Fay Delay

With an unanticipated “break” in our grand opening of school, I am relieved that Tropical Storm Fay resulted in lower levels of damage than anticipated in our Mayport community.

On Wednesday, August 20th, the first "day of waiting" for Tropical Storm Fay, Ms. White, Ms. Lacsamana and I reported to school for a half day. We discovered that our school was designated a JTA evacuation site for any residents wishing to take public transportation to a city shelter. Four JTA buses waited in our school parking lot until 5:00 p.m. as a part of the citywide emergency response system. 

A handful of parents and students called and/or came by to determine if school really was closed on Wednesday. One mother patiently sat in her red van in the parking lot until I went outside to greet her. She rolled down the passenger window to reveal a first grade student with a book in her lap and asked, “What time can my daughter come inside and read?” Wow. That is one child who is ready and eager to learn! It has been quite an unusual first “week” of school for everyone.

August 18th Imagination Journey

My gratitude is heartfelt for all the faculty and staff who helped to plan, organize, set-up, and execute a fabulous Imagination Journey for our Dolphin Imagineers on the first day of school! After the read-aloud of our August Book-of-the-Month, The Spyglass, students were greeted with creative displays and engaging invitations to "Estimagine" how many animal crackers were in a jar, imagine what was inside a collection of boxes using only their sense of touch, imagine what they saw in an optical illusion, imagine how many minutes had to be run to burn off the calories contained in a Hershey candy bar, and imagine how many people they could feed by playing the Free Rice vocabulary game online. At the end of a fast-paced 45 minute journey, students were surprised in the Media Center with their very own Imagine the Possibilities spirit T-shirts. This team effort resulted in a memorable first day for every student!

August Book of the Month: The Spyglass

The Spyglass , by Richard Paul Evans, is a book about vision and faith.  I chose this book to help us focus on the importance of developing a clear vision of our work as 21^st century standards based learning leaders.  It is only by rethinking past practices and having faith in new practices that we will be able to envision a 21^st century school of learners and leaders.  Vision requires seeing from a different point of view with a different set of lenses.  Faith is an untouchable virtue that can carry you to places well beyond your intellectual understanding or even your fears.  “The eye of faith sees without bounds or limits.”

In order for us to move our learning community forward, we must combine a vision that is shaped by constant collegial conversations and support with a faith in best teaching practices.  The leap into reshaping an entire culture is risky, frightening and often times paralyzing.  But with vision, faith and hard work we will do just that.  For each of us, our “spyglass” is the belief that we will maintain our high academic standards by keeping our sights fixed on best teaching practices combined with 21^st century tools. In this way, we will not only ensure academic success for each student, but we will play a pivotal role in the rebirth of our community. We have Imagined the Possibilities and now it is a matter of “making them so...”

"Blue Sky" Celebration--August 11th

"The sky's the limit!" read the banner high on the wall under the media center skylight. As teachers greeted each other on the first day of pre-planning, all were invited to Imagine the Possibilities of a new school year. Our "Blue Sky" celebration was inspired by the following quote from Kevin Rafferty, a Disney Imagineer in the book The Imagineering Way:

"When you want to make the most of your creative abilities or rediscover what they are, do what Imagineers do: allow yourself to be a kid again and let the fun and fearlessness of childlike creativity set you free! Untie the ropes of opinion and rejection that are holding your imagination down, so it can soar into the deep blue sky of endless opportunity. Then hop onto that noble purple-and-pink-polka-dotted elephant, face your enemy--fear--with a kitchen-pot helmet and cardboard sword, and charge full speed ahead into that land of countless dreams and untold surprises!" (p. 27)

Teams of teachers embraced the 2008-09 theme with a variety of creative mediums: music, poetry, power point presentation, and drama. Our morning of celebrations concluded with an introduction of our 2008-09 Faculty Book Study, Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools, with the help of Suzy "Webb 2.0," a Duval County Instructional Technology representative. EVERY teacher created their own blog before lunch! Wow. Our 21st century faculty of learners and leaders embraced this Web 2.0 tool and were exceedingly imaginative in designing a first blog and publishing an initial post. If you'd like to view these teacher blogs, I invite you to visit Mayport Elementary's Website. You can scroll through our faculty list and connect to see the beginnings of their 2008-09 blogging journeys where the possibilities are endless and the sky's the limit!

Learning Village

If you are looking for a Learning Schedule for teaching Reader’s Workshop and Writer’s Workshop, follow the easy steps to sign-in to the Learning Village. You simply need to follow the links to K-5 Curriculum, your grade level, and the tab for the Reading/Writing Learning Schedules. When you are ready to view these to plan or print, refer only to the 1st nine weeks on the Learning Schedule since the rest is still under revision. The Anchor Lessons for establishing rituals and routines in each of your Workshops can be found here as well. These tabs will be updated regularly throughout the year as new tools for using our new reading series to support Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop become available. Getting ready for reading and writing instruction is right at your fingertips!

Welcome Back Imagineer Celebration!

At first, it sneaks up on you. You do not recognize it because it has been such a long time gone. It takes you some time. It has to literally fight its way through doubts and disappointments, fears and questions…many questions. But, as with many of the best things in life, it is at the moment when you feel the weakest that the biggest and most promising changes take place…

It is during this time that you begin to remember, again, what it was that brought you here to start with. Maybe there is the fleeting memory of a child’s smile, or the short visit of that feeling of triumph that comes when you hit your target and you see the light of understanding click on in your students’ eyes. It is starting to find its way to the top now…a small smile creeps across your own face…

Then come the butterflies in the pit of your stomach…the same ones, perhaps, that you felt way-back-when in your very first days in the classroom as a young student yourself…or as a beginning teacher…the very ones that your own students will feel in August. This is when you know that it has finally arrived and taken hold. There is the nervous feeling, but far more, there is possibility. It is the thing that keeps you coming back. It is the fuel that drives you forward. It is the fire that ignites your imagination.

Now, you find that you can only Imagine the Possibilities of this upcoming school year. There is nothing else. The possibilities of an inspired mind, a generous heart or a boundless spirit. The possibilities of an empty canvas, a freshly sharpened pencil, an unread book or a newly planted seed. The possibilities that can only come from exuberant youth lead in mass by tempered wisdom and steady knowledge. The possibilities that only our great and noble profession offers.

I invite you to your new laboratory of possibilities on August 11, 2005 at 7:50 am at Café Mayport. Please bring to share with your colleagues some representation of the possibilities that this year holds for our school –-get together with your grade level team and build a vision to share of possibilities that you will achieve TOGETHER (banner, model, skit, significant object, poem etc).. Mayport Elementary’s success will begin first with our Imagining the Possibilities together, then taking the Risks to put those possibilities into action through Rigorous application of best teaching practices so that we can ultimately see the Results in outstanding student achievement.

Mayport Elementary…Imagine the Possibilities !