Jostens' Renaissance and School Administration

Okay, I just rushed in from a fundraiser at my school, so it’s been a long day. We had a celebrity dinner to raise money for the Jostens Renaissance process that we started at our school this year. The fundraiser seemed to be a big success as we raised a great deal of money for the program with the dinner. I’m sorry, I am getting ahead of myself as I often do. I will slow down and discuss why we decided to go with the Renaissance process at my school.

Why Renaissance?
We started the Renaissance process this year to recognize and renew academics at our Elementary and High Schools. Basically, the Renaissance process is a school improvement and academic renewal initiative that recognizes the academics of all students. Let me repeat that…ALL STUDENTS…not just the top ten percent.

Recognizing all students is currently more important than ever and I can’t believe that we haven’t been doing this all along. However, after attending the Renaissance Nation Conference in Minnesota last year we realized that we really only recognized two groups of students (e.g. the top ten percent and our discipline problems). Hence, we myself included, were unintentionally over looking the majority of our students. We didn’t mean to overlook any of our students, but it was happening anyway. Why? Well, they weren’t the top students and they didn’t cause any problems so they accidentally fell through the crack.

Now, we are doing our best through the Renaissance process to recognize all of our students. Additionally, we are challenging them to excel academically. This is more important than ever with NCLB and we should have caught the problem before attending the conference.

Want to know more? Check out the video and other great information from last year’s conference at Jostens site. You can click here, do a Google search, or click on one of the previous links. What is the Renaissance in their words? Read below…. I copied it from their site…but I am quoting so I’m sure they won’t mind…

“Jostens Renaissance is a proven educational enrichment program developed by Jostens and customized by you and your school community. It's designed to empower your students and educators to reenergize your educational atmosphere, and to create and seize new opportunities for success. The result? Schools all over the country cite higher GPAs, increased attendance, improved morale and stronger graduation rates, just to name a few. Many individuals even see Jostens Renaissance as a program that changed their entire outlook on life.”

Trust me when I say that this process really has something. Is it going to work at our school? I sure hope so! It would be very unfortunate if it didn’t work for our school. However, the Renaissance is something new and like all new things it will take time and dedication on behalf of the administrators, teachers, and community to make the process work.

All school administrators and other leaders should read this!
I just wanted to highlight a great post for current and future school administrators and other leaders entitled “Wake up call to administrators”. Like Vicki’s administrator, my current administrator is great, but I have been through a few that really needed to read this post… Anyway, like the Renaissance, this information should help schools if administrators will take the time to adhere to the wisdom within. Please do so for the sake of your students and teachers…

Vicki A. Davis AKA the cool cat teacher is responsible for the post and she hit the nail on the head with this one. Way to go cool cat teacher! She definitely has my attention as an aspiring administrator… I’m awake…Thanks

W. Bishop

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