Excited to Begin!

-
Though I don't officially begin the job until July 1, I am already getting quite the positive taste of the St. Francis Borgia school community, and this all began with my opportunity to meet the staff last month.

On the final work day of the school year, the students were no longer in the building, but the teachers gathered for mass, a breakfast, and to tie up loose-ends heading into the summer. When I introduced myself to the staff, I discussed my past, sharing that my preparation to lead the school academically stems from the great people I have had the chance to work for and with in the past. I discussed my great years in the Parkway School District, and shared that I learned quite a bit from my time at St. Dominic, even though they did not want to hear much about my time with our rival! What surprised me about my visit, however, happened next. The questions from the staff were not about my professional background. Instead, they were about my family. They wanted to know about my wife and my kids. At that point, I knew that I had become part of a family. I knew I would love it here.

Later in the morning, I attended mass, and Father Kevin concluded the mass by welcoming me to the front and presenting me with a cross for my office. It was a wonderful gesture, and again, I realized Borgia is a special place.

Over the past few weeks, I have had the chance to meet several students. Several students were kind to my wife and kids when we toured the school. My sophomore daughter cannot wait to begin! I really appreciated the students who took the time to say "hello," and one girl who crouched down to speak to my two year-old daughter. On my routine visits to the school, I have been happy to be greeted by students working out front and in classrooms, all of whom are so willing to smile and talk for a few seconds.

In a couple of weeks, I will no longer be a regular visitor to the school, but I regular fixture to its community. I am excited for my chance to be as welcoming to others as the community has already been to me.
Location: Ballwin Ballwin

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Build Culture, One "Pin" at a Time

-
This year, our principal came up with a fun way for the administrative team to appreciate teachers. She purchased three different types of "pins" that principals can distribute to faculty or staff. We have pins to give teachers who make notable contributions to our PLC teams and we have pins for adults who go above and beyond for our students. In addition, we have an "apple" pin to give to teachers following a good lesson. We didn't make an official announcement about these pins. We just started distributing them, here and there, in November. As a result, faculty and staff have been pleasantly surprised when we have had something to share, aside from some positive words.  Earlier this month, I put an inordinate amount of time into a presentation. It was the type of presentation that did not require extensive preparation. In short, we had decided that students weren't taking our district writing prompt seriously. The sophomores who had to participate did ...
Read more

Pro-Life Allows 600,000 to become 1 Team

-
One of the great things about going to high school is the opportunity to be part of a team. Whether a student chooses to play a sport or not, he or she has the opportunity to show up and root for the team. When Borgia wins "State," we all win State. Especially at Borgia, team spirit is plentiful.  Sometimes, we have the opportunity to rally around other causes much like we rally around our teams. And in the case of the Pro-Life trip, the team is much bigger than our students experience with the other teams they support. The Pro-Life Trip experience, however, begins with Borgia rallying together as a team. This past fall, our campus minister Andy Halaz put extra energy into helping students to recognize that the Pro-Life trip is an opportunity to come together spiritually. We wanted to fill a bus with Borgia students going to Washington D.C. to march for this worthy cause. We succeeded! This was our first victory as a team.  In doing so, we had to remind students that a trip t...
Read more

The Decision-Making Matrix Helps Us Focus on Rationality

-
A great deal of the CPI Nonviolent Crisis Intervention Training focuses on “rationality.” For instance, we acknowledge that a person who is demonstrating “defensive” behaviors is “beginning to lose rationality.” At the same time, we are going to respond more positively to a defensive person if we, as staff members, have “rationally detached.” We are going to more positively influence behavior if we can control our rationality, and that is something that we have the power to do! While Unit 6 helps us recognize “unproductive” responses to defensive and risk behaviors, including “overreacting” and “responding inappropriately,” Unit 7 helps us to think rationally about crisis situations so as to avoid irrational (and unproductive) responses like these. Unit 7 highlights the Decision-Making Matrix, a mental model that places “severity” on a y-axis and “likelihood” on an x-axis, providing an objective way for us to measure risk. And more importantly, the matrix offers us an objective w...
Read more