SMS Principal Blog

  "I believe in throwing a lot of positive energy in the universe and hope for the best." -Vaani Kapoor These first two weeks of school have been about the most positive two weeks I can remember in quite some time. No doubt, we have had a few very challenging years in a row, and it can be very difficult to stay positive when it feels like so many things are going poorly, but I am excited about what lies ahead for Sullivan Middle School this year.  Yesterday, I began visiting teachers on their prep period to ask them two simple questions: 1. What is going really well so far this year? 2. What could be going better? While I have only visited around 25% of the faculty so far, the answers I am getting are extremely encouraging. Most end up giving me multiple things that they feel are going really well without much thought. When it comes to things that could be going better, the answers require more thought, and everything so far has been pretty minor. We will keep working on thos...

  "Nine tenths of education is encouragement." -Anatole France The word encouragement has been running through my mind a lot the last few days. I've been really wrestling with whether this message is meant as an encouragement to me personally or if it is a message urging me to offer encouragement to others. Either way, I've decided that offering encouragement to others is always a good idea, message or no message. A month ago, I was very encouraged. We were building up to a school year that was going to look like every school year leading up to March 2020. I was excited to have a school year where everyone walked in happy. But alas, that is not where we ended up, and I know that many people are very discouraged, which is the polar opposite of our key word here, so I want to offer some encouragement. At one point last year, I was having a conversation with a teacher in which they were expressing how "over" the masks they were. They were tired of wearing them,...