The Big Three

Watch this to see what we are focused on at Lomira High School

In a great learning environment, we are ALL teachers!

For years I have been working to build collaborative cultures in the buildings that I have served as an educational leader.  I find such genuine value in brain-storming, discussing and even disagreeing with others who have the same passion for education that I do.  As is true with most educational settings, the challenges I have often faced included creating time for our professionals to come together, creating the safe environment where everyone would honestly contribute and offering up enough professional development to help everyone fully grasp the necessary information needed to have complete discussions.
After listening to Dr. Gary Stager last night on his clip, "Dr. Gary Stager Discusses the Best Educational Practices in the World" I realized that what I am missing is the focus on creating this environment for all of our learners and teachers and using these titles interchangeably.  Teachers as students and students as teachers.

During his interview, Dr. Stager reminds me that our students need to be the teachers too.  Ok, we all know that in the back of our minds but do we really embrace that thought or simply agree that we believe it and then send them to a classroom where the teacher is still handing out the necessary material. Sometimes, as Dr. Stager describes, "preaching through a textbook as though it is gospel".  So what will it take for all of us as educators to relinquish our deep need for 'covering all of the content' to move to a supportive setting where we are comfortable allowing sufficient time to truly explore a question or prompt from start to finish?   Trust in learning is what we need.

Educators by nature are a very compliant, driven and methodical bunch who want to accomplish a task and be comprehensive in their efforts.  True learning isn't usually that clean.  For our teachers or our students.  Instead of worrying about how to find time to incorporate all of the new mandates, standards and evaluation hurdles, how about building confidence and empowerment to allow for exploration, creativity, and natural learning.  We need to be accountable for our students and educational path, but as leaders we also need to set the stage so that our students are comfortably allowed to become contributors to their own educational environments throughout this journey as well.

I embrace Dr. Stager's comment that with, "a supportive environment, sufficient time, appropriate materials and a good prompt" to get the seed planted, we can all trust in the process of learning. It shouldn't be as hard as we make it to believe in this. Together, teachers and students can be great educators.

Cool Tools for Teachers

A great resourse for any educator..... or anyone who aspires to learn more about the education world!

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2012 from Jane Hart

The Time is Now

 

It's hard to believe that my family and I have been in the Lomira Community for 3 school years already.  From the day that we began to expore the option of moving to Lomira, we heard from so many people that this was the ideal, welcoming, caring place to live.  And every day that we have been here since has been a blessing. The people that we have met, become friends with and worked with have all been amazing, caring folks. This is exaclty the type of environment that I want to be sure to maintain for your students everyday as they enter the Lomira High School doors.

 

Education is a tumultuous world right now.  There are new initiatives, new standards and new legislation coming at us virtually everyday. These changes are important & necessary for schools to continue to grow and evolve as quickly as our world is.  Yet with all of this overwhelming change and excitment, our main focus is, and will always be your child.

 

You'll hear things like, "Common Core State Standards", "Assessments", "Teacher Effectiveness", "Interventions",  "Response to Intervention", "PBIS", "21st Century Learning", "One-to-One initiatives", "College & Career Readiness" and so many other phrases that it will overwhelm you.  But the important part to realize as we all grow in this evolutionary educational process is that as educators we will do everything that we can to ensure that your Lomira Lion graduates from high school as a young adult who is able to not only function in the "adult" world, but thrive and excel. It will take all of us in partnership to make generation after generation of successful, focused, and driven young adults.  And we can.

 

As parents keep these three "R's" at the fore-front of your parenting philosophy:

Respect, Responsibility & Resourcefulness

If your child truly grows up to embrace and live by these values, everything else will fall into place.

 

Together we can take the entire Lomira community into a bright and competitive future - and the time is now!

Thank you for your continued support of education, the teachers who inspire learning and children. 

We WILL need them - let's make them good!