Welcome Back and Thank You Educators

As the first day of school starts in St. Vrain I’d like to wish you an enthusiastic welcome back and thank you for all that you do to make the lives of our students and our community more awesome.

The beginning  of the school year always brings hope to this educators heart. Hope for making a difference in others’ lives and having my life changed by others. The hope for the development of new relationships, and greater depth of connecting in my communities. Hope for the moments of wonder, excitement, and laughter that seem to be more prevalent as an educator than in other professions (we sure could use that in every workplace.) Hope to miss less of these opportunities than I did last year.

It seems that St. Vrain is a district where others have similar hopes and the willingness to do it what it takes to see these hopes fulfilled. From the end of the school year to the start of this one I saw this willingness in so many educators. Here are a few of the ways I’ve seen this:

• The hundreds of educators that went to the technology camps we hosted, giving up time to learn and in countless cases being vulnerable to try something new, whether it was presenting to peers, creating something, or adjusting your content to work with a device that you don’t know as much as you’d like to know about, etc.
• Taking time to create or organize resources and events, like my teammates who worked during the summer to make sure our Elementary Tech Camp went well, and Helen Robbins creating an iBook for digital citizenship.
• Hundreds of employees, and volunteers supporting our schools in preparing, distributing and deploying iPads. Smiling, and celebrating the small successes of connecting to our Mobile Device Manager (MDM) or when a student successfully gets an Apple I.D.

For all that you do, thank you! It takes a village and I’m honored to be a part of this one. In the words of our CTO Joe McBreen, you rock! May we all have our best school year yet!