Dear Community Members,
As I consider the many blessings of our community, one is certainly the spirit of the winter season within the Belmond-Klemme school district. The beautiful trees adorning the downtown businesses, as well as the Breakfast with Santa, Movie at the Lyric Theater, Hot Cocoa Crawl, Colt’s Corner’s Inflatable Day, and many other community celebrations, demonstrate community spirit and connection.
On that note, if you are out and about for the Hot Cocoa Crawl, please consider visiting our FFA students at our District Office on Wednesday, December 6th from 4:00-7:00 PM for the annual plant sale. This is a new location, and we are excited to bring this event to the downtown area. We look forward to seeing you!
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Another community-spirited event took place on November 30th. Our School Improvement Advisory Committee (SIAC), composed of students, parents/guardians, teachers, paraeducators, administrators, community members, and a board member gathered and was facilitated by a team eager to focus on continuous improvement of the student experience.
Increasing academic scores, enhancing critical thinking, and honing communication skills while providing a healthy and safe learning environment are at the forefront of our vision for each student in our district. To bring our vision to life, we know the importance of collaborating across a variety of perspectives to meet our district and building goals. Our SIAC exists to help us achieve our district and state-required goal areas: Iowa Code 280.12.
The team set the night’s purpose by sharing the following video: DID YOU KNOW 2023. Understanding how to prepare our students for each day with us and for each day after they leave our classrooms was a focus of the night. You can find more information and a meeting agenda here: Belmond-Klemme CSD Meetings.
Upcoming meetings include the following topics: harassment or bullying prevention goals, programs, training, and other initiatives, character education in the educational program (TOP 20), district academic calendar and hiring, recruiting and retaining the best and most-qualified staff.
The TOP 20, referenced as a future SIAC meeting topic, is a foundational driver for our work with students and one another. As a district, we want B-K to be the best place to work, so we aspire to the following each day:
We support and celebrate one another. We seek opportunities for improvement. We seek solutions. We own our mistakes. We respect the absent.
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Our Teacher Leadership (TLC) Team provides professional learning opportunities for our staff to dive into these concepts and embed them into our daily practices with students and one another. When I asked our team to share their insights into the importance of the TOP 20, they shared…
- Learning to be a Top 20 school is learning to be the best we can be.
- We want to be the best we can be for our students.
- They deserve the best education that we can offer them.
- Top 20 is one of the ways we can continue to do that.
- Kendra Haugen
The Top 20 professional development is helping to build up our BK culture. Willow Sweeny has provided insightful and humorous professional development that we are then able to apply in our classroom environment. Building positive relationships and modeling those is a key part of our Top 20 work. In class, we talk a lot about respect, empathy, perseverance, and resilience. I am able to relate these "above the line" qualities to characters in stories to help students understand and relate to what it means to be in the Top 20.
- Erin Slifer
As teachers, we constantly work with other humans (students, staff, parents).
Top 20 gives us tools to better understand how we can better operate as an individual as well as better understand other's human experience to better serve those we work beside and with.
- Justin Meyer
- Focus on the possibilities for success, not on the potential for failure. - Napoleon Hill
- Stay curious.
- What comes easy won’t last. What lasts won’t come easy.
-Christine Shultz
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CALLING ALL BAKERS
I wish you a joyous holiday season and appreciate your continued support of the B-K school district and community. To celebrate our staff, we are inviting community members to bake goodies for a “Treat Walk” on December 21st. To show our staff how much we appreciate them, I invite you to help us reach a goal to have each staff member leave the building with at least one dozen cookies or treats. Goodies can be dropped off at each building’s front office starting on Wednesday, December 20th. We have approximately 120 staff members, so we are looking for a LOT(over 1440) of goodies. Calling All Bakers...
Take care,
Chris