Piece by Piece
For my first message of the 2021-22 school year, I’m going to revisit a message that I offered at this same time in 2020. Then, I asked that readers imagine opening a new jigsaw puzzle for the first time. I described how you pop the lid, spill the pieces out onto a table, start organizing the various pieces that eventually will come together as one. It’s not too much of a stretch, is it, to see the similarities between assembling a puzzle and what happens at the start of a school year?
Puzzles and new school years have a way of bringing us together … there’s the hunt and assembly of the corner pieces, which I think is similar to getting the building put back together after extensive summer cleaning, improvements and reorganization. Can I get a “shout-out” for the custodians and maintenance staff who got the classrooms, hallway and ground looking better than ever?
With the new flags out front, a lot of new paint on walls and fresh flooring— well, Springfield High School is looking pretty good.
Another important piece to the puzzle are the school counselors, who somehow fit everyone’s academic needs together within our trimester schedule. We have some new faces in our counseling office. Mrs. dePompei is now at Springfield Middle School, and earlier this month, we welcomed Morgan Roe and Kurtis Tucker to SHS. They are supported by our school secretaries, who work their magic to connect people with whatever they need—answers, directions, key fobs—they do whatever it takes.
Working our way through more of the puzzle pieces, there’s our cafeteria-based team. These folks know what our students and teachers like to eat and care about the quality of the meals they offer everyday. And, how about those free breakfast and lunch meals again this year?
Of course, there are the talented IT guys who know which keys to touch to get you connected to the network and to fix what’s broken.
The puzzle is incomplete without our school resource officer, school nurse, the bus drivers who deliver the students to and from school safely and, of course, our teachers, aides and all the others who impart on our students their wisdom while nurturing and challenging each one of us to reach for our dreams.
The puzzle is almost together, but impossible to finish without our coaches and parent volunteers who give freely of their time to enrich our school. We hope to have them all back in the building very soon. The final pieces that complete the SHS puzzle are our students and their families.
And, just like the toughest puzzle out there, we all somehow unite. Regardless of the puzzle piece we represent, the end goal is the same: to take a bunch of seemingly random parts and fit them together until the image of what we are building—an exceptional education for today’s learners and tomorrow’s leaders—comes into focus.
Stand Up and Cheer
Remember, if you want to catch the Blue Devils’ marching band at home football games, all tickets must be purchased online.
The link is on the athletics webpage: springfieldbluedevils.com/eventtickets.
