SMS Principal Blog

Weep with those who weep. -Romans 12:15 It is hard to put into words the way tragedy affects us. As I sit here in our empty building trying to process yesterday's events, I'm not sure that the words will ever come. So often, we struggle to find meaning in tragedy. There is some part of us that wants to make sense of the senseless. I suppose there would be comfort in that if such a thing were possible, but I know it is not, so I will not bother wandering down that path. Instead of trying to make sense of why these things happen, my mind keeps circling back to why they affect us so deeply, so entirely. In the sense that we normally think of the relationships that we have with one another, I cannot say that I knew the student we lost in yesterday's tragedy. I'm sure I possibly crossed paths with him at some point over the last six weeks, but I certainly can't recall ever having a conversation with him nor a circumstance in which I might have, yet this loss of li...

"We don't develop courage by being happy every day. We develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity." -Barbara De Angelis One of the most difficult things about being a parent is navigating situations in which our children are facing adversity. How do we know when to let them face it alone as a learning experience and when to help them navigate the adversity? How can we tell when it is adversity that is a natural part of their learning experience and when it is a situation that is not something they should be going through and that we need to intervene to protect them? This is something I struggle with constantly with my own children. I'm never quite sure that I've made the right decision, but I'm usually pretty positively able to identify when I made the wrong decision. I talk about this with other parents, good parents, and I know it is one of the more difficult aspects of parenting, but the one thing I take solace in is that even...

"There is no such thing as a 'bad kid'-- just angry, hurt, tired, scared, confused, impulsive ones expressing their feelings and needs the only way they know how. We owe it to every single one of them to always remember that." -Dr. Jessica Stephens One of the things I tell people I am most proud of about Sullivan Middle School is that our teachers truly seem to understand that many our students are not coming to us from perfect home lives and that often manifests in imperfect behavior. It is difficult sometimes to keep this perspective as the year moves on, but this quote reminds me of something I came across during an online Admin Academy I took over the summer. The point was to change our mindset when dealing with student misbehavior. Instead of asking "What is wrong with you?", we should be asking "What is going on with you?" Many people read these kinds of statements and jump to the conclusion that this means we do not hold students ...