Weekly Blog 3-14-15

3-14-15

Good afternoon!

Happy Pie Day to all! Hopefully everyone is enjoying some pie today!! Personally, I am hoping that my wife will make me one of my favorite pies. It would either be a hot apple pie with vanilla ice cream or strawberry pie with big and thick and juicy strawberries.  I think I have earned it through my good behavior during my first three months of marriage but time will tell...She may have a different opinion.....LOL!

Before I get into the meat of our blog this week, I want to send a special thank you to all of our students, team members, and parents for all of the warm birthday wishes I received yesterday.  I truly have the greatest job on earth and I do appreciate all of the kindness that everyone has shown me.  It was funny to hear the students guess my age...The guesses that I heard were anywhere from 27 to 112 years old....Of course the only way you can take this is as a compliment.  In my opinion, I think I am doing pretty good for 112 years old...LOL!

A couple topics have been weighing on my heart in regards to our students that I would like to address with all of you:

As we just closed the Third Nine Weeks yesterday, I want to point out that I do not ever want our "tough love" at times to be mistaken for anything else but "tough love" for our students to grow into responsible young adults.  Above all we love your children, just as all of you do! We want them to grow up being responsible productive members of our society.  When we have tough conversations with your children about their classwork, homework, and/or attendance record, we want to not only provide them an opportunity to be successful (short and long term);  but we also want them to be accountable for their actions.  It is vital that all of us are on the same page to make sure that we not only provide them with the love and support that is needed, but we also teach responsibility and accountability to our students for their actions.  While I completely respect different opinions and views on how this is done, I strongly feel that once we have provided them every opportunity to succeed, we need to follow it with a lesson of responsibility and accountability for their actions.  If we do not do act in this manner, my fear is that our actions will spiral into future nonproductive and irresponsible decision making from our students.  Please do not take this as militaristic or unloving view of how to run a school, but a view of how to develop responsible and productive students.  

On another note, the more I read the newspaper, watch the news and/or hear stories about how families are negatively impacted, I am often thinking about how we can better educate students to be people of strong character and develop leadership skills in them.  I think this starts in elementary school and often later in life it might be too late.  I would be interested in your opinions of how we can do this better at Columbia Elementary for our students.  While our students are the best and the brightest, we want them to be people of strong character that will help improve our community, state, nation, and world in the future.  I believe that together, we all can focus on these efforts to positively impact our future as a society.  Please feel free to e-mail me at mdill@mvcsd.us or contact me with your ideas.

Upcoming Events at Columbia Elementary:
3/20-Spring Pictures
3/23-Grade Cards go home with all students
3/27-Awards Assemblies: 9:15-10 (KDG-2nd Grade), 10-10:45 (Grades 3-5)
3/27-Pie Assembly for entire school @3pm.  A special guest will be appearing:)
3/30-4/3-Spring Break
4/6-Introductory Google Training for Parents from 6-7pm (Third Floor Classroom)
4/6-PTO Meeting@7pm in the library
4/10 Donuts with Parents@ 8:15am until 9am


Have a great weekend!

Go Tigers!
Matt