This school year our One Word was PURPOSE.
You saw it every week at the top of our update and I hope you allowed this word to guide you this year. As I begin to reflect on this school year I look back at how we lived our word. It’s funny because for me the word purpose meant something different at the beginning of the school year than it does now. In August and September, when I thought about our word I thought about being purposeful with our meetings, purposeful with decisions and purposeful in how I used my time. As the school year went on and I began to dig into the needs of our kids, our word took on a completely new and more powerful meaning. Purpose began to be about others. I started to think about ways we could help our students find their PURPOSE. I looked at our work with R Factor and JW YOUniversity and thought about how the skills we were teaching our kids and the experiences we were giving them added purpose to their lives. I began to see a deeper purpose in the work we do and realized that we are so much more than teachers of standards and curriculum. And, I remembered that our PURPOSE as educators is to truly make a difference in the lives of kids. The things we did this year are nothing short of amazing! We did incredible work with R Factor, created 24 courses for our kids to take during JW YOUniversity, expanded our knowledge of phonemic awareness and phonics, learned that love is an intervention, cotaught our ELs, coached each other during JW Grows, had a student become a finalist in a National Competition, took every child on at least one field trip, and welcomed 6 first year teachers into our school. What’s even more incredible is that at JW Reason we know our purpose is not only to serve our students but to also serve each other. As a staff we covered classes and duties for one another, helped write sub plans for sick teammates, gave up assessment days, made phone calls to parents together, planned field trips together, dreamed big dreams and created awesome opportunities for kids. We built each other up and rooted for each other along the way. We lived our word! We did hard things together with PURPOSE. Thank you for helping me along my journey this school year. Thank you for showing me what it means to live with PURPOSE each day as you cared for children. Have a great summer! You deserve it!
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