BOOST Collaborative

Although it is cliché, as the end of the year approaches, it is a time to think about closing out the old year and bringing in the new year. As your programs and schools wind down for the holiday season, this allows us an opportune time to reflect upon the accomplishments of our students, our staff, and ourselves. It’s also a time to think about what we did not accomplish in 2011 but what we hope to do in 2012. These may be seemingly minor things like not cleaning out the supply closet, or it may be something more major, such as our students are not where we would like them to be academically. So, I invite each of you for a few minutes to take a breath, forget about the baking and shopping and card sending, grab a hot cup of coffee or tea, and sit down and reflect upon the following questions.

Many articles being written lately are suggesting that parents are the missing piece in solving the cyberbullying puzzle. What they are suggesting is that communication between parents and their children is often too many times missing. Parents need to truly get involved in “cyber” discussions with their children. We need to take the initiative to dialogue on “cyber” issues that our children are engaging in. The following questions and strategies will help parents initiate and sustain conversations with their children.

Initiating Conversation Questions:

As part of girls’ development, it is critical they connect with positive peers- especially other girls.  Those of us at middle school sites tend to cringe at the idea of girls “connecting” with other girls because nine times out of ten there is some drama involved.  However, contradictory to what media feeds us, girls are not born with a “mean gene.”  Research stresses the importance of healthy relationships for girls can have a significant impact on their self-esteem, connection to school, as well as involvement in positive activities.  Wondering what great tool can achieve this?  The answer will probably not surprise you: athletics.

Participation in athletics provides multiple benefits for adolescent and teen girls, some of which include:

If you are in any sort of leadership role in any type of organization running any type of program and managing any number of people, I’m asking you to do something. I want you to copy the sentence below, paste it into a Word doc, increase the font size to about 200, bold it, italicize it, and post it somewhere in your office where you read it everyday. Here it is:

NOTHING INCREASES STAFF MORALE AND JOB SATISFACTION MORE THAN A WELL RUN ORGANIZATION.