School Staffs Resolve Better New Year's

Each year, billions of people around the planet make their New Year's resolutions: promises they've made to themselves, their friends and family and society as a whole.

It's no different at the FishHawk Ranch area's four public schools.

At FishHawk and Bevis elementary, Randall middle and Newsome high schools' staff and students, began making their New Year's resolutions as early as the middle of December.

While staffs at the four schools got ready on the last day before the holiday break, some of the teachers, administrators and students had already begun making promises for 2009.

In her seventh year of teaching at the school, Jo Ann Jones, a fifth-grade teacher at Bevis Elementary School, 5720 Osprey Ridge Drive, said it's the positive interactions between staff and the school's approximately 850 kindergarten to sixth-grade pupils and 40 teachers that has made getting motivated simple.

"I just want to continue helping with the good things we have going on here," said Jones, who lives in FishHawk Ranch. "We are pleased with our students and their success and progress and we want to continue that."

As for her personal agenda for 2009, Jones said she wants to spend more time on the water.

"I want to enjoy more time fishing; more time on the boat, relaxing and fishing," she said.

Jones' colleague, principal Tricia Simonsen, also had 2009 goals for Bevis' student body: to keep performing like they are.

"I am certain that 2009 will bring continued success for the entire Colleen Bevis Elementary community," she said. "It's so important to recognize all the special and hard-working faculty, students and parents that are committed to excellence in education."

About a mile east of Bevis, students and staff of FishHawk Elementary School, 16815 Dorman Road, were getting ready for an afternoon pizza party. In the school's media center, media specialist Debbie Crawford finished checking in materials for the day. In her fifth year at Bevis assisting the school's approximately 950 pupils and 50 teachers, Crawford said for 2009, she would like to find more time to teach researching skills to all the classes.

"That's a skill they'll need throughout their lives," she said. "I'd personally like to do that."

Outside the classroom, Crawford said next year she plans to work on "losing some weight" and checking out more books.

"I want to read more of the 'Sunshine State' books; books chosen by the school district as being the best books," she said, as pupils began coming into the library.

One of those pupils, Victoria Tilson, 9, had a simple resolution beginning January: being nicer to her brother.

"I'll play with him outside and do something nice, like get him a card and try to make him happy," she said.

As for school, the fifth-grader said she wants to work on improving a particular subject.

"I want to study math more. I definitely need to do better in math," she said.

Besides students and teachers at the schools, non-instructional staff members also have their own New Year resolution agendas.

One of them, Walter Owens, head custodian at Randall Middle School, 16510 FishHawk Blvd., said he has plans to make the school better for its 1,500 sixth- seventh- and eighth graders. He said getting some portables ready for removal next summer will be a big task.

"I just want to help keep everything clean and get everyone working together and accomplishing our goals," said Owens, a Ruskin resident in his fourth year at the school.

Personally, he wants to stay busy.

"My wife got laid off a month ago and is just now back to work, so I just want to stay working," he said.

Next door to Randall, staff at Newsome High School, 16550 FishHawk Blvd, also had their ideas of what they would like to accomplish next year.

As he walked to the parking lot after school last month, Assistant Principal Paul Lindstrom, in his fourth year at Newsome, said his resolution for the school was to help the "middle grade" students do better at the school of about 2,100 students and 85 teachers.

"We want the 'B' and 'C' students to get more active in the school," he said. "They need to involved and more included."

Personally, Lindstrom wanted to get rid of something next year.

"I'm losing weight, at least 10 percent," he said. "I start New Year's Day."

Across the street from Newsome, a school bus driver, Pamela Christie, whose daughter, Ashley, also is a school bus driver, had lunch with some of her colleagues. Christie, a driver with the Hillsborough County School District for about a year, said she has goals for next year, too.

"I'm going to work on being more efficient and I want to be more courteous to people when I'm driving, I want to be a better driver all the way around."

Research shows that while 52 percent of participants in a resolution study were confident of success with their goals, only 12 percent actually achieved their goals. Men achieved their goals 22 percent more often when they had goals set and women succeeded 10 percent more when they made their goals public and got support from their friends.