I Will . . .

We had a wonderful staff development day at Burks - maybe one of the best I have been to yet.  Our brilliant principals started off the day tugging on our heart-strings (and especially mine) by showing a couple of clips from Mr. Holland's Opus.  It's only my favorite inspirational movie of all time (runners up include Sister Act 1 and 2, The Sound of Music, and Mary Poppins).  I have never watched that movie without crying, and now that I'm in my fourth year of teaching music and have watched dear friends get cut due to budgets it just hits me even harder.  Thanks for the sob fest, Pam and Garry!  You definitely know how to get my attention!  :)

Gets me every time.

We also revisited and reaffirmed our belief statements and mission statement that we wrote for our school two years ago.   It is very nice to see that those statements are still true and speak to what we believe as a staff, and what I personally believe as a teacher.  Afterwards, we discussed what it looks like to live out those beliefs in our classrooms with our students.  We were challenged to create our own set of "I will . . ." statements and post them outside our doors.  These will serve as reminders to us and allow students, parents, and staff to hold us accountable.  I wanted to share mine here.