Five Simple Things You Can Promise To Do in 2012 If you haven’t included any green living promises on your resolution list, here are five easy things you can promise to do this year that will make a positive impact on your community—and ours as well. Share this list with students and colleagues too! The more energy saving and recycling, the better.

The holidays have come and gone. Times Square has been cleared of all the streamers, noisemakers, and beads left behind by the thousands that gathered to watch the ball drop; residents and neighbors of Mt. Olive, North Carolina, celebrated the end to 2011 by dropping a large pickle at the stroke of midnight; and in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, revelers reined in the new year by dropping a giant carp. No matter what your local tradition is, the message is the same—it’s a new year.

Childhood obesity is a national epidemic. It’s one of the easiest diseases to detect, but one of the hardest to treat. There is no cure in a pill bottle, or magical outcome after a few days in the hospital. Childhood obesity is a whole-body illness affecting the mind, body, and spirit of the child.

Justin Tarte is a blogger. He’s also an educator living in Arnold, Missouri, who has recently taken on the role of Assistant Principal at Popular Bluff Junior High School. Technology in education excites him, his yellow lab Maddy loves to give kisses, and he’s been to Germany five times. No, we’re not stalking him. We do however follow his tweets and his blog postings.

Graduating seniors and motivated juniors are going to come back from winter break eager to finish out the year. There are portfolios to build, college applications to send, essays to complete, and campus tours to take. And, of course there are also scholarships to research and apply for.

The explosion of Twitter has taught the world to microblog. It is the spot for instantaneous news reports. Revolutions have been reported on Twitter freely. When the ground shook here at ISM, we immediately checked on Twitter to find reports of the east coast earthquake being felt from North Carolina to Toronto seconds after it happened.

Lower, middle, and upper divisions often have their own approaches for delivering instruction, relating to students, offering extracurricular experiences, and structuring the time between the start and end of the school day. In each division we have to think about students, teachers, and curriculum. What practices and beliefs should span all three divisions, and which should be modified to best suit the needs and mission of each division?

Q: We’ve contracted with a vendor to provide our criminal background screening reports during this year’s faculty hiring season. Our question now, is who should view the results—and how do we decide who “passes” or “fails”?

Blogs, forums, chat rooms, listservs—the list goes on and on. These are valuable resources to find alternative opinions and information about almost anything. From HR concerns to just needing a quick laugh to fuel the rest of your day, blogs can help remind you that you're not alone in the all-too often chaotic world of private-independent education.

During the past few months, we’ve been examining different aspects of performance evaluation and growth programs, in advance of the release of a new performance and evaluation model from ISM early in 2012. To continue that theme, this month we would like to consider the impact of this model on Division Directors (also known as Division Heads, Principals, and the like).