AM Announcements - May 27

AM Announcements
May 27, 2010

1. Today is Day 170.

2. It is the mission of Speas Elementary School to provide its students with the tools necessary to successfully meet the challenges they will face in a diverse world.

3. Calendar items for this week:

Thursday: May 27
EOG Retest Remediation
Drs. Appointment - Reichert off-campus - 12:30-2:00

Friday: May 28
EOG Retest Remediation
Dollar Dress Down Day
Box Tops for Education collected

3. Upcoming Calendar Items:
a. 05/31 - Memorial Day - No School
b. 06/01-06/04 - EOG Retest
c. 06/04 - Class Picnics
d. 06/08 - Fifth Grade Celebration - 9:00 - 10:00 AM
e. 06/08 - Fifth Grade Social - 11:30AM -1:30 PM
f. 06/10 - K-4 Honor Roll Assembly - 9:00 AM
g. 06/18 - Report Cards mailed or available for pick-up in the office

4. The address of the blog for staff comment on the information presented to SIT last Tuesday is:

http://2010-11organizationstructureb.blogspot.com/2010/05/2010-2011-structure-organization-and.html

5. Dr. Weycker's office has the 2009-2010 K-2 Data Warehouse open for teachers to submit math and literacy assessments for their students. Directions for entering the data as well as new information regarding passwords may be found on the teachers' portal under Documents and then K2 Assessment Folder. This information may be found on the administrators' portal in the K2 Assessment Folder. If you have questions, please contact Janie Costello or Velvet Simington. The link to the K-2 Warehouse may be found on the teachers' portal on the right hand side, labeled K2 Assessment Data Collection.

6. Friday is the late arrival/early release day for classified staff members before the Memorial Day holiday. Classified staff members who arrive at 7:15 may arrive at 7:30 and leave at 2:30.

7. Yesterday's refreshments were courtesy of Hope Presbyterian Church. The have a box on the shelves above the A-F section of mailboxes. Thank You cards can be placed there.

8. Let me take a moment to thank all of you for yesterday afternoon. It is truly hard to believe that I stood up in front of my first class of 31 second and third graders 42 years ago. It has all gone too quickly. I truly envy all of you who have the unique opportunity to work with children and spend your days teaching. There is no more enjoyable job in the world than teaching. We are blessed with this opportunity. I have been asked on several occasions since I announced my retirement about what my legacy will be. I don't think about things in those terms. Our legacies ride school buses; eat lunches in the cafeteria; are often too loud; and make us smile with the off the wall things they say. They will act throughout their lives often times unknowingly on what they have learned from us. It may be in the way they love their children; the work ethic they possess on the job; or how they care for their aging parents. Our legacy is eternal. The following is the final stanza of a poem I love called "The Quilting Bee." The poem uses the making of a quilt as a metaphor for the building of relationships between individuals.

Front porch music, quill-plucked dulcimer music,
fiddle, bow, and banjo music hung in tulip poplars and lowland gums.
The patterned music of generations past clung to the quilting stiches,
as they formed intricate patterns.
Stitches as invisible to the glance as sixteenth notes to the ear,
binding fabric and friends.
Having little to give as wealth, each shared self,
and, in the giving became posterity’s remembrance beyond generations,
where names are forgotten but deeds remembered.


8. I will be off campus between 1:30 and 2:30 today at a Dr's. appointment.

9. I'm not worried about the bullet with my name on it... just the thousands out there marked 'Occupant.'
Unknown

There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
Matt Groening (1954 - ), "Life in Hell"

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell (1903 - 1950)