We are starting something new this school year with the Principals and the Superintendent writing a blog post each week. This week is my week, and I must admit that I am not quite sure what to put into a blog post - I have never done one before. I have read some blogs recently, and one person, George Couros, talks about how difficult it was for him to start blogging, but once he decided to just tell his story, things began to emerge. So, hopefully, through this first blog post, I can begin to tell my story, and likewise, things will hopefully emerge.

On the business side of things, we have a high school dance coming up on Thursday October 24, 2019 from 7-10pm. The dance is Halloween-themed, and students are encouraged to dress up in a school-appropriate costume. We are in the process of securing chaperones. As of this writing, I have three out of the four that we need. There will be “jobs” assigned to each chaperone, walkie-talkie radios to be used for communication, as well as cell phone communication, and the doors will be locked promptly at 7:30 pm in our efforts to make our dances a bit more safe and secure.

Friday October 25, is a full day Superintendent’s Conference Day. The Secondary School will be doing PLC team meetings and a Positivity Project overview/intro in the morning, and will be spending the afternoon with Jeanne Elmer from OCM BOCES discussing childhood trauma and its effects on student learning. I am looking forward to a great day of learning.

On a personal side, I want to start sharing my story. I did not go into education right out of high school. I was going to be an FBI agent, and planned on majoring in criminal justice at Mansfield University, PA. I had an opportunity in the spring semester of my senior year of high school to shadow an FBI agent from the Syracuse office. Through that experience, I was persuaded to major in engineering because criminal justice is too general for the FBI and they need people with specialties. So, I changed my major the first day of college to engineering.

Engineering was tough for me. I did well in the sciences in math in high school, but I had to take calculus and computer programming, and physics (calculus-based in college). I was not successful in calculus despite going to office hours each week, working with a tutor, and doing extra problems to try to figure it out. Subsequently, I did poorly in physics, too. I was involved in some music performance ensembles, so in the spring semester of my freshman year, I auditioned for the music department to be a music education major. I was accepted, and never turned back after that. I did have to go an extra semester to complete the degree because of the change of majors, but I don’t regret the extra time.

I will expand more on this story in another post. But I want to end by saying this: We don’t have to have everything figured out before we graduate high school. It is OK to explore various avenues in life. What is important is to find out what we are gifted at and are passionate about, and then pursue those things. I was not encouraged to pursue music as a major while I was in high school because the “powers that be” didn’t see it as a viable career choice. So, I succumbed to the influences in my life at that time, and pursued something I wasn’t passionate about. It took me a whole year to get back around to what I was passionate about (teaching kids music).

Help me help our students find what they are passionate about, and guide them in the pursuit of their passions. That is where the truly gratifying work lies.

Mr. Phetteplace