Happy New Year! When I wrote to our staff earlier this week, I mentioned how lucky we are to work in an environment where we get to say that twice a year: at the start of the school year as well as every January. The idea of having two new beginnings within the cycle of a school year is actually pretty exciting. The idea of a fresh start or the beginning of something new holds great promise–that’s also why Mondays are my favorite day of the week! It’s an opportunity to look forward, to set goals and, most importantly, to make something new.

Growing up, my family celebrated “Bestu Varsh,” our new year, in October/November. (It’s a lunar-based holiday, so it moves around.) One of the greetings that we might say to each other on this day is to hope that the other person has the “wisdom to choose their path carefully.” It’s about choices, beginnings and opportunities. We see that same idea embedded in one of the qualities in our Profile of a Graduate: intellectually curious. Someone who is intellectually curious sees risks and mistakes as opportunities to fail forward and makes learning a constant. We should always be looking for new beginnings and opportunities to take risks and not just when our calendar or traditions remind us about it.

Watching students take risks or fail forward and learn from the experience is quite simply amazing. Last month I had the opportunity to attend “Agents of Change'' presentations from our fifth graders at Glenridge Elementary. These presentations were part of a literacy unit that encourages our students to find problems in our world that can be fixed, somewhere they can make a positive change within the Glenridge community. Their teachers worked to empower these students in ways that caused their intellectual curiosity to explode. They took risks presenting their work in front of parents, teachers, administrators and school board members. 

These students tackled real issues like bullying and vandalism. They advocated for ways to make their playground more inclusive and gave ideas to make their school lunches better. Some of their projects may come to fruition and some may not. Regardless, I feel as though their success is from the process and not necessarily the outcome. They were curious enough to find a problem, to take a risk, to give something a new beginning. No matter where we are in life, that's something we all should do a little more often.

I hope you and your family had a wonderful holiday. I hope your new year brings you happiness, success and the wisdom to choose your path carefully. 

When I have the opportunity to talk with anyone about the work we do in our schools, I often refer back to Clayton’s Profile of a Graduate as our “north star.” Along with the strong, high-achieving academic foundation you expect from Clayton schools, the Profile defines the qualities we want our students to have when they complete their PreK through twelfth-grade journey through our schools. When our graduates leave us, we want them to be self actualized, intellectually curious, empathetic, culturally-competent, creative thinkers and collaborators. I have also stated that these competencies are not just for our students. They are for all of us to model in our day-to-day interactions. But what do we actually mean when we use these words? I’d like to explore those qualities a little, starting with self-actualized. 

 

For me, both personally and as an educator, being self-actualized means living an authentic life that’s guided by a strong internal compass. I was raised to believe that hard work, determination, excellence in all that you do, and building relationships based on mutual respect and trust for every person is the cornerstone of success. Even with all of that, I believe we all need a strong sense of self and authentic purpose in order to achieve the goals we set for ourselves. And we need to do all of this while also being mindful of our physical and mental well being.

 

I saw many examples of believing in yourself and living a life with authenticity, purpose and happiness during my time as a classroom teacher and building principal. As principal, I worked to help all the students and staff in our building develop personal mission statements. Imagine over 1,300 mission statements displayed up and down school hallways. It was powerful. These mission statements connected each student and staff member to their why and served as their “north star.” That was seven years ago and I still hear from people who refer back to their mission statement as something that grounds them during challenging times. That is the power of being self-actualized!

 

Throughout my life, I have been fortunate to be surrounded by individuals who are grounded in these same beliefs, which is just one more thing that makes working in Clayton so personally rewarding. I take pride in the opportunities I have to support those around me to be their best version of themselves. That is also what we want our students to be able to do. It is why being self-actualized is a quality we believe is important for not only them to develop by the end of their journey in our schools but also for each of us to embrace and model through our actions. 

 

As always, thank you for your continued support of our students and our schools.

As we get ready to begin Thanksgiving break, I found myself thinking about my first Thanksgiving in the U.S. We were living in New Jersey at the time, having just moved to the States four months earlier. As November rolled around, my classmates in my new school began talking about this thing called “Thanksgiving” and all the different traditions associated with it. After learning as much as I could about it, I asked my mom, “Do we do this now that we are in America?” And while we weren’t exactly sure how to celebrate, we did gather for a family meal, which was, of course, all vegetarian with a side of my favorite - potatoes!  

 

Even though we had a more traditional, but still vegetarian, celebration the following year in Kansas City, I will always remember that first Thanksgiving in New Jersey. We may not have had turkey, or many of the traditional sides or desserts, but we had each other. Our lack of knowledge of all the traditions and stories typically associated with Thanksgiving didn’t stop us from appreciating the most important part: coming together and making time to be grateful for everything we had. To this day, I am grateful to my parents for bringing our entire family on a journey from Kenya to the U.S. to ensure that we had opportunities that were never available to them.

 

All of those opportunities brought me to be part of a new family: my Clayton family. I am ever so grateful to be part of this learning community and have the opportunity to work with so many amazing students, families and staff. Our schools are amazing places to learn and to work because of our community and your support. I can not thank you enough for everything that you do to make our schools a place for everyone to grow as learners in head and heart. 

 

I hope this Thanksgiving provides you with time to be with people who are important to you and the opportunity to reflect on the many things that have made a difference in your lives this past year. Most importantly, I hope that you and your family have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

Dear Clayton Family - 

 

As we all grieve and work to process the senseless tragedy that happened last Monday at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, it’s natural for us to be thinking (and worrying) about our own loved ones and their schools. It’s only natural to have questions and concerns about the safety of the school where someone close to you works or learns after something terrible happens at a school. These questions and concerns become even more important for us when we are connected, by our proximity or our relationships, to a tragic event. We’ve had a lot of questions and conversations this week about how we keep our schools safe from intruders. While this isn’t new information to some, it’s always good to share.

 

Here in Clayton, we focus on three main areas when we think about keeping schools safe from intruders:

• Education 

  • What do our students and staff need to know in order to keep themselves safe?

• Prevention 

  • What things can we do to ensure our buildings are safe?

• Interaction

  • How does knowing our community well help keep us all safe?

 

Education (Training)

We train our staff using an options-based response program for intruder situations based on the four Es: educate, escape (run), evade (hide) and engage (fight). Our teachers and staff are trained annually by local law enforcement. We also conduct two intruder drills with students, one in the first month of school and a refresher during the second semester. During those drills we review with students (in an age appropriate manner) what to do in an intruder situation, which includes all the components of our options-based training. We also have a core team of staff (SROs, administrators, counselors, as well as some other staff) trained in a behavioral risk assessment protocol, which provides another level of both education and monitoring as part of our safety program. 

 

Prevention (Physical Safety)

We have taken a number of significant steps in recent years to increase the physical safety at our schools. We just completed the second summer of safety improvements based on recommendations from a comprehensive safety study of all of our buildings. As a result, all of our schools have new, secure entry vestibules. Anyone visiting our buildings who is not a staff member or student is screened with our visitor management system. Exterior doors, which are locked throughout the school day, will soon be electronically monitored to let us know if they are left open. We are adding an intruder alert/deterrent system in all our schools. Finally, we also have school resource officers who provide a physical presence, and quick response, in our schools. Our SROs serve as so much more than just police officers in our schools. They are relationship builders, positive role models and an integral part of how we use the power of relationships to keep our schools safe.

 

Interaction (Emotional Safety)

Next to physical safety, knowing our students well and ensuring our students know they are cared for are two of the most important things we can do to keep each other safe. We work to make sure every student has at least one trusted adult they can go to in a time of need. Building meaningful relationships with students is one of the most effective means of prevention. Everyone, including teachers, administrators, custodians, plays an important role in knowing our community. We supplement this internal relationship building by also maintaining strong external relationships with our partners at Clayton’s police and fire department. 

 

While I am glad that we have such a comprehensive safety program in place, I am also a little disheartened that the world works in such a way that we need such a safety program in our schools. Either way, please know that all of us in the District are committed to ensuring that every student or staff member who comes to school or work in the morning is able to return home to their families at the end of the day. 

 

Thank you for your continued support of our schools.

Dear Clayton Family - 

I struggle to even imagine the profound sadness and sense of loss experienced by the families affected by the shooting at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School today. Our hearts break every time we learn about a senseless act of violence finding its way into somewhere that should be a safe place. It becomes even more challenging to process when a tragedy like this happens so close to home. We have students and staff with personal connections to the CVPA community who will be impacted by this in ways many of us will never comprehend.

Regardless of where, when terrible things do happen, our thoughts turn to our own students, families and schools. Please know that we place an extremely high priority on the physical safety and emotional well being of our students and staff. We work tirelessly to ensure that every student or staff member who comes to school or work in the morning is able to return home to their families at the end of the day. 

While we still don’t know all of the details of today’s tragedy, we have safety measures in place in all of our buildings, as well as regular training for our students and staff, to help prevent these types of events. We have exceptionally strong partnerships with both the Clayton Police and Fire Departments. The safety improvements completed over the past two summers have made the entrances at all of our schools more secure. We also balance the need for physical safety in our buildings with the idea that we still want schools to be places where students and families feel welcome and emotionally safe as well. Next to physical safety, knowing our students and ensuring our students know they are cared for are two of the most important things we can do to keep each other safe.

Our school counselors and social workers will be available to help your child process these events. If your child would like to speak with someone about any feelings or concerns they have, please reach out to us or encourage them to speak to a teacher or adult at school. I know these conversations can be difficult at home as well. Here are some resources that you can use to help your child process these feelings.

Your role in our community is even more important today.  While we all play a role in ensuring schools are safe places to work and learn, we play a vital role in taking care of each other. Thank you for your ongoing support and for trusting us to take care of your children every day. Please join me in extending our deepest sympathies to the CVPA community.

The end of September finds our students, staff and families getting back to some of our favorite Fall traditions, some of which we haven’t had since 2019. Last week our sixth graders returned to Sherwood Forest Camp for the first time in three years. Sixth Grade Camp is a time-honored tradition and an important part of our students’ Clayton Experience. The camp experience is so impactful that it’s almost always mentioned by our student speakers at graduation and many of our alums still talk about their time at Sixth Grade Camp decades after graduating. 

Next week brings another favorite fall tradition with Homecoming at Clayton High School. A week of events and activities for our high school students will culminate with the parade, football game, alumni BBQ and dance on Saturday. If turnout for our homecoming events is anything like how our back-to-school events have been, it’s going to be a great weekend to be a Greyhound! 
 
Homecoming traditions are always a highlight for me because it reminds me of the great memories I made during my college years at the University of Kansas. As a Jayhawk, you typically only mention Kansas basketball, but I still enjoyed homecoming time. With Jayhawk football starting their season 4-0 for the first time in thirteen years, it’s definitely easier to share football-related highlights! Homecoming at KU was always filled with memories, laughter and an opportunity to meet fellow alumni and connect with old friends. It’s an opportunity to return to a place that feels like home and I look forward to welcoming our alumni back to CHS to share the same experience. 

Now that we are more than settled into the school year, we can go deeper into our focus on our Profile of a Graduate. Many of you have heard me refer to this as our North Star. Our journey to ensure the competencies we’ve included in the Profile are embedded in our work and achievable for everyone one of our students is at the center of everything we do. Students, staff, parents, community members, post-secondary educators and representatives from business and industry provided the input that helped us develop this profile and is the driving force of our work and the endgame we want for all of our students. 

The Profile of a Clayton Graduate defines the qualities we want our students to have when they complete their PreK through twelfth-grade journey through our schools. When our graduates leave us, we want them to be self actualized, intellectually curious, empathetic, culturally-competent, creative thinkers and collaborators. In my communications throughout this year, I want to take some time to really explore each of the competencies in our profile and explain why we know that these skills, while not as easily measurable as things like reading levels or fact fluency, will be critical to our students’ post-high school success. I look forward to sharing these thoughts with you.

I hope to see you out and about next week during our Homecoming festivities. It’s a great way to gather as a community and to support our students. As always, thank you for your continued support of our schools.

It’s been an amazing first two weeks of the school year! Even though summer provides some great opportunities to unplug and recharge, work never really feels the same unless our buildings are full of students, teachers and the sights and sounds of learning. Being able to be in a school during the first week, and especially on the first day, of a new school year is one of the best parts of my job. There is so much hope, energy and excitement for things to come that it’s simply contagious.

As we look ahead to the work we have planned for this year, a big focus will be a deeper dive into our strategic plan and ensuring all of our actions help make our schools a place for everyone to grow as learners in head and heart. As someone who emigrated from Kenya as a middle schooler, I understand what it means to need to be in a place where you are welcomed and feel like you belong. We all need a place that embraces your unique qualities and celebrates them with you. My parents moved to the U.S. so that my siblings and I could go to school here, so growing as a learner is a value my family instilled in me long before I became an educator. And, finally, self-care and emotional well-being is something that has always been important to me, and something that we all continue to work to be better at.  

Last year, our administrators worked together every month to really dig into the ways they can make our schools a place for everyone. (Goal one of our strategic plan.) This year, our focus will be on empowered learning (Goal Two: to grow as learners) and how we as lead learners continue to empower our students to take ownership of their learning. We are also working with our teachers to explore all the different ways we can embed (and evaluate) the competencies in our Profile of a Clayton Graduate throughout our students’ PK-12 educational journey. With all of this as a focus, combined with the learning that is an everyday part of the Clayton experience, 2022-2023 is shaping up to be an incredible school year for all of us. 

Even with such a strong focus on academic excellence, we are still dialed in on important things like health and safety. Long lead times and supply chain issues have extended our summer construction into this fall. We are finishing up the second round of safety improvements at our schools which will allow us to better manage visitors and access to our schools, improve our response time in crisis situations and ensure all our students/staff feel safe and supported while at school. We are also still keeping our eye on COVID cases in our schools. Our experience with different routines and evolving mitigation procedures over the past few years has left us well suited to make a change on the fly, if that’s what we need to do to keep our students and staff healthy and learning at school. 

I’ve said it before. I'll say it again: This is going to be an incredible school year! I’m looking forward to sharing it with you and your family. Thank you for your continued support of our students and schools.

It is hard to believe we have only a few weeks left of summer before we officially begin the 2022-2023 school year. This week, we welcomed our new educators and saw the start of fall sports. As we get ready to have the rest of our teachers and staff return next week, it can only mean that having our students back is right around the corner. I cannot wait to see our students and to begin our new school year together! 

I hope you and your families had a wonderful summer and were able to find some time to have fun and create lasting memories. For me, that meant spending time traveling and making amazing memories with my family and friends. During my family trip, my nephew proposed to his fiance, so that means planning has already begun for a traditional Indian wedding (They last for a few days!) early next summer. This memorable family trip came after I was able to start my summer with some amazing learning at our first Summer Leadership Experience.

In planning for the upcoming school year, our priority continues to be focusing on our strategic plan: a place for everyone to grow as learners in head and heart. The School District of Clayton envisions having graduates who are self-actualized, intellectually curious, culturally competent, empathetic, creative and collaborative.  These are the qualities that we want students to have when they leave our schools. We want to develop students who are not only academically prepared, but also attuned to their own humanity and how they can improve it. The students that we are educating right now are the digital natives from Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Expecting academic excellence while also prioritizing these fundamental competencies is a must to ensure our students are successful in today’s world.   

As with every school year, we will continue to keep the health and safety of our students and staff as top priorities when we return later this month. Beginning on the first day of school, face coverings will be recommended, not required, indoors at all of our schools. Since all of our PK-12 students are now eligible to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, all of our schools and offices will be mask-optional.  We will continue to monitor cases in our schools, but will not use a specific threshold to move to a mask-required status. Of course, students and staff are always welcome to continue to wear masks while at school as they are an effective mitigation strategy against COVID-19 and other airborne viruses.

Our plans also include continuing to maintain our data dashboard (and improving it so it updates in real time), providing access to vaccinations and testing, ensuring adequate ventilation in our schools and keeping guidelines for quarantine and isolation in place that are consistent with CDC and health department recommendations. COVID-19 is now something that we must manage like many other communicable diseases that find their way into our learning environment. We will manage it by watching our data and being ready to implement mitigation protocols if needed.  

The past two years have taught us a lot about what we need to do to ensure the educational, social, emotional and physical well being of our students and staff. Even though we are beginning this year with the hopes of a more “normal” school year, we will use everything we’ve learned since the start of the pandemic to monitor our current plans and make decisions in the best interest of everyone in our learning community. 

Along with the rest of our teachers and staff, I am excited to work together during the upcoming school year to provide your children with an amazing Clayton experience. I am looking forward to seeing our students when they return on Monday, Aug. 22 and beginning our new year together.