21st Century Skills

Earlier this month, the staff and I had discussion concerning 21st Century Skills. The 21st Century Skills were identified as a group of skills that are key to thriving in the today's workplace. The following is a list of some of those skills.

Collaboration

Critical Thinking

Communication

Creativity

Financial Literacy

Organization

Problem Solving

Self-Direction

Social Responsibility

Technology Fluency

While all of the skills are important in their own right, I felt it was important for our staff to focus our efforts on a select few. If you make an attempt to focus on all of them, you end up focusing on none of them. So the staff voted and narrowed it down to their top four choices. 

However, before I name the four the staff agreed upon, I am giving you the reader and stakeholder in this school a chance to submit your choices as well. Please reply to this post by identifying your top four choices. You can simply name your choices, but I would be very interested in reading the rationale for your choices as well. 

I hope to hear from many of you!

Community Meeting

I would like to thank the group of parents that attended our community meeting last night. I felt it was a great opportunity to discuss the vision of our school system.

It is my hope that everyone in attendance has a better idea of what lies ahead for our students, staff and parents in terms of academic standards. I feel our district is being proactive with these changes and our students will be better because of it. If anyone is interested in learning more about the Common Core standards there is a link under the "Parents" heading on our school webpage.

I also want to thank the parents who provided us with some great feedback on "What we want out of our school?" We will continue to gather opinions from different stakeholders in order to write our vision statement, a document that will require us to continue to reach new heights as a district.

Thanks again for your input last night and I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Mission of Wyndmere School

A little bit later today, the staff and I are going to sit down and start tweeking our mission statement. It has been in place for nearly 10 years and it is time we reevaluate it and ensure it coincides with the true mission of our school. Our current statement reads as follows...

The mission of the Wyndmere Public School is to provide a safe, respectful, and caring environment so all learners will have an equal opportunity to achieve lifelong success.

When evaluating a mission statement there are three important questions to ask. 

1.  Is it clear?

2.  Is it specific? 

3.  Is it measurable? 

Let's start with question 1. One key to having a clear mission statement is removing ambiguity. In the end it is important for the mission to be so clear and there leaves little room to find multiple meanings. When our staff met last week, there was little clarification needed for the first part of the statement, but the last portion leaves much for the reader to infer. This is something we need to improve on. 

As we move on to question 2, there remains much to be detailed. The statement "equal opportunity to achieve lifelong success" is much to broad a goal to set, much less achieve. This means we as a staff need to become much more specific on what we are intending to accomplish. 

Finding an answer to question 2 will always bring us to step 3. Once we have set a clear and specific mission for our school and students, how are we going to know if we are successful. If I were to refer you back to the statement of "equal opportunity to achieve lifelong success", I would challenge anyone to provide me with a measurement of success in achieving that goal. 

The task of evaluating and rewriting a mission statement is never a quick process. Everyone will have opinions on the language and intent of the mission statement, but nevertheless it is still an important process. Once we are able to set our mission, it is going to be much easier to get staff, administration, students, the school board, parents and the community working together to provide the best possible atmosphere for our kids to succeed in. 

In closing, I have noticed there has been some regular traffic on this blog and I am very excited about that. I am hoping that people are willing to post reply's to the same questions I am asking my staff. The more information provided in this process will only ensure we find the success we are looking for. 

Welcome

In an effort to keep the stakeholders of Wyndmere school well informed on all of the great things happening here at the school, I have decided to begin a blog.

This blog will highlight the many accomplishments of our students and school. I have found that a monthly newsletter article doesn't provide adequate space to get the job done.

However, while it is important to celebrate our accomplishments it is even more important to be looking towards the future. We are at a point in education where many changes will be taking place. Curriculum standards, methods of teaching our children and countless other items are changing before our eyes. In order to keep Wyndmere School as one of the top schools in the state of North Dakota, we must be proactive in addressing these changes. This blog will also be used to provide research, thoughts and updates on how our school will approach what lies ahead.

The staff will be having many meetings in the upcoming weeks to discuss what lies ahead and establish a plan. The community is also asked to be part of this process by attending a meeting in the school lunchroom on March 15th at 7:00 pm. This will be a great opportunity for parents to provide valuable information in regards to the vision of our school. Administration will also be providing information on initiatives that will be impacting our school in the upcoming years.

This blog is going to be a learning process for me and I hope it provides some great information to the students, parents and staff of Wyndmere School.