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At Monday evening's school board meeting, Ironwood School Board Trustee, Chuck Vitton reported to the board relating to a recent character Education conference that he and other school staff members attended in Milwaukee.

It was an extremely good conference, with top quality speakers and informative meetings Vitton told the Board of Trustees.

He thanked members of the staff for giving up 3 or 4 days of their time and for coming back to our district with the goal in mind to improve upon all aspects of our educational community.

He stated that the direction of the board should be to get everyone from the superintendent, to principals, teachers , bus drivers on board or the program is not going to be as acceptable as it should be. "If you don't it will lead to the downfall of Character Ed" he said.

Vitton gave the analogy of a basketball team when 4 players run the same play, but one player goes off to do their own thing,. "It doesn't lead to a cohesive play. If you don't have everyone on board its probably not going to work the way you want it to" he said.

He told the Board it needs to emphasize that if we are serious in continuing character education then we need to take a stand and insist that all staff follows this model or there will be consequences to those who chose not to.

"Studies show that those schools truly committed to character ed will show very positive results in many aspects of the school and the community' he said.

Marcy Kusz told the board we were invited to present two breakout sessions and we were told that our sessions were considered some the most informative; in that people felt like they could walk out of our session with something they could implement.

Denise Woodward told the board that our school district is recognized for having two national promising practices awards. It was the only school in the U.P. and one of only two schools in the State of Michigan to have won the award.

The promising practice award is basically the first step of being recognized as being on your way to doing something with character ed. You must describe something in your school that is unique in your application. "We applied for five and received two awards" she said.

One project receiving an award was Character on the Move for the walk to school event that the district has done for the past two years. The other was Watching Character Grow, that builds off Mr. Kerkove's Norrie Project that he does every year. "That doesn't mean that there weren't other great things but that is what the character education partnership recognized our school district for" she said.

Many schools will apply for a state promising practices award, but as of right now, the state of Michigan doesn't have a practicing promises award, but will have one in 2012. The IASD decided not to wait for the state award and went for the National recognition that they received.

Front Row: Barb Drier Carol Vitton, Dawn Wolfe, Ben Schmandt
Middle Row: Chuck Vitton, Denise Woodward, Patti Pachmayer, Ann Wourinen, Michelle Kanipes
Back Row: Ted Sim, Marcy Kusz, Kathy Saari, Doug Foley

Polar Bear Cookbook

Thank you to everyone who submitted recipes for the Polar Bear Hockey Cookbook. The cookbooks are now available. The cost for the cookbooks are $10.00 so make sure to grab one for yourself and maybe one or two as a gift. They can be purchased at the Pat O'Donnel Civic Center concession stand or by contacting Kerry Roehm or Micki Sorensen.

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