Monday, December 12, 2011

Basketball Mini-court is Open!

THANK YOU MMPTO!  The new mini-basketball court is open for "business!"




Tomorrow is the first day that students in grades 3-5 can use the court at recess time...hooray!

Monday, December 5, 2011

Core Values

Today was a very special day for all of us at MMES.  About a month ago, a group of staff members got together to have a discussion about values.  We brainstormed a list of values that we each hold individually in hopes of arriving at a smaller group of values that we could adopt as our school's Core Values.  We believe that it is important to develop our students' character along with their academic skills.
MMES Core Values:

Honesty
Effort
Acceptance
Respect/responsibility
Thoughtfulness

Hopefully, your child came home today talking about our school-wide meeting that took place this morning.  At this meeting, we introduced the students to the concept of Core Values and introduced "MMES has H.E.A.R.T."  This involved a presentation and skits starring your very own MMES staff!   


Future meetings will focus on one or two of the values.  We will explore the concepts at a deeper level and select certain values to focus on for a period of time.  Classrooms will also explore the concepts in their classroom morning meetings.

In addition, we introduced the concept of "heart slips."  These are a small way for our staff to recognize students who go above and beyond our expectations in demonstrating good examples of our core values.  


We even got creative with our promotion of the core values by making t-shirts for staff and decorating the lobby with the concept.  We will use this concept as a frame of reference as we talk to the children about expectations throughout the school year.  Please feel free to refer to them at home also as you see fit.  A big "Thank You" goes out to all of the staff members who worked together to develop and implement the core values concept.  It is going to be a great thing for our school climate and culture!