Observations

Dear Campus School Families,

*Well, we're off - a new school year is underway! What a joy to see the excited
faces of students this week. It is quite an achievement, at any age, to begin a
new school year, and I am grateful for the careful preparations teachers and
parents made to begin this year in such fine fashion. I hope you and your
children enjoy a relaxing weekend as we prepare for the first full week of
school.

*On the first day of school, as I stood out front greeting families, I was struck
by the ways our students approached me. Some of them seemed to know I was
the new principal but others simply did not know who I was. Regardless, I was
greeted warmly, looked in the eye, and got lots of smiles. The warmth and
confidence of the students was notable and, in my mind, a very important
indicator of a healthy school community. By day two some students were
greeting me by name - very impressive!

*It was a pleasure meeting many of you at my coffees this week. I always enjoy
opportunities to communicate with parents and to have a dialogue around the
most important things - our students and school. I hope you found the coffees
to be useful, and I want to let you know that I will do several more during the
school year; information on dates will follow soon.

*And in keeping with communications - an important request. It is likely that
during the course of a school year something will not go as planned and a
concern will arise. When this happens I ask you to bring your concern to the
person who can best respond to it; I think this is both productive and fair and a
hallmark of healthy relationships.

*Finally, something, I hope, to entertain and educate. Sir Ken Robinson was
knighted for his work in bringing creative thinking to schools in Britain, and
his TED talk about schools and creativity is wonderful. (I am sure some of you
are already familiar with it.) It is well worth 19 minutes of your day.
Creativity and creative thinking are core skills definitely worth cultivating and
teaching. This is a topic I will return to in the coming months.

https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

Warmly,
Chris