BLT

This school year I have the opportunity to serve on our Building Leadership Team (BLT).  Last week, BLT members from all over Madison County had an opportunity to come together at the Jackson Center at Hudson Alpha to listen to a great motivational speaker.  His name was Jamie Vollmer, and he talked to us about the fact that as educators we have the power to change the way that the public thinks about education.  He talked a lot about the assumptions that the general public has about public education.  He said that most people believe that public education is flawed, that it's the teachers' fault, and that if schools were run like a business everything would be okay.  As a businessman, he said that he used to believe those things but quickly learned after speaking at different schools, that these assumptions are just not true.  It is impossible to run schools like businesses, because schools have the responsibility to educate EVERY student regardless of their circumstances while businesses can pick and choose who and what they do business with.  He ended his talk by describing what we can do as educators to change the negative perception of public education.  We have to go out into the community and promote our successes.  Mr. Vollmer wrote a book called Schools Cannot Do It Alone that I plan on reading in the near future.  I feel like we all learned a lot from his presentation and hopefully we will make the effort to shift from the negative perceptions to the positive!