It's a Good Place to Learn
#NMSTigerPride!
One of our main jobs
as educators is getting our students to want to come to school.
The first few days of
school are imperative in setting the stage for this to happen as
well as all of the learning that will occur for the rest of the year.
As I walked around the
building during the first four days, getting into classes, I was so impressed
with the work our faculty and staff was doing to build relationships with our
students.
I saw teachers doing
exercises for relationship building, forming a culture of together and
learning, and then after that, starting to get into the academics. All of these
are important, and each holds its own individual importance, but research will
say that a foundation of trust and a relationship is needed in order to build
the academics upon. For me, it was so much fun to see our faculty and staff do all
of these activities in the first three days.
In our own first few days as a faculty and staff,
last week, prior to students coming, we as a district and a school spent much
of our three Professional Development days discussing this importance of
building a relationship with our students.
We had guest speakers, presentations, and also read many articles which
all expressed how our students will learn and put forth more effort when they
trust their teachers and have an established relationship with them. This is
exactly what I saw in these first few days. As a student so eloquently put on a sticky note in Ms. Macquarrie's 8th Grade Math class in the picture above: What's your opinion of school? "It's a good to place to learn." --> Yes. We nailed it.
On the first day of
school, Ms. Rae, Mr. Thomas, and I held a sign and took selfies with the
students stating that "We're here for them." In a simple way, we
wanted all students to see that they are wanted here at NMS.
On the third day,
Thursday, we held another sign explaining to all students, "We hope they
have a Banner year" similar to the New England Patriots. Again, this was what many of our students saw
as they were dropped off for school or got off the bus. We want our students to
feel special and know we care about them, and a little sign (inspired by my
friend and colleague at Joseph Case High School in Swansea, Principal Brian
McCann) can do this for our students.
On Friday, September 8,
it was the first day we had all of our students wearing their Class T-Shirts
and our faculty and staff wearing their Staff Shirts.
It was an awesome display of school pride and unity. In 6th Grade classes you would see a sea of gray; in 7th an ocean of orange; in 8th grade, a bouquet of black; and all along side, a staff shimmering in black with the word “PoWErful” emblazoned across it.
We are going to continue this tradition for our signs on #PositiveSignThursdays and on the first Friday of each month, we will wear our T-shirts. Our next #NMSTigerPride Spirit Day will be Friday, October 6.
Love the NMS Spirit!
Here is a “Storify” of my @JTNicholsMS Tweets of the week, which tell the story of welcome, unity, relationships, and school spirit. Please check it out.
