Mentors

Two excellent articles in this morning’s Chronicle-Independent about mentoring opportunities in the Kershaw County School District.  Even if you can simply eat lunch with a young person once a week, it will make a huge difference.  The principal of any school in the district would be happy to help you get involved!

A Good Tuesday Evening

I had the opportunity yesterday evening to stop by the Adult Education Program over at ATEC.  I was extremely pleased to see the large number of GED students and as always, was really impressed by the work being done by the Adult Ed teachers.  I hope every one of these folks can earn their GED.  I know the staff in the Adult Ed program will do everything possible to help this to happen.

Also got to see the North Central volleyball team absolutely dominate 4A Lancaster High School.  This is a very talented and well-coached team that plays really well together and with great enthusiasm.  Impressive!

Jackson Morning Show

When I stopped in at Jackson Elementary this morning, I got to catch the morning news show.  It was excellent!  Look out WIS!!!

Volleyball!!!

Volleyball season starts this week at all three of our high schools.  If you’ve never seen a girls’ volleyball game, take the opportunity to do so.  It keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time.  Really exciting!  All three of our high schools have excellent programs.  Well worth the time!

A Thought-Provoking Book

Dr. Connie Long passed a book on to me last week called If She Only Knew Me.  It’s a short book, but a very powerful one.  It looks at school from the perspective of so many high risk kids that we serve.  One of the vignettes has a picture of a young man, maybe third or fourth grade, receiving a tardy pass in the office and wiping his eyes from crying.  The caption says, “If she only knew that I had to get my little brother up and ready for school this morning, she wouldn’t have fussed at me for being a few minutes late.”  Makes you think….

Fine Arts Center Hot Dog Lunch

I truly enjoyed spending a some time today at the Fine Arts Center Hot Dog Lunch.  This annual event is an opportunity for community members to tour the Center’s facilities, enjoy some great music, and have a hot dog with old friends and new friends.  It was good to see a lot of folks there.  Kudos to Tim Hopkins of the District staff for his leadership and work on this event.

An Excellent Friday

Started my day on Friday greeting the new Junior Leadership class over at the Mills Courthouse.  Junior Leadership is a year-long leadership program sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and involves eleventh grade students from our three high schools and Camden Military.  It’s always fun to watch how this group comes together over the course of the year.  I really enjoy stopping by for the group’s monthly sessions.Visited Doby’s Mill Elementary and traded barbs with Ms. Jakki Wiseman’s fifth grade class about the multiplication competition we’ll have sometime this year.  Their message to me was “bring it on!”  Ms. Wiseman does a great job with her kids in math!

Also visited Ms. Stephanie Desjarlais’ first graders, who were counting by 10 frontwards and backwards while jumping up and down.  I wish I had that much energy. 

While visiting Stover Middle, I was pleased to learn that Stover would be starting its own archery team.  Blaney Elementary, which shares a campus with Stover, has had a very successful program.  I appreciate the work that Blaney PE teacher Scott Lewis has done to get the Stover program off the ground!

Fall Sports Schedules

This morning’s Chronicle-Independent has a great summary of fall sports schedules for all three of our high schools.  A great item to clip out and keep handy.  If you haven’t been to a high school athletic event recently, it’s a fun experience and a terrific way to support young people in our community.  Thanks to Tom Didato of the C-I for putting this together and for his excellent coverage of high school sports in Kershaw County!

Here And There On Wednesday

Had some fun out in the field yesterday…

I spent some time with elementary school bus drivers being trained in PBIS (“Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports”), a program that has been implemented in our elementary schools through the “Safe Schools/Healthy Students” grant.  Having the bus drivers work with student behavior management in a coordinated way with the schools is an outstanding idea!  PBIS is making a tremendous difference in our district.  Thanks to Ms. Kathy Brand for getting this organized and to the drivers for participating!

I also spent a few minutes with the clerical folks in our schools who work with the “PowerSchool” data base program.  Our data base in unbelievably important in terms of many tasks that have to be managed.  These people have done an outstanding job!  Our data base is in the best shape it has ever been!

While I was at Camden Middle School, I visited Ms. Elizabeth Butler’s science class, where the students were doing a lab on living and nonliving things and classification by genus and species.  It always amazes me to see the level and complexity of work that our students do in math and science,  I don’t remember doing anything with genus and species until high school.

Wednesday Morning

I was pleased to learn that Ms. Ginger Catoe, principal of Doby’s Mill Elementary School, had been selected to participate in the South Carolina Education Policy Fellowship Prorgram.  In this day and time, it is extremely important for school administrators to understand how state and federal policy-making impacts education at the school and classroom level.  Through her experiences in this program, Ginger will be a great resource to the District.

I appreciated Keri Todd Boyce’s article about the United Way and its impact on the community in this morning’s Chronicle-Independent.  Keri is going to be doing a series of articles on the United Way’s partner agencies.  Through their work, these agencies have a positive impact on the entire community.  I know from experience how these agencies help support what we do in schools.