up in December! Can we make it a record-setting month? That would be...great. And speaking of great...

This week, we revisited something we started the year with - the idea of choosing to be great. We stressed it early in September at our whole-school assembly with the students, and we kept it going here and there. Even now, a student will correct me if I say to them, "Have a good day." Many times, they'll say, "No, I'm going to have a great day." Using my own words against me - I love it. They remember better than I do, and I'm thankful they keep me on my toes.

So this week, we took some time to refocus on that idea, and the staff approached it from what we can do as educators and leaders (and if you work with kids, you are a leader - period) to instill greatness first in ourselves and then our students. At Thursday's staff meeting, we looked at what separates good educators from great educators (we used Todd Whitaker's What Great Teachers Do Differently as our resource - I highly recomment this book to all who are interested in being great in education). We all can be good, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that. Good educators get good results. But what about great educators?

The Bacon staff discussing what separates good from great

Greatness abounds in each of us. It's already there, but it's missing a few ingredients to be fully realized. Michelangelo (not the ninja turtle, although he's pretty great, too) said the statue was already in the block of stone, but it was up to the artist to discover it. But think about it - even though the beautiful art was already there, it took discipline, practice, patience, persistence, and work to refine the skills needed to chip away at the stone and find it. Something external to the stone was necessary for the stone to give up its internal beauty. The gifted artist still needed to practice and work hard.

The same is true for educators. Sometimes (ok, all the time), it's a matter of putting in the time and effort to cultivate and then release the greatness we already have. We all can be great. Do we want to be? Are we willing (key word) to do whatever it takes to be great?

Let's think big, let's think great, and then let's do great work. I think we are already on our way, so let's keep it going.

Pictures from around the School