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Welcome to the Walter T. Bergen website. At
Walter T. Bergen, students come first. The administration,
faculty, and staff will always place the best interests of the
students of the middle school first in every decision we make as
they are the reason for being educators. At Walter T. Bergen,
there is a concerted effort to encourage all students to achieve
and to provide them with the tools needed to be successful as they
move forward in their academic endeavors.
Some of the material that follows has been borrowed from a You
Tube piece entitled
212—The Extra Degree.
212 --
The Extra Degree
(Created by S. L. Parker)
At 211
degrees, water is hot
At 212 degrees, it boils
An with boiling water, comes steam.
And with steam, you can power a train.
JUST ONE EXTRA DEGREE MAKES A DIFFERENCE.
There is no real secrets to success.
Success
in anything, including teaching, requires effort and extra effort.
THERE ARE
NO QUICK FIXES.
Vince
Lombardi, Hall of Fame football coach said "Inches make the
difference."
We've
heard the expression (and even the title of a self-help book) not
to sweat the small stuff.
I say to you, sometimes we need to sweat the small stuff.
All too
often in society today, we hear "It's not my fault." Not to
wade too deeply into political waters, very recently, New Jersey's
Governor blamed the Federal Department of Education for not
allowing New Jersey to rectify an error in its Race to the Top
submission. It was not the Federal government's
responsibility to ensure the accuracy of a grant submission.
Video tape shows that the statement was not accurate and that New
Jersey was given the opportunity to provide accurate data.
New Jersey schools would have been the beneficiaries of up to
$400,000,000.
YOU ARE
RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR RESULTS.
Here's an
example of the value of an extra degree.
Between
2000 and 2006, the PGA champion took home an average of
$1,060,714. The second place winners earned $460,657 less.
The second place winners lost by 1.71 strokes which equates to
less than half a stroke each day.
In
Nascar's Daytona 500, between 1997 and 2006, the winner of the
races earned $509,000 more than the drivers who finish second.
The average margin of difference in times was 0.175 seconds - Less
than two-tenths of a second!!
Olympic
gold and nothing is often separated by split seconds. In the
women's 200 meter freestyle event, the difference between gold and
nothing was 0.43 seconds.
YOU ARE
RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR RESULTS; IT'S TIME TO TURN UP THE HEAT.
Success
in anything has one fundamental aspect - EFFORT!
Margaret
Mead said, "Never doubt that a group of thoughtful, committed
citizens can change the world. It's the only thing that
has."
I end
with these words of encouragement: Be 212... Just one degree
makes all the difference.
Let's go to work!!
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