Building Project Update
It's been an interesting week with the building project. First, the crane did not arrive last Monday as planned and so no panels were installed this week. The good news is the crane arrived Thursday and we are expecting the first panels at 7 a.m. Monday morning. The panels will arrive on trucks that will be spaced out every 20 to 30 minutes. So, we will have quite a bit of truck traffic when the panels start arriving. They will start at 7, so please remind your child to be aware when driving into the parking lot and look for trucks driving through the area.
The crane arrived yesterday on several semi-trucks. The tracks were carried on one truck, the power plant/cab on another one and the boom on still another. They spent a good part of yesterday assembling it and are finishing it Friday morning. It's quite a process to see them assembling this large piece of equipment.
Of course, each panel is quite large and made mostly of concrete so it will require a strong machine to lift them off the truck, turn them the proper direction and place them in place. Be sure to follow our Facebook Page as we will be posting updates there throughout the project. Also, you may have seen #NHtribe on some items and also many postings. This is a hashtag and we use it to designate school related items. If you want to know what's going on at school, you can go to Facebook or Twitter and do a search for #NHtribe and all posts with that hashtag will come up for you to review. It may be on a building page, a teacher's page, or an activity page. By searching with the hashtag, you can see all the posts across many pages without having to go to the page. This being homecoming week, it would be a great time to try it out.
We're entering an exciting phase of the project. Stay tuned for more.
Professional Development
Monday there is no school because of a Professional Development day. We do professional development during the school year, so our teachers can gain new knowledge to improve their skills and then put them into use right away in their classrooms. The next month, they will meet again and discuss how the implementation went in their classrooms including what went well and what needs additional work. They then have time to go back and continue to refine their practice throughout the year. If this was done during the summer, a lot of time would go by before they actually got to practice what they learned and the follow up is actually probably the most important element.
This Monday, New Hampton staff along with St. Joe's and Turkey Valley staff will be attending a presentation by George Couros. He is the author of the book, Innovator's Mindset. Last year the school board did a book study on this book and really liked his ideas and thought process. You can find out more about him by checking out his blog here.
Final Thoughts
As homecoming week winds down, I want to congratulate Tom Clark for being selected Homecoming King. Tonight we crown the Queen at the game. This is an awesome week as everyone--staff, students, and the community--really come out and show their school pride for everyone to see. I hope to see you at the game, I will be manning the Sharpies for the beam signing. Come out and cheer on the Chickasaws and listen to our band's great half-time show. It's going to be a cool fall night, but there's no rain in the forecast.
