Red Ribbon Assembly

Today, we held our Red Ribbon assembly. Our STUCO (which I sponsor) chose to celebrate RR week starting today, going through Friday instead of last week through Thursday. They worked so hard getting everything together! I'm so proud of them! We met last week to decide on general ideas. I previewed video clips for a couple of days and gathered supplies for games. I asked one of the girls to put together a power point on drug use by the end of last week. I added to it over the weekend. I decided it would help with the presentation if there was music added, but couldn't get the song to attach. This morning I went in to work stressed about not having the song. My STUCO president, a senior, came to the rescue! She played the DVD with the videos in her laptop. She suggested we choose one of the clips I'd passed over, as the celebrity was more relevant to the kids. By the way, the DVD with the celebrity clips came from Natural High. It was free and I highly recommend them for middle school/high school ideas. The celebrity clips and toolkit are updated each year. The toolkit includes activities and lesson plans for all grades. We also chose a student story from the DVD. So, once the power point was played with the song "This is Your Life" by Switchfoot, we watched three 5-6 minute video clips. STUCO kids stood and told what their natural high was, which went along with the video clips and we played to minute-to-win-it games. We planned three, but the batteries were dead in my donated pedometers so we cancelled one. The games were a hit and included students from every grade plus two teachers. Everyday we're dressing according to some theme like so many other schools. Monday: tie-dye, color your world; Tuesday: Camo/Duck Dynasty; Wednesday: wear red, don't let drugs twist your mind and so on. We're taking a count each day of the number of students dressed up in each class. The class with the highest percentage of participation for the week will get a prize next week. I was touched by some of the students' comments while planning everything. One student said and others agreed or made additional comments to go along with what was said which impacted me greatly. This is what was said, "Thank you for everything you're doing for us and with us. You have these ideas and are trying to be supportive and incorporate our suggestions, too, to make our school better for us. We appreciate everything you're doing for and with us." Wow! I was almost brought to tears! I've been struggling with being in a new school, disconnected from all the teachers and administration due to my role at the school. Right now I feel I have just one real friend at work, who I knew previously (all my life), and who is retiring at semester's end. The principal doesn't care for me and I'm not sure the secretary does. The secretary thinks the principal hung the moon and she knows he doesn't care for me. If you follow this blog you know I'm new to the district, but so is the principal and several other teachers. The secretary has only been there one year and she is someone I've also known almost my whole life. So, many days I feel I'm in no-man's land, working by myself, no one to confide in, no one to conspire with, no one to joke and be silly with. The principal comes in now and then to give me a task to do with no other interaction. The secretary has gone around me to avoid me doing things when the principal is gone, though I had instructions from the superintendent to carry on a certain way in the principal's absence. The principal is gone often and never lets me know, though he communicates this with the secretary regularly. Sometimes the secretary tells me when he is already gone and won't return, sometimes she doesn't. The kind comments from the STUCO kids were perfectly timed, though they have no idea how much so.