The influence of time

Written By: Hans Appel

TIME.  How often do you think about time?  For the past month I’ve been thinking about it…...A LOT!

A couple years ago, our office team knew it was time to make a serious overhaul to our SEL, PBIS, and School Culture.  After an exhaustive search we found dynamic programs and people to help us usher in a new an improved Enterprise Middle School.  In January of 2017, we began creating a vision and plan for how, when, and why to carry out these much needed changes. During the next 7 months, we took an inordinate amount of time to prepare our staff, students, and community for real….meaningful change.  My friend, John Norlin says “sometimes you have to walk slow in order to run fast."  And that’s certainly what we did.

The cultural results have been incredible!  Since implementing Character Strong and PBIS Rewards we’ve gone on to rebrand our school as #WildcatNation with a unified focus on Character, Excellence, and Community.  If you were to ask many of our students, staff, and community….they might tell you that this intentional effort to promote kindness, service, and empathy have resulted in one of the best school years they’ve been involved with.  In a recent survey, 100% of staff said they’ve seen acts of kindness increase at EMS. 95% of staff have observed students demonstrating greater empathy towards others this year. Furthermore, 98% of staff surveyed said they had seen CharacterStrong positively impact the culture and climate of EMS.  On top of all of this, our school took on 1:1 devices, established a strong social media presence with our community, established a PBIS matrix, and made a concerted effort to increase school/home connectedness with home visits, collaborative events, and transparent communication. In fact, this school wide focus has been so wildly successful that we were selected to receive the 2018 ASCD Whole Child Award for the State of Washington.

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