Welcome to the 2013-14 School Year

Tomorrow morning our students return and it’s one of my favorite days of the year. Everyone returns with enthusiasm in whatever favorite new outfit they’ve chosen. And the best part is that I get to help our littlest ones find their classrooms. I really enjoy seeing our students return and watching the bittersweet goodbyes from parents bringing their child to school for the first time. Parents, please know that we will cherish your babies—that our teachers will love them and expect the best of them. And so will I.

At the same time, we will have high expectations for each child. We want our students, your children, to learn and to grow and to experience a positive yet challenging school year. Attached you can look at the opening day presentation I gave to our entire school family of employees yesterday. Randolph academic success is on the rise and we are working hard so that our students can be successful in every aspect of our programs. We look forward to working with you and we hope that you will also have high expectations for your child.

Why are our expectations for children so important? Here’s a personal example. My parents were clear in their expectations for me as a student—my grades had to be above a C. So that’s what I worked for, to get above a C–B’s worked just fine in my house.

We like to think every generation gets smarter than us, right? Our expectation for our own two kids was that they had to have their grades above a 90 average. That’s a higher expectation than my parents had for me and both of our children met that expectation every ten weeks. I remember quoting, “hey, to he (or she) who much is given, much is expected”—meaning your life is good, your brain is good, get to work! When our son was a senior in high school, he had to write a paper in which he spoke about his strong relationship with his dad for 90% of the paper and then on the last page wrote, “and I’m thankful that my mom had her foot on me through all of school or I never would have done as well as I did.” Not exactly gushing in it’s emotion for his mom, but hey–you get the point. He’s now a senior at St. Bonaventure on an academic scholarship that requires he maintain a 3.0 average. What do you think he maintains?

Please expect more from your children. I’m betting they can get there. We’re doing the same here at RCS and we’re expecting more of ourselves too. I’ve never forgotten something I read at the beginning of my administrative career, written by Todd Whitaker in What Great Principals Do Differently, “Great teachers have high expectations for students but even higher expectations for themselves.” I’ll work on everyone here at RCS having high expectations for themselves–first of all ME–please help us by working on having high expectations for your children at home–in school attendance, academic performance, behavior and treating everyone with respect. Deal?

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