Dancing the Night Away: My wife and I had a wonderful time at the winter semi-formal on Saturday night. The theme was
The Great Gatsby and the high school hallways, cafeteria, and gym were transformed into something right out of the book and movie. Tremendous kudos to our faculty advisors, Mrs. Deemer and Mrs. Hogan, as well as Mrs. Brown (not my Mrs. Brown!) who helped to organize all of our parent volunteers.
Our parent volunteers also deserve plenty of thanks as they helped with ties, dresses, and making sure that everything went well. For the freshmen this is really their first dressy dance, so it is always fun to watch them walk into the gym for the first time and see that they are awesome pieces of an 850 student puzzle! The gym was dancing and hopping and I even saw a few students do the worm. I am actually starting to like some of the new music that is out there, so that was cool too. I cannot wait for the junior prom!
Learning from Seniors: Earlier in the week I had my annual opportunity to meet with our senior citizens at the Camillus Senior Center. I would like to thank Mrs. Bacon for making this opportunity possible. The seniors are so welcoming, and I enjoy the chance to speak to many who helped forge our community into what it is today. I asked for a show of hands to see how many had gone to a West Genesee school, sent a child, grandchild, or great grandchild through the district and most of the crowd (I would say around 75 people) raised their hands proudly.
I went through a lot of topics over the course of an hour. Budgets, community issues, school matters, national concerns impacting education and talk of the past occupied our time. Of all of the topics covered, there was one that drew the most passion from the audience. The topic was how children are communicating differently and if that is a good thing or not.
From cursive writing, to block print, typing, texting, Facebook, Twitter and anything else social media many of our seniors felt that this evolution is ruining the art of communication, of resolving conflict, of forging true long lasting friendships, of memories. It was a powerful piece of our time together. They understood why things are changing and that we will probably never go backwards, but I learned that we should find other ways to preserve the human emotion in communication or we are going to be in trouble decades from now. Thank you for the learning experience!
Busy Week in Fine Arts and Athletics: We had a very successful weekend with our fine arts and athletics. We had many musicians play in All-State Concerts in Rochester this weekend (click
here for a list of students). I followed along on Twitter while the students performed, and they certainly represented us well.
On the athletic side all of our team sports won over the weekend. Considering nearly all of them competed, that is pretty cool! Check our website for the most current schedules.
Enjoy the week!
Chris
Learning from Seniors: Earlier in the week I had my annual opportunity to meet with our senior citizens at the Camillus Senior Center. I would like to thank Mrs. Bacon for making this opportunity possible. The seniors are so welcoming, and I enjoy the chance to speak to many who helped forge our community into what it is today. I asked for a show of hands to see how many had gone to a West Genesee school, sent a child, grandchild, or great grandchild through the district and most of the crowd (I would say around 75 people) raised their hands proudly.
