WELCOME TO THE NEW SEMESTER!

Our new semester began today with an abbreviated class schedule so that we could have time for a BIG TEACH! Teachers planned a BIG TEACH so that our whole school could gather together to celebrate our students' first semester achievements, discuss the special programs and events we are looking forward to second semester (international travel to Costa Rica and Europe and an exchange with Germany; French students visiting our school; the start of the CSIHSIS Chapter of National Honor Society; a Craft Club; our annual Talent show; and more!) and so that our staff and students could share words of wisdom, encouragement and inspiration.

For this BIG TEACH staff was asked to select a favorite quote, poem or original writing to share with our school community. I would like to share with you some of our words to students. We welcome students, parents, friends to share additional thoughts, quotes and poems with us as we embark on what we hope will be a fun, interesting, and successful semester for each of our students.

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put foundations under them."
-Henry David Thoreau

"I am only one, but still I am one.
I cannot do everything, but still I can do something;
and because I cannot do everything,
I will not refuse to something that I can do."
-Edward Everett Hale

"It is hard to fail. It is worse to have never tried to succeed." -Teddy Roosevelt

"Bear in mind that the wonderful things you learn in your schools are the work of many generations. All this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive it, honor it, add to it, and one day faithfully hand it on to your children."
-Albert Einstein

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the number of moments that take our breath away."
-Anonymous

"Every million mile journey begins with just one step." -Lao ZiI

"Minds are like parachutes, they only work when they are open."

Mrs. Krikorian

She saved me. When I arrived in 6th grade,
a known criminal, the new teacher
asked me to stay after school the first day, she said
I’ve heard about you. She was a tall woman,
with a deep crevice between her breasts,
and a large, calm nose. She said,
This is a special library pass.
As soon as you finish your hour’s work—
that hour’s work that took ten minutes
and then the devil glanced into the room
and found me empty, a house standing open—
you can go to the library. Every hour
I’d zip through the work in a dash and slip out of my
seat as if out of God’s side and sail
down to the library, solo through the empty
powerful halls, flash my pass
and stroll over to the dictionary
to look up the most interesting word
I knew, spank, dipping two fingers
into the jar of library paste to
suck that tart mucilage as I
came to the page with the cocker spaniel’s
silks curling up like the fine steam of the body.
After spank, and breast, I’d move on
to Abe Lincoln and Helen Keller,
safe in their goodness till the bell, thanks
to Mrs. Krikorian, amiable giantess
with the kind eyes. When she asked me to write
a play, and direct it, and it was a flop, and I
hid in the coat-closet, she brought me a candy-cane
as you lay a peppermint on the tongue, and the worm
will come up out of the bowel to get it.
And so I was emptied of Lucifer
and filled with school glue and eros and
Amelia Earhart, saved by Mrs. Krikorian.
And who had saved Mrs. Krikorian?
When the Turks came across Armenia, who
slid her into the belly of a quilt, who
locked her in a chest, who mailed her to America?
And that one, who saved her, and that one—
who saved her, to save the one
who saved Mrs. Krikorian, who was
standing there on the sill of 6th grade, a
wide-hipped angel, smokey hair
standing up weightless all around her head?
I end up owing my soul to so many,
to the Armenian nation, one more soul someone
jammed behind a stove, drove
deep into a crack in a wall,
shoved under a bed. I would wake
up, in the morning, under my bed—not
knowing how I had got there—and lie
in the dusk, the dustballs beside my face
round and ashen, shining slightly
with the eerie comfort of what is neither good nor evil.
-Sharon Olds

There are 24 hours in a day. Do what you have to do with 8 of them (school). Do what you want to do with another 8 (homework and fun) Do what you need to do with the remaining 8 (sleep) and you will find that your life will run smoothly. TRY IT.

I Never Said I Wasn't Difficult -Sara Holbrook

I never said I wasn't difficult,I mostly want my way.

Sometimes I talk back or pout and don't have much to say.

I've been known to yell, "So what,"when I'm stepping out of bounds.

I want you there for me and yet,I don't want you around.

I wish I had more privacy and never had to be alone. I want to run away.

I'm scared to leave my home. I'm too tired to be responsible.

I wish that I were boss.

I want to blaze new trails. I'm terrified that I'll get lost.

I wish an answer came every time you asked, "why?"I wish you weren't a know-it-all.Why do you question when I'm bored?

I won't be cross-examined. I hate to be ignored.

I know. I shuffle messages like cards, some to show and some to hide.But, if you think I'm hard to live withyou should try me on inside.

“Prayer For The Children”

We pray for the children who sneak Popsicles before supper, who erase holes in math workbooks, who through tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food, who like ghost stories, who can never find their shoes.

And we pray for those who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire, who can't bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers, who are born in places we wouldn't be caught dead in, who never go to the circus, who live in an X-rated world.

We pray for children who sleep with the dog and bury the goldfish, who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions, who get visits from the tooth fairy, who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And we pray for those who never get dessert, who have no safe blanket to drag behind them, who watch their parents watch them die, who can't find any bread to steal, who don't have any rooms to clean up, whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser, whose monsters are real.

We pray for children who spend all their allowance before Tuesday, who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub, who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool, who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone, whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray for those whose nightmares come in the daytime, who will eat anything, who have never seen a dentist, who aren't spoiled by anybody, who aren't spoiled by anybody, who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep, who live and move, but have no being.

We pray for children who want to be carried and for those who must, who we never give up on and for those who don't get a second chance. For those we smother and...for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.

-Ina J. Hughes (an American school teacher)

Pause and Reflect

Conversation is the natural way we humans think together.
We can't be creative if we refuse to be confused.
It's not differences that divide us. It is our judgments about each other that do.

There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.

Am I becoming someone I respect?

Reality doesn't change itself. We need to act.

Please inspire our community by sharing your thoughts with us!