Student voice is an essential component of high-quality middle grades instruction. As young adolescents develop their own opinions, coupled with their strong sense of fairness and equity, engaging our students requires providing them opportunities to include their own voice.

As a result of the horrible school shootings in Parkland, Florida, the power of student voice is becoming more and more evident. Regardless of your stance on the issues surrounding this tragedy, we can all agree that ensuring secure and safe schools should be a priority. Even someone with rudimentary knowledge of human needs should understand that we cannot expect high achievement if students don't feel safe in their classrooms. Unfortunately, some are quick to dismiss these Stoneman Douglas High School students. In my opinion, witnessing these adolescents' passion and engagement is inspiring - their courage and synergy is an example for the adults.

There are phenomenal practices, educators, students, support staff, and parents in our schools! I'm so proud that we've had our biggest response of awards nominations in recent years. Thank you to all of our members who took the time to recognize this.

Our board welcomed new associate representatives since the fall conference. We're thrilled to have so many passionate middle level advocates working on our members' behalf. Recently, some of these board members met with state senators to discuss the licensure component in Senate Bill 216. These conversations were very constructive and I'm thrilled that these lawmakers were able to offer an amendment that retains the middle level teaching license in Ohio and provides flexibility to district leaders to ease staffing concerns. It was specifically mentioned that the feedback from our members to the legislators guided this change to the original language of the bill, which eliminated the grades 4-9 license.

We cannot wait to gather for #OMLA2018 October 25-26 at Kalahari Conference Center in Sandusky! George Couros and Kim Campbell along with Jack Berckemeyer will inspire you and leave you laughing! Be sure to highlight your classroom practices and school programs during a breakout presentation. Those applications must be postmarked by June 1 and can be found at www.ohiomla.org.

Thank you for all you do to continually improve middle level education in Ohio. Finish the school year with strength!