Week 14: Schools and Nursing Homes

Happy Friday!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and have had a productive week. Thanks for all you did this week to continue our mission. Much has happened through the course of the week coming out of the break and I want to use this Wrap-up to share the positives and put the whole week into perspective.

Recognition

In the Week 13 Wrap-up, I wrote about the state recognition that has been received by our buildings, and this Monday, I received more good news from the Office of Educational Policy. Holly Harshman Elementary has been recognized with a Beating the Odds award for high ELA growth for the Southwest Region. Louise Durham and Mena Middle School also received this award with the MMS earning it for all subjects and making the state’s top ten in two categories, Overall and ELA! The full list of Beating the Odds award winners can be found here.

This week, several school staff members helped a struggling mother of one of our second graders get out of The Executive Inn and into a house. When the request for assistance came, our people stepped up to fill the home with furnishings and housewares, have the electricity turned on, and deliver a stove donated by Washburns. Washburns is also donating a refrigerator. It is a happy story for a mom who lost her nine-month-old not long ago. She now has a home and one of our students has a better chance at success.

I want to thank Mrs. Philpot for inviting me to do a lesson for her enrichment class of 9th graders on Wednesday. The lesson was on tying ties and they learned to tie a simple knot and a Windsor knot. We had a fun time learning a new life skill that I hope they will use frequently. I am glad that I was given this opportunity to teach kids a skill because early in my career, Mr. Duckett, former MHS ag teacher and administrator, used to tell me that when you are having difficulties in the job to just go grab a 9th grader and make them good at something.

A very special thing happened in Pottsville last night as our Junior Bearcats and Ladycats Basketball teams took on the Apaches. In our boys’ game, one of our Bearcats was heartwarmingly helped by his teammates to score a basket before the game ended. He shot the ball over and over, then it went in just before the buzzer making both sides and both teams cheer for his accomplishment. He is a special kid, full of joy, and with the help of his teammates, he brought joy to the whole gym. It is nice to see empathy and compassion on display among our students.

I want to thank our counselors for the recognition they earned for our District this week for their Comprehensive School Counseling Plan. This is a required submission to DESE and in an email, I received from Program Advisor, Rodney Ford, he stated, “Your plan was scored as well-developed, the highest ranking you can receive. Only 35 school districts received this designation. You have done a great job and I can tell that a lot of hard work went into your plan”. It is nice to have people in the state department recognize our counselors’ efforts.

More Than a Nursing Home

Wednesday was the official opening and ribbon cutting for The Greenhouse Cottages of Homewood, a rehab and senior care community located next to Holly Harshman Elementary. We already know they have been a wonderful neighbor to HHE, but going to the ribbon cutting gave me more perspective on the mission and purpose of that “nursing home” and our mission and purpose as a “school”.

The Administrator of the community, Vickie Hughes, explained that each of the houses in the complex was named after some influential person from Mena to honor and memorialize those names and their service to the community. Besides the proper names such as the Coogan House or the Rowe House, she also called the names Bearcat House and Ladycat House. That is us. Our school is the largest contributor to the future good of our area.

Just prior to Mrs. Hughes’s portion of the program, a gentleman from the Department of Human Services, John Ponvey, made some very meaningful statements. He said that a society can be measured and evaluated by the way that it treats its elderly and its sick, which is a modification of a quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. As he spoke about the impetus of The Cottages, he reminisced about visiting his grandfather in a nursing home and how institutional and depressing they were. Many of you can probably relate. They were not like home at all and definitely not suitable for people who were in cognitive and physical decline to feel comfortable like they are at home.

He went on to explain that they chose Mena because not very many communities have what we have. He was referring to the values that are shared among us. Values that would ensure that the people who serve the residents of The Cottages would do so with dignity and honor and make the twilight of life more joyous. So, the vision of home and community and the values of our community resulted in this newest care facility in Mena.

What does this have to do with our school? We are an institution for humans who are in cognitive and physical incline. We deal with the beginning of a person’s life, and as Mr. Ponvey spoke about the need for a feeling of home and community instead of the depressing institutional feel of nursing homes as a way to ensure dignity at the end of life, schools have to operate with the same warmth and care toward our clients as our way of keeping the cherished values of family and community that brought The Cottages to Mena. It is all about caring for others and I would spin off of the Gandi quote by saying a community can be measured by how it treats its children. If we treat our children well by guiding their cognitive and physical incline, we will continue to prosper.

Closing

We have more senior high basketball tonight as the Senior Bearcats and Ladycats take on the Pottsville Apaches. I also want to mention our eSports team’s success in their postseason tournaments. In Splatoon 3, our team advanced to the second round. This tournament involves high school teams throughout the central U.S. We also have a student in NBA 2K23 who has advanced to round two, as well, and is seeded in the top five of more than 100 players. You can see more about them on our Facebook Page. Congratulations to them and I hope they reach the finals in two weeks.

Our latest district goals data continues to trend the same. Discipline remains much lower than last year and attendance is at 92.5 percent.

At Mena Public Schools our students are prepared, our staff is supported, and our community is confident.