BCMS Parents;
One important announcement prior to my post this week:
We have an important Date Change. Our Leadership and Personal Responsibility
Assemblies for students have been shifted from February 24th to March 3rd.
Parents who would like to attend can RSVP to the link here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1cSUvnUd05Ml5v5cgvFicTGAa7AVjkzOtK6Fv8CZwbhI/viewform
inspired by David Suzuki's blogpost of the same title (linked below)
Next Week's Calendar
I had a wonderful
High School teacher (Mr. Gravel) my Senior year who taught my public speaking
course. I took a full course load so I figured this would be my one
‘gut’ course and to this day I’d swear it’s the one course that has done me the
most good (from my senior year).
Our first
observation of Mr. Gravel was that he was intensely serious in a professional
way about ensuring the integrity of the mission of his course. Before we
could get scared or disappointed that the work load might have been more than
we hoped he also showed us how what we would be learning would be fun,
engaging, and personally inspirational. The only speech he allowed
to be irrelevant was our first so he could get a baseline for each
student.
Like most 18 year
old males, I stayed in the ‘shallow end of the pool’ and thought my eloquence
in speaking about the finer points of Yankees players was world
class. Little did I know how absolutely horrendous I was!
Two things proved this; the first was the topics that we selected to speak about
and the second was how those topics made one feel about leadership, about
responsibility and about being an 18 year old who was about to assume a step
toward joining the ranks of the adult world. I separate these to
make an important distinction.
Talking about Don
Mattingly’s (baseball) hitting style, while relevant to my world, was not
relevant to others’, and in no way could be considered to instill any sense of
responsibility. However, when I gave a speech about nuclear
disarmament amidst the hey-day of the escalation between the United States and
Russia (when there still was a Russia) I was surprised that my cheeks got red,
that my hands shook, and that, as I am still sometimes prone to do, talked so
fast I lost so much annunciation that many couldn't understand all
that I was saying.
If one wasn’t
scared of nuclear war in the 80s s/he wasn’t paying attention. More
importantly, I chose this topic. My teacher didn’t choose it for
me. The prompt our class was given was to speak about our greatest
political, cultural, or social fear at any level of community
organization.
I spent hours upon hours researching (learning factual
and historical information) without being graded for my research. We
didn’t even have to do research. It wasn’t a necessity of the
speech. The only goal, other than following a rubric for speaking
mechanics and the organization of our speaking points, was to create an
emotional response in our audience (my classmates). I didn’t set out
to do all this research. It just happened. I got sucked in because
of how much I enjoyed the process.
Long before I
knew I’d be a teacher Mr. Gravel taught me so much about great teaching and
about teaching students to find their voice. Their real, authentic,
genuine, impassioned, and not superficial voice. It wasn't about 'cause
of the moment activism' but rather about identifying how our fears, pride, and
compassion caused us to resonate with world events.
As a tribute to
the Mr. Gravel’s of the world I thought I’d share the message below that I sent
to our District-Wide Green Team earlier today. When we empower our students to
great oration we send a force out into the world whose impact is amazing.
Happy Friday and
have a great, hopefully warm, weekend.
...my note to the
Green Team...
Good morning
everyone,
I thought I’d
forward the attached (see link below titled "Speaking truth gives
youth great power") because it’s a nice nexus between our Green
Team’s mission and our educator mission of serving children. Perhaps more
inspirationally it reminds us of what great things children can lead when
entrusted with leadership!
I agree with the
premise that when children give impassioned speeches to adults on serious
cultural issues, it causes an emotional response and greater engagement by
those adult listeners. I think I know why that is, but I won’t share
because I am not sure. What I do know however is the response by adults
is profoundly different when they hear this message from a child.
If you need a
little inspiration check out the links in the article to see some great (child)
orators! For greater ease I have copied two links below.
Mike
“If a child on the
streets (of Brazil) who has nothing is willing to share, why are we, who have
everything still so greedy?”
Severn Cullis
Suzuki, age 12, 1992 Earth Summit in Rio
Severn’s speech
Ta’Kaiya Blaney’s
speech
The rest can be viewed here:
Monday, Feb 23
- Welcome Back!
Tuesday, Feb 24
- Late Buses
- BCCF Meeting 6:30
Wed, Feb 25
- Late Buses
- Staff Character Committee Meets 3:00
- BOE meets 7:00
Thurs, Feb 26
- Late Buses
- Student PAC meet 3:00
- BOU spelling Bee 7:00
Fri, Feb 27
