Opening Day

This morning was my school district's opening day conference for all school district employees. Unlike the meeting I had yesterday morning, this meeting ran ahead of schedule. As we entered the auditorium, there was a band playing and a montage of photos from the previous school year being projected onto a large screen. One of the photos was this one which today I saw at Cop Talk. I had assumed that this photo originated somewhere in my school district, but now I am not sure. Perhaps the person putting together the presentation came across it somewhere and thought it would be funny to include it.



The conference was fine. Like most conferences of its type, the main purpose was to inspire us all, and I suppose it did have that effect to some small degree. One particular point that the superintendent made that really made me think was that we must believe in our students' abilities to learn. I've always felt that every student can learn. What we were reminded of is that if we don't think that a certain student can be successful, he or she will pick up on it, even if we don't verbalize those feelings. So, if we don't want to leave any students behind, we must believe that each student can succeed.