The Ship in Port - Summer Update

If there is one thing this summer has not been, it has not been slow and restful.  Right from the first day with the Summer Anchor program we have been off and running.  I am finishing up a week at the Superintendent's Summer institute for Principals this morning.  It has been a good experience and I have enjoyed learning with and from my colleagues.  There are a lot of very good things going on about the district!

It is also hard to believe that the month of July is almost gone.  We are ready to unfurl the sails and prepare the deck for the 2010 - 2011 school voyage.  The are still some questions to be answered and the last parts of the puzzle will begin to fall into place quickly now as we start the ramp up.  It is odd how quiet it is at school but the feeling of awakening is definitely in the air!

The building is looking sharp as Mr. McDonald and the custodial crew have been hard at work preparing for opening.  The classrooms look bright and shiny with fresh wax and everything put through summer cleaning.  We have just one last shipment of computers left to come in for the engineering lab.  We're looking for them sometime next week.

For students and parents, the individual FCAT score reports are in so please be on the lookout for more information as to when and how we will distribute them.  On a whole, MAST did very well and once again the work of our students, teachers, and entire MAST family has shone through.  Thank you all!  School grades will not be published for senior high schools until November as there are now additional grading criteria that the state must collect and analyze.  More to come ...

Finally, my summer reading has been going.  It would be enjoyable to have had more time to read but I have completed Drive by Daniel Pink, Discussion Based Online Teaching by Tisha Bender, and a title on SMART Goals ( good for IPEGS).  I learned from all three and each has lead me to additional learning/reading that I have saved up for future opportunity.  Drive's discussion on motivation is eye-opening and I have since found some of the research by E. Deci to review.  There are some major implications for motivation in schools and learning.  The SMART goals piece will help as we as a faculty plan our upcoming year's IPEGS goals and some of the case studies were interesting.  Finally, the book on online teaching was drab and dated.  Despite this, it did reinforce the idea that there is something in the idea of online learning.  I think that we as the adults have as much to learn as the students.  I see this becoming a powerful venue for learning once we get a better handle on how to best use the tools available.

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer and has taken the necessary precautions for the pending tropical storm.  Being as it looks like we will be spending a wet weekend indoors, it sounds like a great time to make sure that your summer reading is up to date and you are on course to finish!