My Favorite Word is Hope!

Thought I would share my letter to staff as we finish out 14-15 and look forward to 15-16

Dear Mams Family,

Needless to say this was a long and arduous year. However, Jon Gordon says "as a builder of lives, people, and teams, it is expected to have challenges, adversity, rejection, and negativity, but have an even greater expectation that you will overcome them" I share this because I do profoundly believe that any obstacle has a path around, over, or through it. Any challenge is an opportunity to grow. Adversity is just a momentary delay for success. Rejection is just another way of learning to start again albeit differently. As for negativity, we continue to support those who harness these feelings and listen intently to them as we must embrace that we will not always see eye to eye. Ken Williams, presenter for Solution Tree says, "If four people in a room all agree, then that makes three people irrelevant."

As we head into a new year, you have my word that I will work diligently to hear all voices and continue to work on becoming the best listener I can be. You have my word that I will do everything in my power

to take all opinions into account. You have my word that if I disagree with your opinion, it will be done with respect and dignity. However, in return I ask that all of you do the same. In a profession where we ask kids every day to put their differences aside and accomplish a goal, the expectation for us can't be different. We are the merchants of hope that should model the expected behavior we seek from our students. Furthermore, we can never forget that even when we are on different sides of an opinion, we are always on the same team.

As the title of my summer send off letter says, my favorite word is hope. You have heard me say countless times and I used it above, we are merchants of hope for our students. I ask you to consider: If you are not a merchant of hope, then what are you? I am a believer in the power of potential: yours, mine, and our students. Each day we have the amazing opportunity and the daunting task of changing and even saving lives. So as we close this year and look to the next:

• it's my hope that we can move forward with our students best interests put before our own best interests
• it's my hope that for those who may have had a difficult year you embrace today's end so that you can charge forward with a new tomorrow
• it's my hope that we all first seek to understand and then to be understood
• it's my hope that we all recognize that our building is stacked with great kids
• it's my hope that if you had conflict with a colleague that you can let the past go in order to go forward. If you keep living in the past, you can't grow
• it's my hope that you take step 1 to trying something new and realize you can't take step 2 until you eliminate fear and take that first step
• it's my hope that you know that no matter who you are YOU MATTER
• it's my hope that you know that I have listened, I have listened to the praise, the critiques, and the criticism and will work on all three to continue to improve my practice
• it's my hope that you know that as an educator, even in the toughest of times, I love what I do and I hope you do too
• It's my hope that we live by our collective commitments and make 15-16 our best year yet
• It's my hope that you have an outrageously fun/restful summer and you consider registering for edcampnjshore on August 28th 

Thank you for all that you do on a daily basis, congrats for completing another year and most importantly, for making MAMS a special place of learning for all our students.

With admiration,

Cory