| Introduction
by Principal of the O'Dea School
Statement by , Principal, O'Dea School |
Report about comments Ryan made at Rotary Meeting on January 23, 2008
Garth McCann introduced Ryan Joyal from O'Dea School. Ryan researched Rotary and was pleased to find numerous youth-oriented committees. He was surprised to be selected. He voiced several concerns about education: the "need to fix it" translates into getting all the help teachers can get. He went to a meeting based on this "need" and was disappointed to find no teachers involved. He proposed three solutions: 1) Give appropriate respect to teachers because we are all interested in education-don't marginalize them. 2) Make families stronger. He gave an example of a girl who didn't know who her father was-and this affects her education. 3) Support an increase in resources; schools need to move into the 21st Century. For example, he has only 3 computers into his classroom. He urged us to volunteer in the schools. I have been teaching for Poudre School District for 3 and a half years now. Before that I substituted and volunteered every Tuesday in Ed Castro’s classroom at Laurel for a year. I taught 6th grade at Moore, then 3rd grade at Moore, now for the last year and a half have been teaching 5th grade at O’Dea. My community activities center on and stem from my church. I have taught high school and university level religion classes as well as 5-year old Sunday School. I have worked with the youth in many capacities such as overseeing the work of our 8 local congregations, organizing activities and dances for 100 – 1200 youth, and serving with the Boy Scouts of America. Our partnership with the BSA has been invaluable and provided many wonderful experiences. Currently I help with the men’s organization. I like the kids. We have so much and work well together. They are wonderful. It’s a real treat to be able to work with them and help them learn and develop the knowledge, wisdom, and skills they’ll need throughout their lives. In turn, they teach me so much about what good character is and should be, about patience and love and acceptance. It’s a real treat to spend all day with so many wonderful people. Lucas is a great example. The Tuesday before the break he was in tears over his long division, he just didn’t feel like he was getting it. I spent Wednesday working with him. The Tuesday after break he was offering to tutor kids because he got it. I love it when the lights turn on and new worlds are opened and fear is driven from their lives. In my short career I am most proud that former students will still talk to me. If I see them at the park or the mall or a community event they’ll say hi. Some still email, some drop by for a visit. There is no significant learning until there is a significant relationship. No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. These clichés ring true. It’s the relationships that matter. In my estimation, the biggest challenge facing our students is not at school, at the park or the mall, at sports or dance lessons. The biggest challenge facing our students is at home. Who do they come home to? Who do they not come home to? What is being taught there? By and large, students with healthy families fare better than students from broken families. One of the very first questions asked about any student who is struggling is what is going on at home? So the biggest problem facing schools in general is being given the responsibility to do the family’s teaching and the school’s teaching, to make up for broken families. Where family is the basic unit of society, any failure or breakdown reverberates through the entire society. The best way to strengthen education is to strengthen families. I don’t know how to correct the mistakes of the parents of this generation, but I am actively working with tomorrow’s to create the society we all hope for. It would be wonderful every parent were responsible, if every parent loved their children more than their teachers did, if every parent were invested in their children’s futures. It would be wonderful if every child had a safe home to go to, if every child had warm clothes and full tummies and didn’t have to worry about those things, if every child had parents who were committed to their success. It’s not something you can force or coerce. Parenting needs to be re-enthroned as one of the most, if not the most, noble professions on this planet. Nothing can take the place of a stable family. One of the biggest challenges facing our school and the entire district is the change we are going through. Think about all the transformations that have taken place in the past few years: Dr. Wilson’s hiring, the changes in administrative procedure plus new personal in the Student Services Center, boundaries, discussions regarding the closing of schools, new schools, grade configuration, school of choice busing, and on and on. We have are being put through the wringer, so to speak. But is it bad? Do we need to eliminate all this change? No. This is a lot happening in a short time, but we’re moving in a very positive direction and the future looks bright. I would never want to eliminate the changes that are occurring. We need to change, to grow, to do things better than we have ever done them, so I would never want to avoid or eliminate the change. But we need to have the right attitudes about the changes that are happening. They need to be good changes, positive changes that really will have a positive impact. And we need to buy in to those changes to do everything we can to make them successful. |
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Copyright © for the Rotary Club of Fort Collins, Poudre R-1 School District and by Alan Ashbaugh, October 18, 2007
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