The Fort Mill School District is helping all schools to develop World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by putting “Children First…Everyday.” This purpose statement is embedded in all of the decision-making processes of the FMSD, and is woven throughout the district culture. As we put “Children First,” we address the needs of the whole child ensuring that students have the World Class Knowledge, the World Class Skills, and exhibit the Life and Career Characteristics of the SC Graduate to ensure their success as members of a global community.
At Doby’s Bridge Elementary School, we help students develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate by focusing on the four Cs – critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity. Our vision statement of Engagement, Enrichment, and Excellence motivates us to create learning experiences for students to challenge them to be critical thinkers, collaborators, creators, and strong communicators.
We believe that students have the ability to perform at high levels, and that student learning happens best when students are highly engaged, and have ownership of their learning. We embrace the Discovery Education STEAM model, and have identified STEAM Leaders in our school who are creating model classrooms to support their colleagues. Students are engaged in STEAM through interactive lessons, inquiry based instruction, Project Lead the Way, purposeful play, and a variety of classroom based activities.
Our school acknowledges collaboration between students, teachers, and parents. We have a highly engaged parent community that provides outstanding support for our instructional programs and for our students. Although visitors were limited this year, our parents were still able to participate virtually through Meet the Teacher, parent conferences, writing celebrations, and our Dragon of the Month ceremony. Our PTO supports school efforts through helping fund classroom libraries, instructional resources, and campus beautification. Our School Improvement Council embraces a continuous improvement model and this year created a "Welcome to the Bridge" process to help new families become acquainted with our school. The process involved a welcome packet to help families get to know our school staff, community resources, virtual school tour, and virtual coffee hour with administration and counselors.
As a learning community, our teachers collaborate on a weekly basis. Our teachers engage in Professional Learning Communities, where they focus their time and talents on answering one or more of the four focus questions of a PLC. The PLC culture provides teachers with the opportunity to work together to plan for instruction, engage in intervention/enrichment opportunities, and analyze data to help ensure student success. Our teachers also engage in collaboration through working together to accomplish our Read to Succeed school wide goal of literacy engagement. Teachers created tools to use to help their students become fully engaged during readers and writers workshop. Our staff also embraced utilizing learning management systems, such as SeeSaw, and Google Classroom to help with virtual learning.
Unfortunately due to Covid-19 protocols, we were unable to provide some of the engagement and enrichment opportunities as we have in the past. Some of the past opportunities included a variety of options for after school activities such as Girls on the Run, Let Me Run, Battle of the Books, Dragon Scales Chorus & Vex IQ robotics teams. We were able to continue opportunities for students to serve our school during the day though student ambassadors and our nutrition team.
We believe in creating a culture of respect and responsibility. As a school we help create this through using positive reinforcements with our students and staff This year we continued to use Braggin' Dragons, an incentive used by teachers, staff, and substitutes to promote positive behavior. Students are recognized by staff for displaying the characteristics of being Friendly, Including others, being Respectful, and Engaging minds. Students and teachers are also recognized through our Dragon Student of the Month and Dragon Teacher of the Month programs.
Our staff believes in utilizing social media to communicate our message "We are The Bridge". Teachers use Twitter to spread our story. The staff and families at Doby’s Bridge Elementary School are committed to Building the Bridge for our students as they develop the World Class Skills of the Profile of the South Carolina Graduate.
Amanda Kubbs- Principal
Rachael Obregon- SIC Chair
