O’Maley Innovation Middle School – New Pledge

O’Maley Innovative Middle School SAILS on with Pledge!

Oct. 1, the entire O’Maley community gathered in the auditorium for our first SAILS assembly of the school year. Rick Doucette, YMCA Executive Director and SAILS Community member volunteer, acted as Master of Ceremonies. Rick had the honor of revealing to all gathered the O’Maley pledge and led us all in the Pledges’ first public reading. Principal Deb Lucey was the first to sign and Rick followed as our first community member. After the assembly students returned to homerooms where each classroom has a poster of the pledge. Students were then asked to sign on!

The O’Maley community is now engaged with sharing the pledge with others and inviting them to sign on in support. On Oct. 9, while visiting our school Dr. Safier enthusiastically added his signature to our pledge while a group of 6^th graders looked on with pride.

Last Spring, as part of the O’Maley School’s SAILS initiative, the whole school participated in an all school writing prompt. The prompt asked students to take a look at examples of pledges and then discuss what it means to make a pledge and commit yourself to it. Next the students were asked to make a list of what they think should be included in an O’Maley pledge.

The responses from the writing prompt were then given to a group of student editors, made up from volunteers from each grade, who then took on the task of narrowing down the broad categories and reworking these down to a manageable number reflecting values expressed by students that they would like to see in a pledge.

The final Pledge draft was presented and accepted. The beauty of the Pledge as written by the student editors needed no further work. The pledge speaks to all and ask of each what is theirs to give.