[Music] Ahoy Minnetonka I'm David law Superintendent at Minnetonka Public Schools thank you for joining us for our second episode of our new podcast Ahoy Minnetonka today our theme is celebration Minnetonka schools celebrates excellence in how our students and staff live lead and learn we do this by honoring our teachers and staff and the dedication and drive they bring each day by lifting up the achievements milestones and successes of our hard-working students and by fostering the growth and connection and by celebrating the unique and vibrant voices throughout the school district all year long joining me today are three special guests one of our middle school principals one of our Communications staff members and a soon-to-be graduate for the class of 2023. so please tell us a little bit about yourself hi I'm Lucy Hiller I'm a senior at Minnetonka High School and I will be graduating soon as the 2023 senior a little bit about me I have three younger brothers so I am the oldest of four which means my house is never quiet so as you can imagine but I do have two very supportive parents and they have been with me throughout throughout my journey at Minnetonka which has been awesome um I started track and field when I was in fifth grade so I was chosen for the four by one and I guess I just fell in love with it because here I am I'm a varsity Track Captain and been on the track team since I was a freshman I struck with stuck with track throughout middle school but then in seventh grade I found my true passion which is in design lettering graphic design calligraphy things like that so I started my own small business in seventh grade and when I came to Minnetonka as a freshman I started the Minnetonka design lettering club which has now 56 Plus members which is absolutely crazy but um it's just been an awesome awesome Journey our mission is giving back to the community with our skills in design lettering and creativity and we support the community with posters and other marketing materials for non-profits local organizations and clubs after starting DNL I started taking advantage so as a vantage designer marketing student I have been given so many amazing opportunities and I think that is just like starting being Advantage has been one of the most amazing things coming to Minnetonka because the opportunities I've been given are just crazy like my portfolio has been done through Vantage my resume has been done through Vantage and then I also started working with a non-profit letters of Love Letters of Love is a non-profit that gives back to children in hospitals and supports them with emotional support items and recently I became head of marketing materials for letters of Love which has been an awesome opportunity and I'm super excited to keep working for them so that's just a little bit about me well and a lot to celebrate there too probably yeah that's um I'm Mary Cornelius I'm the communications specialist on our district Communications team and I always tell people that my job is celebrating the amazing stuff like stories like yours Lucy just the amazing opportunities that students have that teachers create and just the amazing stuff going on in our community I um do a lot of feature storytelling I'm writing for our website and District Publications I also coordinate our social media strategies so telling a lot of those stories on Facebook Instagram Twitter all those different platforms to get the stories out there and then I also coordinate our monthly School Board recognitions program so that's a little more formal recognition we recognize that academic athletic activities and artistic achievements of our students and so that is just a really exciting way to get to celebrate the amazing things that students do and our Communications team as a whole we also do a lot of events for celebration we just finished up the celebration of excellence and that's an amazing opportunity to get to celebrate teacher and staff from all areas and volunteers for the ways that they make an impact for students awesome yeah that's great my name is Freya shermacher so I'm the principal of Minnetonka Middle School West and Lucy it's great to hear your story because really my job at West is to launch students to be able to find their passions in academics and activities in service and Athletics I mean the things all the things you mentioned it's kind of nice to hear you know as your senior that's kind of one of that's our end goal but it's not really our end goal because we know you're doing so much more Beyond high school so that's really exciting to hear about that um before I was at mmw I've been there for three years I was an assistant principal at Minnetonka High School and I started my career as a special education para and I became a special education teacher and a reading teacher and I kind of moved to different positions so I'm so excited to be here at Minnetonka just to talk about how we honor and celebrate our students in our community thank you all you know through the past year I've been so impressed with the ways that we celebrate our students and staff Mary you referenced the celebration of Excellence I had the chance to be there in and get involved with it we honored more than 150 teachers staff and school volunteers for those who didn't attend the celebration of accidents it's available online live streamed I encourage you to watch the video on a YouTube channel Mary do you want to talk a little bit more about who gets celebrated that night and the process behind the scenes I know that it comes up a lot yeah I mean it's the believe it or not the planning for it starts all the way um I mean in the winter before February we open up the nominations to the community to nominate teachers staff and volunteers that have had an impact for child-centered excellence and so we have a form open where students submit names families other staff members submit the names of teachers or staff members who they work with and so we gather nominees for Teacher Awards staff Awards there are a couple like special named Awards the Joyce Gustafson award Brad board award is specific for elementary education we have a newer one called the Judy Erdahl award that recognizes a staff member in the Minnetonka Community Education Department but it's all about people who are making an impact for students and so once we get those nominations there's a whole committee that reads through the um the applications and they um the committee is made up of people that have won the award in the past so they choose the winners we get to notify them and then we go through the big process of getting ready for the event so our videographer Andy Smith puts together some beautiful videos highlighting you know the stories of these individuals that have won awards and then we uh we all get ready for the big night and it's it's just a wonderful time we pack the totally packed the auditorium you know the all 700 seats and it's it's family it's students cheering for their teachers it's um staff members cheering for each other getting to yeah getting to really celebrate those moments well I'm curious what your experience was since this was your first one that you were you know it was it was so fun because it's hard to picture that event and all the energy in the event just when a group of employees or a group of community members line up and everyone's cheering on them their name was called and they're cheering it I mean it's one of the bigger celebration events I've been part of and the energy the positive energy and tearful impacts for people I can remember someone who came up who could barely catch your breath she was so she was honored to be named and I think it was the it was the Judy Erdahl award and she had known judier at all and so winning that award after someone who she clearly had a lot of respect for it was you could see the full picture of the connection the community that that Minnetonka feel for were all in this same place I mean it was powerful and it was fun to see and and that was just a small sample of the staff and volunteers yeah well that was a that was a unique event Freya as principal you're celebrating all year long I've attended some of your meetings for both students celebrating and for staff where you celebrate every staff meeting how are what are some of the things that a principal does to celebrate throughout the year right and celebration is important too I mean teachers it's it's a social job however teachers really spend most of their day in a room full of students and we don't get really a chance to come together as a community too often and I really believe that celebration is a reflection of our community and it's it can be small like celebration of Excellence is a huge event that really culminates a whole year of of Excellence right and in our schools we try to celebrate the small events too so for example we have bi-monthly staff meetings and at the beginning of every staff meeting we just want to take a moment to shout out what are the big life events that have happened that that we need to celebrate as a community because we haven't maybe even come together in two weeks and we don't see each other's faces as much so for example I learned somebody was getting married I learned that we had a staff who was getting a national recognition for the best buddies organization these are things I didn't know but we were able to communicate that together and celebrate as a group so that that's always it's so fun and I believe it's those small little moments of connection that build community and then we can truly celebrate together and so that's just a small way we do um something called staff member of the week staff Westie of the week the staff wow and that's actually where students nominate teachers to receive the staff Westie award and so every Monday we we reveal the West day of the week live on the morning announcements and I have we have a big obnoxious trophy that we travel week to week and students will bug me all morning who is it who is it this week but it's the big reveal and so that's another way we just honor the great things that teachers do and then actually teachers also nominate students so we have sixth and seventh and eighth grade Westies of the week every week announced on on live announcements so those kinds of things are ways that we shout out each other and celebrate each other's accomplishments big and small we have bigger events we have something that we call the full sale Awards which happens twice a year where staff nominates students kind of for the non-academic contributions they bring to school so you know it could be their sense of humor in the classroom it could be their leadership it could be their perseverance or their friendliness where we can really share we bring in families to kind of talk a little bit about the student that's actually my favorite those are my favorite events of the year because you get to celebrate with families too so families students and teachers coming together and it's every teacher says this is my favorite it really fills my bucket and it's great to see the kids who maybe don't get all the other recognitions but they get singled out for the great things they do so those are just a few things a few things we do at MW ah thank you Lucy you shared in your introduction some of the things you're involved with with Vantage and with the letters and you know those Partnerships and certainly some of the acknowledgment you've received in the community and as well as track through your time here what are your some of your favorite celebrations as you think back on maybe I'll be back to Middle School at mme what are some of the things that you remember that you thought oh people notice me totally I think one of the main things that sticks out to me is Erickson's amazing Instagram posts I feel like every week I get so excited to see the student of the week or things like that I remember earlier this year I got chosen as art students of the week and it was just really nice to feel like my peers and even my teachers were recognizing me for some of the work I did and I got that award from Minnetonka design lettering Club So Not only was I raising awareness for my club but then I also felt like I was being honored for something that I had done which was awesome and I feel like this community is so supportive another awesome thing that I think Minnetonka does is the feature stories so so my work with Vantage and letters of love that got a feature story and getting to see all the hard work pay off and be in this article and just be honored was super super cool and I really appreciated all the hard work that everyone put into it um another awesome thing is homecoming homecoming and pet Fest I was on a homecoming Court this year and it was just the best way to start my senior year I made so many friends I built such a strong Community going into my senior year and I also think that the way that Erickson and just the peers and students all come together and just celebrate our community during dances and things like that it all honors the hard work that we do throughout the school year which is really nice yeah I I've had the chance to watch principal Ericson interact with students I mean even at homecoming I can remember my first homecoming parade and the connection and the pride that students have and the the fun between staff members and students it it has a special feel Mary I wonder if you think back over the past year if there's a celebration event that stands out to you is there something you think about or a story you're told that you think is is one for the year that you'd say that was one of my favorites you know I have um there's one from last spring so it's coming up a little older than a year but um we were able to tell the story of a student at Scenic Heights Elementary um it was right around the time that the war in the Ukraine was was re it was breaking out and so he he thought to himself he's like okay this is a huge Global event what can I do how can I make a difference like his mom is actually from Poland and they were receiving refugees in his mom's Village and so his mom was telling him about what was going on and he was thinking about kids his age who were over there and he was like you know what I love basketball what if I put together a fundraiser with basketball and raise money for the refugee kids that are coming in to you know my mom's Village so it started off just as this little thing his mom shared it on Facebook he's like I wanna I wanna make 500 for you know this little community and um it it totally took off I mean we got the email from the principal from Joe Walker at Scenic Heights he's like hey we've got this story this is you know it's it's getting bigger they wanted to raise 500 they did that you know they tripled that they they were raising thousands of dollars and so we got to write a future story about it kind of feature that student and his efforts and um connected with our media um our local media as well and so they there was a story on the local news and then it got picked up as part of a national news story about the ways that people were you know responding and supporting those in need across the world and so that was really I mean I think in the end they raised over thirty thousand dollars for um I know it was so cool and it was all it was so what the the fundraiser was um students were shooting Hoops for Ukraine and I know that story made it in our annual report last year too so there's a page dedicated to that yes and so it's fun to get to you know kind of Follow that story and and um you know part of what we do on the communications team is when we have a story like that we're like okay how can we share this and you know our different channels and different mediums so that we can can celebrate what students are doing and just inform our community so they know um you know service is such an important part of what we do at Minnetonka and student voice and that I feel like that story is just really is an amazing example of both of those things coming together you know you mentioned student voice and Freya I know you've had the chance to have students presented the board meeting sometimes including student voice is a way of celebrating those students for their initiative what are some ways that mmw you've focused on student voice as a way to both celebrate staff or students or School initiatives wow well the student voice is the most powerful voice in the school I mean hands down and that's the voice I really want to turn my ear to and listen to and so I Look to provide really as many opportunities I can to amplify that voice because as students are in middle school they're just beginning to kind of find that I mean we have students in elementary who are like discovering their passions and I think in middle school too is how can I provide these opportunities for student voice so just a few examples um our women of color we have a women of color group has really led the way in recognizing some of our heritage months so for example right now currently it's um Asian American Pacific Islander month and so these students on their own took the initiative to create Short History short bios of prominent Asian American Pacific Islander women and they share this with the whole school via our live morning announcements I know also for Black History Month these students created a trivia contest where they posted daily trivia questions on our schoology pages and then students could you know answer and get prizes so just fun ways to really give students that leadership opportunities um one example two is our best buddies Club so we have actually one of the state's largest best buddies what middle level best buddies club and you want to describe what best buddies are yeah so it's a it's a National Organ actually an international organization that seeks to build friendships and connections with students with and without disabilities to really Foster inclusion and community so all students can have great experiences together um and so we have really worked hard to to kind of allow students to share their passion for inclusion but it's not just about talking it's about teaching and so these student leaders are able to actually inter connect with other students to kind of open up these conversations because in middle school middle school is about learning and we we make mistakes and we learn through mistakes and sometimes our ways of thinking shift towards kindness but without students leading that pathway I mean that's how students are growing and getting ready for high school kind of learning about how to accept others what maybe at one point made them uncomfortable how to confront that feeling learn from it and in that sense understand more about each other and become more inclusive and students have led the charge with that that's not me getting in front of the school that's students getting in front of the school and I guess I'm so proud of those students and I'm always looking for ways to to provide that platform for students and I guess it's ongoing to how else can we offer that leadership and that student voice at the middle level that's that's it's great I've senior students at the school board I see the prayer that they have and I see your pride in those students so Lucia uh you've mentioned Vantage and one of the things that I experienced this year for the first time that I wondered if you could go into a little bit is is Shark Tank how does Shark Tank how is that a celebration of student work okay so I know Global business does their version of shark tank but we kind of do the same thing with working with company projects or developing kind of ideation and going through the research and then ultimately coming out with a product and then for our class design and marketing we come to the marketing strategy we conduct research through surveys and other primary and secondary research and then ultimately reaching the deliverables that our clients ask for us so for me I worked for ladders of love and also mostly made but my favorite project was the sustainable ice cream project where our team teamed up with the global sustainability Strand and we marketed their sustainable ice cream and it was the best oh you're good um it was the best project I loved creating logos for them and it was also really fun to work with kids that thought so differently we had a sustainable side and then also this marketing side and how could we tell their story but how could they get their side across and it was really fun to just honor all the hard work that we did and our team ended up winning that conver that competition which was just super fun and I think the Shark Tank aspect of it of competing against one another but then also honoring and celebrating everyone else's hard work was just a great time that was my experience when I watched the finals here on Shark Tank you know all the room and people pitching their product um and and the staff just sitting back in in really admiring how much those kids had come along on the process it was it was very fun and as I described it to other people outside the system they were amazed that that happens here so that's very very fun um giving back is such an important part of our community and we have a celebration that I've experienced in November about celebration of service and and celebrating service from our students and from our community members just for any one of you is there a service activity I know you mentioned letters of Love Are there service activities that are celebrated that stick out with you because that's another point of pride in the district maybe you want to start with your your service activity um design lettering letters of Love um I think design a lettering Club it definitely has that it's a club that gives back and I know there's a ton of clubs I'm going to talk about do that but I think we are special because we give back to this community in this community in particular the non-profits we work for the local organizations we work for the other clubs at Minnetonka we're all giving back to them and it's students supporting students which is I think a Minnetonka motto at this point is just how can we support one another and give back Mary can you talk a little bit about celebration of service that's another event that I attended for the first time and I was amazed that we give all these Awards to our students and our staff and community members what what what for the community who might not be aware of it what is that event about yeah so it is um coordinated through our Tonka serves office which is just an amazing Sarah Johnson is the staff member there who who coordinates service opportunities for the community but the celebration of service is kind of the culmination of all those events students and it's actually not limited to students it can be families or adults are invited to tally up their service hours for um to earn the president's volunteer Service Awards so the celebration of service is where those awards are handed out and also the High School varsity letter in community service so those are based around community service hours but it's amazing to see the variety of projects that students volunteer in I mean I Sarah's one of my favorite people to talk to when I'm I'm trying to find stories in the community I'm like oh Sarah what's what's going on and she I mean last summer there was a student at Groveland who um he planted a garden and all of the fruits and vegetables that he grew there he donated to ICA and like that was his summer service project and then there's I know there's students at the high school that have a um a digital service Pro like a digital service club and so they are computer science interested students and they um they use those skills to serve the community so yeah it's really um so I think the cool thing about the celebration of service is kind of like the celebration of Excellence we get to um put together little videos that are talking about all those different stories that come up from you know the ways that students are involved in the community um and so that's yeah that's a fun a fun time to celebrate all the things going on in the fall that reminds me just recently we in the local paper they read a story celebrating our students at mme who do the water walk which is for so fun it's funny that you say that because we visited students at mme and mmw last week and when we asked them what was your favorite part about mme a lot of them said the water walk can you just uh talk about that it was certainly it was a celebration for the school but it was also a celebration of the school in the local paper tell me about that yeah I if it's the same as it was when I was in eighth grade we I think students got to make certain things they can make cookies or do crafts or things like that and then they could sell them at the water walk and raise money for Haiti and then other students could also do walks and then they could get sponsored and for the amount of laps or walks of miles that they did they could get paid for those miles and then that would also go back to Haiti which it was just an awesome opportunity for kids to just get involved with Minnetonka yeah okay so we're almost out of time it's me it feels like there's a celebration every night thinking of the end of the year what are some of the celebrations you have coming up between now and the end of the school year free I'll have you go first well starting really small we've got our first annual spring cookout for staff on Friday afternoon we'll be grilling for all staff in our Courtyard so we're hoping for good weather again just getting together celebrating over over a meal one less lunch to pack that's going to be a lot of fun I'm looking forward to that awesome Mary I'll let Lucy talk about graduation but I'm still alive I'm looking forward to it as well because I get to work with the photographer who takes all the pictures to document the event and so it's always one of my favorite parts of the day to get to see um you know just all that Joy but you know through the lens looking forward to it yeah so adding on uh graduation I cannot believe I am a CG this year which is crazy time has flown but yeah this is just everything's moving very fast and I think just slowing down and soaking it all in is what I'm ready to celebrate and just being with my team and my peers and my teachers it's for this final month is going to be really awesome I love that slowing down celebration is slowing down because it's recognizing um you know what what's happened and what's moving forward so well ultimately a school district's goal is to successfully graduate students so they can go on be you know successful whatever they want so graduation for me is one of my favorite events of the school year just because students and families have this sense of completion you know there's that I'm doing something else but for today I did it and that is one of my favorite celebrations of the Year thank you for joining us for this episode of Ahoy Minnetonka I hope you'll join us again next time [Music] foreign foreign