Bentonville holds back-to-school meeting
Posted on Saturday, August 16, 2008
Daily Record photograph by David Frank Dempsey Katie Clements, foreground, and Emily O’Neil, background, led the Bentonville High School Marching Band in a performance for the teachers’ back-to-school meeting at the Arend Arts Center on Friday.
BENTONVILLE - An old African proverb says the best time to plant a tree is 25 years ago, but the next best time is today.
Superintendent Gary Compton encouraged all Bentonville School District teachers to be the ones to plant a "tree "in their students' lives this year. The message came Friday morning during the annual back-to-school meeting for all Bentonville teachers. The meeting, held at Bentonville High School, was followed by a vendor fair.
Compton also talked to the teachers about the importance of having balance in all aspects of life, including relationships with others, a person's various forms of work and all aspects of an individual's person - spiritual, mental, emotional and physical. He showed a graphic of a wheel portraying all those areas. Compton used the graphic to demonstrate the concept that if even one part of a person's life is out of balance, it throws the whole wheel off course.
Not all of the back-toschool meeting was that serious, however; there were many moments of frivolity, including jokes about current events. There was also a time to welcome new staff members to the district and honor last year's Teacher of the Year. Compton also reviewed the school board's goals for the year.
Many of the teachers received the message well. Christopher Marston is starting his first year at BHS. What struck him during the meeting is how approachable Compton seems.
"He didn't put on airs like some superintendents can," Marston said.
As far as the school year as a whole, Marston said, he is looking forward to the chance to collaborate with other people in his field. He comes from smaller districts where there are many fewer foreign-language teachers, so such collaboration wasn't always possible, he said.
For Adele Cadard, facilitator in the district's gifted and talented program, the key idea she will remember from the meeting is that each student has a talent, and it's the educators' jobs to find that talent. She spoke of the BHS student who played guitar for the meeting. The student, Tony Bornhoft, who is self-taught, performed several familiar - and difficult - songs.
"Our students have hidden talents that we need to help them bring out and then use to further their other (skills )," Cadard said.
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