Mind if I share some thoughts with you guys?
When listening to Obama’s State of the Union address last night I couldn’t help but hear the similarities between what he sees as necessary change in our country and what we see as necessary change in El Milagro. If we read a transcript of what he has to say we might find terms like deficit, education, and the last decade being congruent with what we have seen with our progress as a Charter.
Obama discussed to putting our money in things we must have and cutting back on things we would like to have. I see the same in our budget talks.
He talks about making sure we have the foundations to ensure success and to come together and put aside bickering and finger pointing and that our successes do not come from others failures.
He talked about openness and honesty and communication amongst the old and the new. To focus on the good and what we are doing right and have the guts to speak up about what needs to change. He said that the problems he chose to tackle like health care reform was because it is necessary and not because it makes for good politics. The same can be true about tackling the issue of What Works!
What I am hearing from our government leader are changes that we can parallel in our most prized piece of land, our little county, our independent charter school who desperately wants to maintain it’s independence from further bureaucracy. Whose citizens want to maintain their structure and health care and autonomy from outside rule and decision making. We can move forward and achieve 840 but change must happen today and tomorrow. We need to separate routine from a rut;we need to look at better ways of doing things.
I do not have the answer and I do not propose that I can come up with one alone;just as Obama said in reference to leading the country through the next 4 years. But I do see a strength and a drive of the staff, students and parents here.
I have seen that in teachers who willingly schedule conferences well after school is out or just after the sun has come up in the early morning. I have seen that in parents who come to conferences asking what they can do to help their child at home. I have seen that in teachers and support staff who attend the conferences and begin with verbal praise of academic progress and conclude by verbal encouragement to build on that success. I have seen it in teachers who prefer to accept the blame for their struggling students and search for answers.
With that deeply held belief that we are here to help others, I believe we can harness that energy and climb up the CST score mountain as a team.
If Obama can get the US out of a 1 trillion dollar deficit next year, our support staff can get El Milagro out of an API deficit this year.
Just a thought anyway…
Written by Melinda White.
