Well, I guess the blog police or George Bush took a couple of my pictures away. I guess if I were George Bush I wouldn't want anyone seeing me hug John McCain either. Hmmm, that would be a great story starter: What I would do if I were George Bush. Shall I start? If I were George Bush I would...not hug anyone trying to take my job. Now see, you thought I was going to be mean. Shame on you for thinking that!

OVER ONE HUNDRED POSTS!! NOT BAD!!

Did you watch 60 minutes tonight? One of the reports was about school violence. The story mentioned a joint study by the Secret Service and the Department of Education that was published in May of 2002: "Implications for the Prevention of School Attacks in the U.S." School shooters were interviewed to determine why they committed the crimes they did. The responses of the shooters were chilling to say the least. Several common characteristics were found among the shooters. One of the common characteristics was bullying. All the shooters were victims of habitual bullying. Another characteristic among the shooters was they all felt there were no adults around them whom they could trust. They felt that no adult around them cared about them. It's been reported that the Virginia Tech shooter was bullied in high school. I wonder if there were any caring adults around him? Was there anyone at his school he trusted? The implications for schools are profound. A school can say it has a zero tolerance on bullying, but we all know what a few kids do when we're not looking. We have to be vigilant and not accept any bullying whatsoever. Parents need to be held accountable too. They need to teach their children right from wrong. Unfortunately, that's not happening in some cases. We need to make sure every single student feels loved and supported. Every single kid needs to be able to trust at least one person at their school. Preventing kids from being bullied and making sure they feel loved...yeah, we can do that.

Happy Earth Day!

This week I've been looking over the parent comments from the safe school surveys we sent out a while ago. They're very interesting. A lot of comments about how the bathrooms are dirty. I'm sure most of the parents have never been in the bathrooms, so how would they know if they're dirty? And if the bathrooms were dirty, who caused the dirtiness? Their kids!!! Lots of comments about how there needs to be more supervision on the playground. Yep, I agree. Lots of comments about how the kids use bad language, they tease each other, they're disrespectful. Wonder where the kids learned that? Of course no comments thanking us for teaching and reinforcing monthly character traits and for teaching and reinforcing our Tribes Agreements. A few comments about the cafeteria. How horrible it is we make the kids drink their milk and eat all of their food. Even more horrible that we make them slide down to the end of the table. Just once I'd like to hear a few positive comments about all the great things were doing. Wouldn't that be nice?

Someone needs a hug!! :(

Today I sent out a memo about school safety and a reminder about lock down procedures. The horrible incident at Virginia Tech prompted me to do so. No matter how much we plan or how great our plan is, there's no way we can really stop someone determined to cause harm to us. I remember during my first few weeks as a VP at Burnett, some psycho jumped the fence and walked into a classroom and stole a credit card out of a teacher's purse. Darryl and I like dummies chased the guy for more than a half hour. We eventually lost him. We didn't stop to think that the guy might have a gun, all we thought about was this guy violated our school and we're going to catch his sorry ass. We didn't catch him. And thank goodness he didn't have a gun. All we can do is be vigilent of who's on our campus. Make sure the kids feel safe. And most importantly take care of each other.

Hug someone you love.

Dodgers lost today. Sad. But there's another game tomorrow. And another game after that. And another game after that one. Hopefully they'll win one of those.

The last couple of weeks have been very interesting. There's been a little bit of drama with a particular grade level. Some not so nice things said about me. Some not so nice accusations.
That goes with the job I suppose. I received an anonymous letter from a teacher who is unhappy with how the school is being led. I realize I can't please everyone all the time. I find it really sad that the author of the letter didn't come and talk to me. Sometimes I get so side tracked by all the negative stuff (the complaints, the problems) that I forget about all the great stuff happening. And I know there is so much great stuff happening. All I can do is keep working hard and keep thinking about the kids and how much they need us to be there for them.

I've been so sick the last two days. Today has been awful. I haven't left my apartment all day. I'm not sure if it's a cold or allergies or a combo of both. Probably a cold. I feel so horrible. I hate being sick. I hate not having the energy to do anything. I was going to go into work to put the finishing touches on intersession. Guess that will have to wait til tomorrow morning. I hope I feel better tomorrow.