Perspective

The start of a new school year means new people are welcomed into the Greene Central family. New students arrive to replace the graduates, some transfer in from surrounding places and we always have a handful of new teachers to join our staff. I'm always curious about what impression our school culture gives off to new people. School culture reflects your values and beliefs. It's how you feel about the school and how you act accordingly. This week our new students and teachers are sub-consciously evaluating that. People naturally seek to fit in to their environment and they have to make observations about that environment before they can do that. I took a few minutes this week to ask some of our new staff members what they have noticed about our school. Some of their answers were no surprise and others made me chuckle.

One of the most notable things was the freedom that students and staff have within the school. Some students wear hats and others listened to music from their phones in the hallway. If a teacher needed to grab a bite to eat during planning, it wasn't forbidden. Another frequently heard comment was on the wealth of resources. Jeremy Shaw and Kelly Garcia got shout-outs, as did the overwhelming amount of technology. The one comment that I heard the most was how friendly and helpful everyone had been to our new people. Teachers and support staff had reached out to them, checked up on them and had offered assistance multiple times. I head the terms "family atmosphere" and "team" over and over again.

It feels good to belong to a school that projects that feeling. I can only hope that our new students feel the same welcoming atmosphere within the halls that they walk through daily. I want them to be just as overwhelmed with the helpful resources at their fingertips. I'm sure that they may not think that our school is perfect. Much like we question hats and earbuds, they probably question why they can stand on one hall in the morning and not another. My hope is that even with those slightly differing perspectives, we find a common ground of helpfulness in the place where we spend the bulk of our time throughout the year. Teachers should be happy about the place where they come to work every day. Students should be happy about the place that they come to learn every day. If those groups have a shared perspective, the rest becomes much easier.