Superintendent Messages

Use intentional, conscious planning and be specific as to when and how you will do something

Reading is one of the ways I create moments of contemplation - reading creates a momento to breathe, a moment to reflect, a moment to consider what might be a better option than overreacting or underreacting...

If we can create a strong habit of reading, then imagine what we can achieve as a school!

The right behaviors make the difference and parents, community and teachers working together is the only way to win.

The recurring challenge is how do we best support our students in becoming strong independent learners?

What are the questions most important to you at this point in the school year and your life?

Everybody agrees that diligent practice is what allows you to improve, but winning is about practicing the right things.

Invest your time, energy, and action now on making a difference because if you wait, the impact will not be as great...

I’ve been having difficult conversations recently about what it means to be an ASFM eagle.

A member of our community sent me the following drawing as a response to my question on what painting or picture produces feelings of balance and harmony?

Last week I reported on some of the big findings in our data summit; we looked at our school from multiple perspectives and went through a careful exercise of counting.

This week we are looking at our learning data across the school in each generation from Nursery to 12th grade.

I’ve been thinking about when an action you must do eventually becomes routine. At what point does an activity or regular function stop taking up cognitive space in your brain? I wonder.

Welcome back to school! I’ve been thinking about what trends might be the most impactful in education. I read Klara and the Sun over the holidays.

Are you ready for vacation? We are. Many teachers and the administration team like to make fun of the fact that I frequently find ways of inserting my favorite quote from Cicero, “Gratitude is not only the first of the virtues but the parent of all the others.”

This weekend I’m off to Atlanta for a teacher hiring fair, and as we enter the cycle of hiring for the next school year, I’m mindful and appreciative of the hard work that our current teachers are doing to bring new and improved learning experiences to our students.

It gives me great pleasure to announce our new principals for next year. This fall we ran a comprehensive international search for the Head Principal of ELEM and the Head Principal of MSHS.

Did you see the Elem musical last week? Or any of the recent sports competitions? Did you know that over a 100 students and teachers participated in the TECHO project this past weekend? Did you attend MSHS parent-teacher conferences in the gym? 

In today’s post I would like to talk about the influence of grandparents in our everyday life here in Monterrey.

This week, we’ve hosted our two finalist candidates for MSHS principal–we’re going to have a difficult decision because both candidates are excellent educational leaders.

"Kintsugi" is the art of repairing broken pots in such a way that a record of the breakage is preserved rather than not. This record enhances rather detracts from an object's beauty.

Have you ever wondered what the most important sentence ever written might be? In light of recent events, I’ve been thinking about it.

I’m not sure why, but when I can see the North Star in the night sky, I feel better. There is always comfort in knowing where you’re going. Growing up in northern New Hampshire on my parent’s farm, there was little ambient light so generally the stars shone brightly, so it was easy to find Polaris.

This week we had our first Eagle of the Month ceremony. It’s such a pleasure to hear of students’ accomplishments and the stories their teachers tell to illustrate those achievements.

Two important athletic events happened this past week: Kipchoge recorded, again, the fastest marathon ever in Berlin and Roger Federer retired. Did you happen to see the photo circulating on social media over the weekend?

Have you ever heard the expression “stiff upper lip” or “grin and bear it”? These expressions are a bit old fashioned, but I grew up hearing them from my grandmother.

I started my “welcome to Open House” remarks by repeating our school mantra of “Take Responsibility, Meet Expectations, Go Beyond.”

This morning, Thursday, September 9, I fist bumped almost every student as they entered MSHS. “Take responsibility,” this year is about attendance. By 8:30am this morning every student was in the building. Well done! I know the transition back to school is hard, but we can do hard things.

Breathing and opportunity are related. Breathing gives us life, attendance gives us learning. Learning is breathing.

Welcome back! We are so excited to have all our students back to breathe life into our campus once again.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the board, Administrators, faculty , families and students, welcome to graduation of the class of 2022.

As we approach graduation, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what it means to graduate from ASFM. I think this profile celebrates what we want and expect from our seniors.

This has been both an exciting week as well as a complicated one. Seventeen teachers contracted COVID, and virtually our whole English Department was absent for a few days. Fortunately, many are back at school today. Still, we are alarmed.

As the school year nears its end the walls and halls come fully alive with images, sounds and activity demonstrating learning.

This past weekend ASFM hosted two fun events: Marketplace and Miles for Smiles.

Like most of us, I am thinking a lot about the Escamez family and the sudden passing of Monica Rojas Zertuche, an ASFM mother with three children at our school.

Is there a better image than the one below capturing the archetypical moment of scientific discovery when observation, sensation, and chance trigger insight? I’m following up on my Newton-ASOMEX letter sent just before Spring Break

I’ve really never felt anything quite like the energy of an ASOMEX soccer tournament before. The crowds, the cheering, the competition, and the pure joy of being part of something so great. Community matters…a lot.

I feel like I might jump out of my own skin because of my excitement for our first home ASOMEX tournament in two years! Do you feel that way too?

Like many of you I travel to school on Alfonso Reyes almost everyday, but I have never questioned who is Alfonso Reyes. Randomly, my mom reported that she was fascinated by Alfonso Reyes’s writing and was now reading her second novel by him–he was a prolific writer. Naturally, I wondered whether he might have a message to help me with my Friday letter!

School assemblies are back. Last week we met with the prepa students, and this week has been more focused on middle school.

Yesterday afternoon we received news that we can take off our masks outside and in open spaces. Hooray! At ASFM we will continue to wear masks inside the school buildings in order to comply with SEP regulations. Our official position is that masks are optional outdoors.

Do you have three favorite words? I’m always on the lookout for odd words that appear to have deep meaning that I’ve never heard of before.

Let’s celebrate the fact that we just completed our first full week of in-person learning. Let’s celebrate that teachers, administrators and staff are focused on improving the alignment of our instructional activities with our standards and assessments expectations with each grade level and between each grade level.

I don’t know whether it’s my imagination or the truth, but each week seems to accelerate, and the only thing that seems to move faster is the rate of change in our own community. As we continue to distance ourselves from Omicron (0.2% positive cases in our pools and 0.5% overall positive in our community) we are rapidly adding more options to our school day.

ASFMcron has crushed Omicron this week. We earned a 0.3% positivity rate, which means we have virtually no positive cases on campus; we are back to roughly the same positivity rate as we were in December just before the holidays.

I know if I were in the US and we had Monday off from school, my students would think that the holiday was to celebrate the winning team of the NFL Super Bowl. However, the Super Bowl is next week, a week later than usual, but we do have this Monday off.

We completed our 100th day of school this week, which leaves roughly 80 days left until the end of the school year.

There must be several Transformer movies because somehow Megatron kept coming back to life. Similarly, just when we think we’re winning against Covid we encounter a new challenge, and we are back in the trenches doing hand to hand combat, but we are winning.

Did any of you watch those silly Transformer movies? The bad guy transformer is Megatron and he wants to wipe out planet earth and his arch rival, Optimus Prime. Fortunately, Optimus Prime decides that humans are worth saving so he and his team battle Megatron to the death.

This is my final letter to you all before the Christmas holidays. In my last letter I discussed the origin of the Grinch and ended my message by suggesting that this sneaky green “agua fiesta” creature is actually in all of us. Our challenge is making sure we always share the best, most generous part of ourselves on the outside–everybody will be happier. 

We’re chasing down the last week of classes next week, and then we’re off to Christmas vacation; I think we all need a break.

Once I knew I would be moving to Monterrey I began to ask for advice about what life would be like as the new Superintendent of ASFM.

In my last letter I argued that Thanksgiving really should not be the only occasion during the year where we demonstrate our gratitude. On the contrary, let’s agree that practicing gratitude everyday makes us wiser, stronger and healthier as well as helps to lift the spirits of those around us. Together we rise!

In this edition of 107 there’s a wonderful photo of kids eating, laughing, and talking around a table: “Dando gracias.” Thanksgiving is just around the corner and though we’ve had what feels like a lot of days away from school in November, I’m still ready for another long weekend--aren’t you?

It seems to always be the case that I'm in search of my Friday letter topic for most of the week, and then without fail by roughly 3pm Friday afternoon (why not earlier?) it hits me. 

In my last letter I reported that COVID on campus was barely a topic as our PCR testing program once again proved that we have virtually no positive cases on campus.  Even after a long holiday weekend, we can report that we have no COVID cases on campus.

It’s the Friday before a long weekend and there are no students on campus, just the teachers, administrators, and staff. Today is a professional learning day, and we’re taking this moment to review and make meaning of the data we’ve collected over the last several months.

I continue to ask for your input in the Strategic Planning Process (SPP). Your voice matters. In this letter, I hope to provoke you enough that I ensure you participate. Get ready.

577 days, this is the first week we’ve had all of our students on campus.  Suddenly we recognize what school looks and feels like, and these impressions are comforting and make us optimistic about the future. It’s good to be back.

Again, I’m writing to wish everyone luck with opening up our school to full in-person learning.  This is something we’ve been working on for many weeks.

On the COVID testing front, you all have completed another great week by defining a new low for our PCR testing results.

We did it! Again, thank you for committing to supporting our community by your willingness to adhere to the PCR testing program.

At this week’s end celebrate not only completing three successful weeks of school but also Mexican Independence Day. I will return to Independence day in a moment, but first let’s reflect on this week.

I’m happy to report that our rate of transmission continues to go down as we are now under 0.5%. ASFM campus is probably among the safest places in Mexico.

Can you believe it?! We just completed our first week of school!  We collected 2656 saliva samples, guided 1115 cars to multiple testing stations, and started school for our elementary and middle school eagles.

As I write this note and think about the beginning of school, I can’t help but remember the start of school from the last time I was a student.

Together, we are rising.

We dared to open on August 9th because we believe that in-person learning is paramount for our students and for all students. The health officials closed us almost immediately, but all of you--parents, teachers, students and friends of ASFM--came together to fight for what we believe in. I’m so proud and happy to be part of this community. While it may be easy to cast blame on our local officials for our recent hardship, I would ask that we not do this.  Our local officials noticed, they listened and finally, with accurate information, supported our opening of school.  We thank them for their courage and willingness to listen.

Thank You!

Earlier this week I launched the narrative of  “shared responsibility” for keeping our community safe as the key to reopening school for preliminary activities on Monday, August 9.