Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Parent Lighthouse Team

In addition to the Cooper Staff Lighthouse Team and the Student Lighthouse Team, we now have a Parent Lighthouse Team! This team of dedicated parents is already hard at work brainstorming ideas on how they can help promote and enhance the Leader In Me model within Cooper and at home. We look forward to implementing many new ideas that strengthen our leadership culture!



Sunday, November 2, 2014

Leadership is Everywhere!

Wow!  What a month it has been at Cooper.  We have been busy with so many amazing events and leadership is blossoming!

We had one of our best camps yet!  Spring camp has always been a wonderful experience for making memories and celebrating friendships as students' time at Cooper draws to a close.  However, Fall camp is an opportunity for classes to build community and establish a caring, trusting environment at the beginning of the school year.  Our students represented Cooper well with their attentiveness to the instructors and willingness to take new risks and lead in amazing ways.  This year we built in a teacher time for teachers to do team building activities with their classes.  Staff have been able to build on the team work and leadership established at camp into their classrooms.

The Cooper Walk-a-thon was also a big success.  What a gorgeous day it was to be outside!  Our students were so respectful during both the walk and the assembly.  Cooper leaders surprised us all by surpassing our school goal of $7,000.  Together, we raised $7,636.  This money will be used to support our Leader in Me initiatives at Cooper.  The Student Lighthouse Team will be establishing how to use this money for the school with ideas such as leadership assemblies, Work-a-thons, Leadership Day, Career Day, etc.

The Walk Begins

Having Fun

Winner of the Plymouth Whalers raffle

Franklin cheerleaders show their spirit for Cooper.

After the Walk-a-thon, over 700 members of the Cooper community returned for Cooper Family Fun Night.  The Cooper PTA outdid themselves pulling off an amazing, family focused event.  Thank you to Lori O'Dell and her team for all of their hard work.  

Cooper Costumes


The Wrecking Ball


Cooper Students took the initiative to fundraise for a great cause.


Cooper teachers and administrators got pied!

Finally, a big thank you to Sally Erickson (6th grade teacher) and Annette Garbutt (Informational Technology teacher) who helped collect and vet applications, and interview our students for school-wide leadership positions.  We had almost 270 students apply for and receive a Cooper leadership position.  These positions include advertisers, beautification team, greeters, celebration planners, gardeners, hosts, letter writers, news reporters, photographers, recycling, spirit singers, tour guides, etc.  In addition, Bill Lietz (6th grade teacher) chairs the PTA leaders and Service Squad and currently has approximately 60 student leaders in these positions.  Lastly, Jeremy Cybulski, who runs our Rock Star Savers Program, has just made his selection of 24 students after a rigorous application process.  Wow!  This is just the beginning.  It is our school goal to have 100% of our students serving in a leadership position at Cooper.