Laughter at HMS

Laughter is a wonderful medicine, especially within a public school where nearly 400 children and adult bodies coexist in a relatively small space for a length of time longer than we see our own families. When children can see adults laugh with each other and truly enjoy each other's company, it rubs off and sends a clear message that learning is fun.

I appreciate this community's ability to see the "big picture" and laugh at occasional mistakes. The weekly publication of this Parent Flash is often done last minute, due to a myriad of other tasks, and this results in slips at times. I received 15 emails this week from parents questioning our math when we stated that "snack milk and juice is $.35 or $1.80 for the week. Milk for cold lunch is $.35 or $1.80 for the week." Those of you with calculators quickly figured out that either our math was wrong or we were penalizing those who decided to pay for the week! To clarify, milk or juice is $1.75 for the week, unless you want to pay more.

My favorite gaffe in the Flash (Betsy, I hope you won't mind this), was when I forgot the name of a guest speaker, and hoping Betsy (the illustrious HMS Administrative Assistant) would fill in the name for me, I put in something like, "Bets, what in the world is that guy's name anyway"? Well, as I was proofreading, I didn't catch the fact that the name wasn't filled in and my original words were printed in the final draft! Fortunately, we caught the blunder after morning kindergarten had received them and we managed to make the correction before the afternoon version came out for the rest of the school. Funny thing, no parents called about it.

Of course, I wish I had kept a book over the last 20 years of the wonderful comments that children say. My favorite this week is about a kindergarten student who was working on his colors with Mrs. Codd. Everything went well until he got to purple.  He paused for a moment and said, "Pink."  And then when he got to pink, he looked up and said decisively, "Lower case pink."  Too funny.

You wonder what keeps teachers going on those long weeks of no outside recess? Try this one, related to me in an email from an HMS parent: I hope this puts a smile on your face: A few weeks ago, (my daughter) was being very quiet in the car and I asked her what she was thinking about. She said, "I can't decide if it would be more fun to be a kindergarten teacher or a gym teacher at Harold Martin when I grow up."

Here's something else to make you smile: Thanks to instructional assistant and office staff member Denise Damour, I once had 30 paper baseballs surrounding the doorway of my office. Each baseball had a different trivia question with the answer on the back. Every day we put a different question in our daily staff newsletter with the answer published on the following day. You see, at the end of those 30 days, the first Red Sox spring training game commences.

As someone who has worked in a few different communities, I am continually impressed at the positive attitude that exists among parents in Hopkinton and the staff here at HMS. Since the "fruit doesn't fall from the tree" we see the same disposition reflected in our kiddos. Thanks for smiling and have a great day.

Bill Carozza
Principal, HMS