Europium

Today? Humbling.

I was fortunate to attend the teacher "motivation" session at the school where I will be observing this fall. It involved music from the marching band, a showcase of school talent, student guest speakers, and celebrating successes from the past school year, but most of all it set the goals for this coming school year.

If you had only attended the first part of the morning, you would think that this school district thrives, that it's teachers love their jobs, that the students love their school, and that the highest academic achievement is reached. Wrong. While many of the teachers cited in a survey that they "liked" their job, very few said they loved it. And the students leave in droves from their school - last year alone, the school lost 400 kids from the high school (which has 1200 in attendance). As for academic achievement, the school has not made adequate yearly progress (a No Child Left Behind buzz phrase) for the last seven years. Yikes.

The worst part? Listening to how the community doesn't respect their school. I get it, I totally do - it's easiest to state a school's faults then it is to state it's successes. As I learned today, we don't often take pride in our successes (the superintendent did an amazing job of that with the beginning of the session). But the message that struck me the most about the lack of respect was this - the school board president asked the teachers: How can we expect the community to sing its praises for the school when we can't even sing those praises ourselves?

Food for thought my friends.


Common Occurrences: Nearly all compact fluorescent bulbs contain europium phosphors (read: fancy chemistry term for pleasing light).

Fun Fact: Europium is used for labeling on the Euro.