Happy Tuesday, Rotarians.

Need to Know:

1. Stella Harrison, who has visited our club several times, has filled out an application for membership. There were no comments as to her eligibility so she has been approved for membership. We will be inducting Stella as a new member soon. Please make sure to make her feel welcome.
2. Our club will run the concession stand at the Freshman/JV football games this Monday evening (August 31^st) beginning at 4:45 PM. You may sign up to work on our club website.
3. The next Rotary Park workday will be Saturday, September 12^th from 8:00 AM-Noon. Please sign up to work on our website.
4. Our next board meeting will be at noon on Wednesday, September 16th at DD Hamilton.
5. Upcoming speakers: Our club assembly will be on September 1^st. Our speaker on September 8^th will be Steve Dulle, our Rotary District Governor.
6. News on our Don’t Meth with Us Project: Speaker David Parnell will be in the area on the week of September 14^th. Our club is sponsoring him at a presentation at Strafford Schools. Per Amy Wilkerson, the club will also sponsor him for a community event on Wednesday, September 16^th in Marshfield.
7. Go ahead and put this on your calendar now: our 3^rd Annual Romance Raffle will be held on Saturday, February 13, 2016.
8. Go ahead and put this on your calendar now: the Marshfield Easter Egg Hunt will be held on Saturday, March 12, 2016, with a rain date of March 19^th.

Meeting Recap

Our guests today were Tonya Sloan, who visited last week, and Melinda Van Note, a former Rotarian who has some renewed interested in being part of Rotary again.

We “serenaded” Jenny Gardner for her birthday.

Danny O’Neal is passing the torch as Foundation Committee Chairperson to Stan Whitehurst. Jason Hogan has agreed to chair the new Service Projects Committee.

Our speaker today was David Steward, the new Assistant Superintendant for Marshfield Schools. David is a native of El Dorado Springs, Missouri and a graduate of University of Missouri-Columbia. Before becoming an administrator, David was a math teacher and baseball coach. David has spent the last 15 years as an administrator with Monett Schools. During David’s tenure there, Monett was one of the first schools in Missouri to issue a laptop to every high school student and was one of the first 10 schools in the nation to adopt a “flexible modular schedule”. In a flexible modular schedule, classes do not necessarily meet every day or in one-hour increments. Some subjects may be better taught in longer blocks fewer days a week. Classes such as math that benefit from repetition, meet every day for 50 minutes like in other schools. But in flexible modular schedule, other classes such as chemistry lab classes or Ag classes may meet for 100 minutes one or two days a week instead.

David mentioned three principal beliefs about education: 1. Kids are different now and schools need to be able to respond to that. 2. The world is interconnected and 3. Technology is important. David’s goal is to “prepare the kids for their future, not our past”. David acknowledges that a lot of teachers and administrators get into education because they loved school when growing up, but they have to be careful as to not be recreating their past for the kids.

David’s job as assistant superintendent is in operations management: transportation, overseeing building maintenance, etc.

Final Thoughts

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

Yours in Rotary Service,

Kristin Grace Krebs