Published in the March 16- 29, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Mary Alice Callahan
Mary Alice Callahan
Principals everywhere are proud of their schools, but when others recognize your school with a Community Asset Champion Award as Morgan Hill’s School of the Year, that pride is redoubled and validated.
Barrett Elementary School is more than a good, old-fashioned neighborhood school. We are that and much more.
In 2013, Santa Clara County chose Barrett to pilot a model of education that linked a variety of services with the Barrett community through the school. It was a kernel of an idea — to link families and students with public and private agencies who want to support them through the school. At Barrett, we took that notion and nurtured it into a full commitment to build our school community into one cohesive unit focused on supporting children.
We start, of course, with our children. We work tirelessly within and across our classrooms to develop their potential as readers, writers, speakers, listeners and proactive citizens. We honor curiosity and imagination. We empower students to make decisions and encourage them to be co-creators of their campus, their academics, and their play.
Last year, for example, the student council and the Expect Respect Club were each given small budgets to use for improving their school experience. They chose to work on building our positive climate with anti-bullying T-shirts and wrote and performed a play on the topic for the school. They also researched, ordered and assembled soccer nets to make their games more fun.
This year these two groups continue to sponsor Friday lunch-time activities for all students. They choose the activity, prep the materials, advertise the event and run the activity. Staff and volunteers help as well, but mostly they are completely student-run events.
Students also decided that we needed to organize more clubs. They found a parent volunteer and teacher to chaperone, they advertised their clubs and invited students to join them.
The most popular club this year has been the Pokémon club that had more than 90 students sign up for the first day.
Other students focus on more seasonal tasks such as saving the worms who flee the soggy ground and enter the dangerous terrain of sidewalks populated by students on their way to lunch. These students wonder about how to improve their school and take action to make it happen.
The teachers and staff at Barrett have great passion as well and are fully supported by our parents, our tías y tíos, our grandparents, our big brothers and sisters and family friends, our Barrett Home and School Club, our governance committees, and our community partners.
We take the notion of being a community seriously. We have a calendar packed with events that range from educational to informational to just plain fun.
Our belief is that the school should be the hub of our community. Everyone should feel welcome and eager to join us.
Whether dancing on the patio after open house, playing bingo at our Lotería night, exercising on the obstacle course set up by the Morgan Hill Explorers at our parcourse event, learning how to do math homework at our Family Math Night or running in the Bengal March — we come together to have fun, to learn, and to know each other well.
When you walk onto the Barrett campus, you feel welcomed. Hugs abound. At the core of all we do is the knowledge that each of us is perfect as we are, in all our humanity and diversity. Yet, all of us are better than we knew we could be when we work collaboratively as a connected community.
We were honored to be selected as the School of the Year by the Morgan Hill Values Youth conference committee. We are humbled by the recognition but are strengthened in our resolve to continue to meet the challenge of developing the potential of our belief that community matters and that the creation of this community is a shared endeavor. So when you next see us dancing in the streets, park safely and come join us. We are the Barrett community and everyone is welcomed.
Mary Alice Callahan is the principal of Barrett Elementary School in Morgan Hill. She wrote this column for Morgan Hill Life.
