The month of November is one of my favorite times of the year. I love the Thanksgiving Holiday — family, friends and food. My family has a tradition of reflecting on the year and sharing what we are most grateful for. This year I started early on my reflections. At the top of my list is the hardworking learning community that I get the privilege of working with every day. I am blessed. I reread my November Newsletter Message from last year and found out that so many of the things I shared last year actually apply to this year as well. It is a wonderful thing when success and progress is the norm. So here is a message that still applies. Please read it and find a way to be grateful.

Our mission at Spring Creek is to ensure continuous progress for all students in a positive and engaging learning environment. We take this mission seriously and are making a mark. The following statement is published on the State Data Gateway website. It describes Spring Creek as, “A Title I school located in southeast Provo. Achieved success in all academic areas and boasts the highest academic growth rate. Teachers care about students and provide a positive nurturing environment that individualizes, uses technology and capitalizes on diversity.” I feel that this is an accurate reflection of the work we do at Spring Creek.

The impressive progress scores are not attained only by our students that started out with considerable deficits in their learning. The majority of students from all ability levels are making significant gains in their learning. I have to give a huge shout out to the teachers and staff at Spring Creek that work tirelessly to provide students with high expectations and clear learning targets, including the success criteria needed to produce quality work and enough feedback to know how they are doing. I also want to give a shout out to our students that engage in instruction, work hard, set goals and work to meet those goals. The art of teaching and learning is practiced daily and in every subject.

We hope that you take the time to talk to your children about the exciting things that they are learning each day. We encourage you to spend a few minutes each day asking them some of the following questions. What mistakes did you make today? What did you learn from them?

How did you contribute to the learning today? What challenges did you accept today? What questions did you ask? What feedback did you receive today? What did you do with it? How did you show that you weren’t going to give up?

How were you kind today? How were you safe today? How were you responsible today?

Obviously you probably won’t want to ask all of these questions every day, but over the course of a week I would challenge you to try and ask most of these questions. These questions are the key to what successful learners do. And at Spring Creek, “We LEARN Together.” Thank you for the fabulous first term. We are pressing forward to the next three terms with determination that we can all make continuous progress. We can’t wait to share this progress with you during Parent Teacher Conferences. Be sure to get signed up – visit the Spring Creek Website or call the front office for assistance.

Mrs. Franklin