Houston Blog
My blog from Houston, Texas. Updated most weeks, usually on Sundays.
Following firmly in the steps of the so-called blogging experts, I usually try to keep my blogs short by focussing on just one event or theme each week. I am told this is because the research suggests that many people who read blogs tend to have very short attention spans.
Maybe it is my inexperience as a blogger, but I truly struggle to identify just ONE thing to write about when I compose my blogs. There are SO many great things happening and I find that my weeks so interesting (well, to me anyway) that I want to share these events with my family and friends. So, this week, I will defy the experts’ advice and mention three things (while also trying to keep them brief) in the expectation that the audience for my blog is markedly more intellectual than the stereotypical blog reader, and therefore has the attention span to get through to the end.
I will also try to make reading this three-part blog easier by interspersing some photos of the fabulous week I have enjoyed!
Fiesta de Mayo
As soon as I walked into the PAAC on Friday morning, I knew I was about to experience something special. And I was not disappointed.
The reason for the lavish decorations was ‘Fiesta de Mayo’, our annual celebration of Spanish culture and Spanish Language in the Primary School. And as this was the 19th time we have celebrated Festival de Mayo at Awty, I would have to add that is is now an “impressively annual” event.
Each year for the Fiesta de Mayo celebrations, our Spanish Program students in the Primary School share with the Awty Community the diversity of cultures found throughout the Hispanophone world, including music, food and crafts. During Friday morning’s performances in the PAAC, we saw dances from Mexico, Spain, Colombia, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Puerto Rico, all performed to a very high standard by our students from Pre-K3 to Grade 5 to the accompaniment of some delightful and invigorating Latin and Iberian music.
At the end of the dancing, we were treated to a very moving farewell to Ms Rossi Rodriguez-Contreras, who was retiring from Awty after many years of service in our pre-school. To the accompaniment of a flamenco band, Ms Rossi’s former students who are now in the Upper and Middle Schools lined up for a farewell hug, and presented her with flowers and an autographed white rocking chair.
What a wonderful extravaganza of color, life, action, dancing, exuberance and fun this year’s Fiesta de Mayo was! I could not stop smiling for the entire 45 minute performance, and what especially liked was how much the students were obviously enjoying themselves too, especially as many of the dance routines were fairly difficult (well, they would have been impossible for me, anyway).
Fiesta de Mayo was inaugurated at Awty 19 years ago by our Deputy Head of the Head of the Primary School and Spanish Coordinator, Ms Tita Cubria. I understand that it began with just a handful of students. This year’s performances involved hundreds of students, and it was a true masterpiece in my opinion. Congratulations to Tita, the faculty and staff of the Primary School and to the students for producing such a fabulous event!
Please scroll down through the photos below (which can be clicked to enlarge), to read the next section of the blog.
Head of School for a Day
Coinciding with Fiesta de Mayo, I continued the tradition of appointing one of the children in the Primary School to be Head of School for the Day. This year, the lucky student was Chelsey West, a student in Grade 4.
Chelsey’s duties as Head of School for the day began with the opening of the first Fiesta de Mayo presentation in the PAAC. I presented Chelsey with her certificate, and then invited her to give the welcome speech, which she did with supreme confidence and polish to the entire primary School and the hundreds of parents who were present.
Chelsey was a performer in both Fiesta de Mayo presentations, so after the second set of performances, she came to my office with several of her friends to enjoy a pizza lunch. I stayed for the first part of the lunch, together with a gentleman who I happened to be interviewing for a job that day, so that Chelsey and her ‘advisors” could ask questions and, as it turned out, help interview my visitor.
While I continued my interview with the visitor in another room down the corridor, Chelsey and her friends took the opportunity to sit on my chair (and, so I heard afterwards, even put their feet up on my desk, something I have never to do myself!). Chelsey phoned her parents using my office phone, and then wrote a list of instructions on a sheet of letterhead paper. I don’t know whether all her instructions will be implemented now that I am back in charge (such as the requests for ice cream every day, uniform-free days for her and her friends, and so on), but I’ll do my best to implement some of her orders.
After lunch, it was time for me to give Chelsey a tour of the school and introduce her to some of the significant personnel who were reporting to her for the day. Chelsey met and spoke with the Head of the Middle School, the Director of Athletics, several teachers in the Middle and Upper Schools, and she even had the chance to speak with the Head of the Upper School in his office. We concluded the tour with a quick visit to the College Counselling Office where she discovered some of the reasons why so many older students like to visit there – reasons that were sitting in brightly colored foil in a bowl in the middle of the meeting table.
At the end of her day, I asked Chelsey whether she might want to become a Head of School when she grows up, and the big smile with the affirmative nodding of her head suggested that she had enjoyed a wonderful time as Head of School for the day.
Please scroll down through the photos below (which can be clicked to enlarge), to read the final section of the blog.
Strategic Vision Brainstorming Day
On Wednesday we completed the next phase of our community consultation to develop a new Strategic Plan. Starting at 7:30 am and finishing at 5:30 pm, we undertook a “Brainstorming Day” in the PAAC to follow-up the earlier community-wide questionnaire to which over 700 people – parents, students, faculty – contributed their ideas for the future of Awty.
The aim of “Brainstorming Day” was to enable any member of the Awty community to drop in and out of ongoing conversations on aspects of our “big picture” strategic direction for the coming five years.
Needless to say, this was not intended to be a day of decision-making. Rather, it was an opportunity to enable any idea, no matter how wild or unrealistic, to be heard and recorded for later consideration. That is why we called it a “brainstorming day”.
We had five tables set up around the PAAC, one for each of the following “big picture” themes that have emerged as the organizing framework for our new Strategic Vision:
1.Demographic sustainability: This table looked at school size and composition, the needs of the school-age population, diversity, school culture, and links with the wider community.
2.Environmental sustainability: This table discussed making Awty greener, all matters relating to buildings and grounds, energy use, and environmental focus in the curriculum.
3.Financial sustainability: This table opened up issues of financial assumptions, fees and flexibility, elasticity of demand, diversifying sources of income, prioritizing expenditure, and staffing.
4.Global sustainability: This table examined developing problem solving, international perspectives, international links, service learning [local and overseas], and skills and values for the future.
5.Programmatic sustainability: This table focussed on content and skills of the curriculum, matching curriculum to mission and vision, technology to support the curriculum, scheduling, and leaders as change agents.
We had at least one English and one French speaker at all tables at all times. The formula seemed to work very well, and I was delighted by the number of parents, students and faculty who dropped in through the day, contributed to discussions and left comments on the large discussion sheets of paper, on the writing pads and in the boxes.
It will take us a week or two to compile all the comments. As soon as this process has been completed, we will post the “Brainstorming Day” comments on the password-protected portal of the Awty website and invite further comments and reactions to the suggestions made.
Thanks to the enthusiastic support of so many people, we are well on track to developing our new Strategic Vision by the target date of January 2013.
A blog in three parts
Sunday, 6 May 2012
There are some weeks when you simply can’t just focus on one highlight. This has been one of those weeks.