“I believe that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.”
– Anonymous
ENGAGE, INSPIRE, EMPOWER
As the summer hits its midpoint for we “school folks” many of us get excited and anxious to start the next year. We in education get “do overs” every year – a gift most other professions do not enjoy. We in education get to create conditions for learning and growth for fresh smiling faces of eager learners every year. As I’ve written before, we only have ONE chance to make the students’ learning the best it can be. So we in education take the summer months to learn more, train harder, prepare more, and plan for the best year ever each year we’re in the profession. Our motto is Engage, Inspire, Empower – each student, each other, each teacher and staff member – everyone in our community.
There is a myth that teachers “get the summer off” – while it’s true that we don’t necessarily teach students every day as we do in the regular school year, the vast majority of us hardly get the summer “off”! Most administrators are contracted for 12 months like “regular executives and workers” and most teachers are working on professional development, coursework, collaboration, summer school teaching, and overall improvement.
Our aim is to create and sustain communities of growth, learning and excellence. Our aim is to provide a world class education with world class educators. We are blessed with a forward thinking Board of Education that maintains an eagle eye focus on improvement. We have made physical improvements to our schools over the past few years that allow for modern educational opportunities and learning. If you have not seen our award winning, world class science labs, please take a moment to see this 360 degree photo linked here.
One of the ways I sharpen the saw (Covey) is through leading, participating in, attending, and organizing professional development workshops. This summer has been typically busy for me with a week-long aspiring superintendent boot camp, regular work in the district, co-hosting of a digital consortium gathering of superintendents from 20 US states, and a recent attendance and presentation at a global educators forum in Chicago.
By keeping my skills sharp I can support our leaders who can support our teachers who can support our students. We in DPS109 are inter-related. All of our efforts integrate in our continual quest for improvement and excellence.
The roles of a Superintendent include local, statewide, regional, national, and international learning! It’s an honor to lead the Deerfield efforts to Engage, Inspire, and Empower!
ay. From our focus on problem based learning with a cohort of 35 teachers and administrators and iCoaches from around the district’s six schools to math curriculum mapping, to data assessment review, our teachers hardly get the “summer off”. On the contrary, our educators spend the summer recharging for the next school year! As we review the data from the past three years we focus on far more than simply student test performance. Of course, as responsible educators and leaders we do focus on student learning and test performance, that is part of our 360 degree view of success and growth in our district.
adership Team, the Teachers, the Staff, the Students, the Parents, and the entire community across the county, state, nation, and world!
In our school district we take pride in the words and actions ENGAGE, INSPIRE, EMPOWER. We aim to do this each and every day with and for each and every student, staff member, and the community! Since July 2013 our 
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We like to share the great things that are happening in our schools with other educational professionals worldwide.
In this blog post I am highlighting the great work of the teachers, students, parents, support staff members, administrators, community members and the Board of Education of the Deerfield Public Schools District 109. Our leadership team has been following the research of Kouzes & Posner. In their book 
what leadership can do. Two great books on school and district leadership are: School Leadership that works and District Leadership that works. One of the main charges that I have as the superintendent of schools is to support leadership so that leaders emerge in all parts of the organization to Engage, Inspire, and Empower. While I am visible in the schools, and while the classroom is the most important “place” in the school district, I also work very closely with the administrative team in an effort to support their work and their leadership.
and due to the teaching of some very patient workers and supervisors, I now know how to make concrete – I now know how to apply math in real life situations. Seriously, I knew intellectually that water, cement, rocks, and sand combine to form concrete, but I never had the opportunity to mix, make, and use concrete until this trip. I know know how to lay cinder 
