To encourage dialogue and reflection about what we each can bring to our community, our question for this week is: In what ways can you contribute to our community? Community, Contributions, and Humility (Week of 5/28/23) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
Blake's Guiding Lights
Our Students
Blake's Core Values: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, Reflection
Our Essential Question: How can we cultivate and curate the progression of student learning and growth?
Our Mission: Blake Middle School believes in a living mission statement, based on the concept that our community seeks and respects knowledge, integrity, character, wisdom, and the willingness to adapt to a continually evolving world.
The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
Hopefully the long weekend served everyone well and that you were able to ‘live’ the ‘No Homework Weekend’ and have time for whatever fills your proverbial bucket! Katie, Maggie, and I went to Boston Calling on Saturday - really fun, but not necessarily the best timing as I felt the need for the ‘post-D.C. trip nap’, although I was able to get one in on Sunday! The weather was fantastic and we enjoyed time outside in the garden. On Sunday we enjoyed Holliston’s Memorial Day parade before watching Game 7 of the Celtics (an unfortunate end to the season!).
Over the next week I will be asking students and staff to take some concerted time to capture thoughts as we look ahead to next year, including taking time to think about this questions…
‘What is the biggest 'takeaway' that resonated with you - whether it was a certain site/memorial, museum, experience, or interaction?’
For me it is hard to name just one and I know they will evolve, but for now three come to mind…
- Community, Contributions, and Humility - each memorial and site that we visited, in their own ways, highlighted a sense of community, contributions of others, and a sense of humility (of both the individuals memorialized as well as the visitors, including myself)
- E. Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) - as part of our tour of the Capitol, we watched a short film entitled E.Pluribus Unum and I find this to be a mantra that I hope we can bring forth to our day-to-day life at Blake; there are many of us that contribute towards one community - and, yet, it is the individuality of each of us that makes the community thrive
- Shared sense of learning - each attendee on the trip, student and staff alike, learned throughout the week and although the learnings are different and memories will vary, we all hold them and they will shape ourselves and our community
I want to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to all of the chaperones for helping to provide and foster the learning and experiences that took place this past week for our 8th graders taking time away from their families and personal lives: Stacy Burns, Susan Bycoff, Mary Ellen DuBois, Kara Gelormini, Jason Heim, Greg Keohan, Matt Marenghi, Matt Millard, Diana Mileszko, Arlene O'Donovan-Driscoll, and Jillian Shaw. And, of course, a very special thanks to Debbie Avery for helping with all of the organization for the trip and to Arlene for taking care of us throughout. The preparations and 'behind the scenes' work by Arlene and Tricia Williams to assure a safe experience for all is truly incredible and invaluable! Thanks as well to all of the staff who provided a meaningful experience for our students at Blake and with the all of the ‘coverage needs’ - the communal efforts are noted and valued - thank you!
On Friday morning I sent the final ‘morning update’ of the week to the 8th grade families and am sharing them below, as I hope they convey some of my own reflections and learnings in a way that captures the essence of my thoughts that morning…
I encourage you to check out the hashtag #blakeindc to view the pictures and 'online journal' of our excursion, and to take time this weekend to reflect with your children about their experiences. As you know the practice of reflection is one of our core values at Blake and has been a significant element of this trip, viewing and learning about its place and role at memorials, monuments, and museums. Ask your students about what they learned and what they hope to bring back to their day-to-day lives and community. This was our first trip since 2019, and we are thrilled that we were able to have this shared experience with our students once again. It is a unique opportunity to grow, develop, and learn - with memories, new experiences, highlights, lowlights (hopefully not many), and 'bumps' along the path (the 'bumps' along the way can be equally important for growing, developing, and learning). It is an honor and a pleasure to work with our students and we care about them.
From a ritualistic perspective, one of my favorite parts of this annual trip with our 8th graders is the viewing and experience of the 'words of history' (observed and/or heard at the memorials, monuments, and museums). Below is a selection of ones that stood out and resonated with me this year (along with a few from past years from the Newseum - I miss that museum dearly!)...
May the lives remembered, the deeds recognized, and the spirit reawakened be eternal beacons, which reaffirm. Respect for life, strengthen our resolve to preserve freedom, and inspire an end to hatred, ignorance, and intolerance. - excerpt from the National September 11 Memorial Mission Statement
No day shall erase you from the memory of time. - Virgil
Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech. - Benjamin Franklin
If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture. - Eddie Adams
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world, you are no wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar. - Edward R. Murrow
Let the people see what I have seen. I think everybody needs to know what had happened to Emmett Till. - Mamie Till-Mobley
Racism is still with us. But it is up to us to prepare our children for what they have to meet, and, hopefully, we shall overcome. - Rosa Parks
The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth on them. - Ida B. Wells
The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. - Maya Angelou
Let us gear ourselves to the great task of mapping out a pathway that will truly lead to a better world for us all. - Mary McLeod Bethune
Education...enabled all my dreams to come true. - Ben Carlson
The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it...History is literally present in all that we do. - James Baldwin
I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. - Nelson Mandela
There is but one destiny...left for us, and that is to make ourselves a part of the American people in every sense of the word. - Frederick Douglass
We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. - MLK, Jr.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. - MLK, Jr.
I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. - MLK, Jr.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. - MLK, Jr.
I never forget that I live in a house owned by all the American people and that I have been given their trust. - FDR
We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization. - FDR
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. - FDR
Unless the peace that follows recognizes that the whole world is one neighborhood and does justice to the whole human race, the germs of another world war will remain as a constant threat to mankind. - FDR
The structure of world peace cannot be the work of one man, or one party, or one nation...it must be a peace which rests on the cooperative effort of the whole world. - FDR
More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars - FDR
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. - JFK, Jr.
For the dead and the living we must bear witness. - Elie Wiesel
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: What goal(s) do you want to focus on over the last few weeks of this school year? What step(s) are you taking to meet this/these goal(s)?
- Being more confident in myself
- My main goal for the end of the year, is to stay in the here and now. It's hard to not focus on the upcoming summer but when I do that I miss out on what's happening right in front of me.
- I want to make sure my grades don’t go down, so I’ve been working extra hard these past few weeks.
- My goal is to have all students meet the standard and leave the year feeling enthusiastic about learning and life!
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Take care.
Nat