Good Evening Viking Nation,
We had a great first week back from Thanksgiving Break. Our students and staff returned from their 5-days off refreshed and ready to continue working hard towards increased student achievement.
We had a phenomenal start to our week with Dearborn School Life publishing a great article on the awesome work being done by Smith staff & students to prepare our students for life after K-12 education via our “Creating a College-Going Culture/ Post-Secondary Education” focus. My most sincere thank you to our great friend Mr. Raad Alawan (Dearborn School Life Editor) for spending two days at Smith Middle School capturing and chronicling our learning community’s daily successes via photography and in-depth interviews of our parents, staff and students. I want to personally thank Mr. Alawan for his continued support of me as principal since my very first day. His continuous support definitely makes it easier to win for our kids!
On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we conducted grade level assemblies to review district expectations for student conduct and behavior in a continued effort to support a positive learning and growth focused environment at Smith.
A big salute to our wonderful school improvement planning team has continued their excellent hardwork preparing O.L. Smith for it’s upcoming school improvement visit. Our wonderful teachers and staff worked hours on end updating documents, aggregating data and researching best practices. Also, a special thank you to our other teachers (not on the school improvement team) for volunteering their time to cover down on classes of SIP Team members allowing us to avoid using a large number of substitute teachers which saved our school money and preserved quality instruction as well.
Last but definitely not least, I was given an amazing opportunity to present with both Dr. Maleyko (Superintendent) and Robert Attee (DuVall Principal) on the wonderful ways Smith’s staff are using blogs, social media and Google Tools to communicate transparently with our students, parents and other staff. Have a great weekend, see you on Monday!
Principal Fisher
