School Days: Morgan Hill Unified School District
School Days: Morgan Hill Unified School District
The Heart of Morgan Hill
By Steve Belando, Superintendent, Morgan Hill Unified School District
Photos provided by MHUSD
The start of a new school year is filled with a tremendous amount of excitement. As a school district and the largest employer in Morgan Hill, we welcomed back over 500 employees at the beginning of August. With campuses to ready and classrooms to organize, our schools were abuzz with activity long before the students arrived. Even before staff returned, our administrators convened for a two-day“ Leadership Charge” to set the tone and vision for the year.
Our theme this year was based on the book,“ Lead Like a PIRATE: Make School Amazing for Your Students and Staff,” by Beth Houf and Shelley Burgess. The authors describe what it takes to lead like a pirate:
• PASSION— both professional and personal
• A willingness to IMMERSE yourself in your work
• Good RAPPORT with your staff, students and community
• The courage to ASK questions and ANALYZE what is and isn ' t working
• The determination to seek positive TRANSFORMATION
• And the kind of ENTHUSIASM that gets others excited about education
Our school district leaders were tasked to build“ pirate” teams and choose a captain before they set sail on a treasure hunt to businesses and other locations to discover what downtown Morgan Hill has to offer. We took advantage of having such a unique and quaint downtown and wanted the new people now working in our district— as well as people who have been here for a while— to have a chance to explore and get to know it a bit better.
After charting the waters of downtown Morgan Hill, it was time to get to work. One of our focuses at the Leadership Charge was the importance of upholding our school district’ s six core values and developing an action plan around them.
At MHUSD, we know that above all else, students learn best in an all-inclusive, safe environment. That’ s our number one value. We have to have safety and inclusion before all other values are recognized.
The second value, thinking critically. We’ ve moved forward in education from teaching our students academic information to teaching them how to learn and how to access resources. In our modern world of digital devices providing us with an unending deluge of information, thinking critically has never been more important. If people are still wondering what Common Core is, it’ s about teaching how to think, not what to think.
The third value, to be present, holds that daily attendance and engagement in the classroom are essential to the learning process. Being present requires that a student is not only physically at his or her desk, but also mentally attentive and focused on understanding the lessons taught.
The fourth value, focus on achievement, requires that every available resource be used to support academic success and growth for all students. This goes back to the idea of using our educational resources to provide the best education we can to all our students.
The fifth value, to embrace diversity, means that the learning outcomes for students are maximized when a diverse group values individual strengths to work toward common goals. We see this as one of the most critical aspects of our work in public education. To feel safe as an individual means that no matter what your religious preference, sexual preference, ethnicity, gender or any other difference, you feel safe in that environment and included in the school community.
The sixth value, nurture community, broadens our activities beyond the campus where we encourage parents and community to be more engaged with our students’ learning success. The school is more than a building, and it’ s more than the people who work and study inside the building. The school is the heart of the community.
As Morgan Hill Unified School District, we encourage our entire South County community to be engaged in the values of our school district. We hope every resident and business will be part of the process of guiding our children and young men and women to develop themselves both in and out of the classroom.
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2018 gmhtoday. com
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