Canon-McMillan Middle School Spreads Positivity with " Good News Calls " anon-Mac CANON-MAC SCHOOL DISTRICT NEWS
This year, parents of a student at Canon-McMillan Middle School may have received a positive phone call home, celebrating their child’ s success around school and in the classroom. This good news calls initiative was successful, as 100 % of the middle school students’ families received a call.
Vince Faith, assistant principal, initiated the goal of every student receiving a positive call home. While not explicitly requiring a quota of calls, Faith highly encouraged teachers to participate. He kicked off the good news calls initiative at the beginning of the year with a presentation about how building strong, trusting relationships between home and school through positive communication directly impacts student success.
“ We wanted to reach every kid, but my biggest goal was to change things for kids who only get negative phone calls or do not receive calls at all,” Faith said.
Faith emphasizes that positive calls can help establish and maintain trusting relationships between parents, teachers and the school. He maintained a form to track which teachers called and allowed them to provide any feedback. Most teachers wrote that parents were happy to hear good news from them.
“ We were surprised to receive a call from one of our child’ s teachers to tell us how great he was doing in class and how wonderful he did in art class,” one parent said.“ It was nice to hear and a positive message for him to hear as well. I think it ' s a favorable way to communicate good things that are happening with your child at school. It keeps parents informed and engaged and motivates students to keep doing well."
Faith also incentivized teachers to use their team planning time to make a quick phone call. He gifted Sarris pretzels to any teacher who made a positive phone call every week. The teacher who sent out the most phone calls got a“ duty slip” where Faith himself covered one of their duties, such as cafeteria, homeroom or hallway duty. He also bought coffee for teachers from the school’ s Kilted Kup student-run coffee shop. Some teachers made over 100 calls themselves.
The calls often focused on acts of kindness, citizenship, participation and effort in class. Faith said teacher feedback was largely positive, with many saying they would implement this practice permanently. The initiative’ s ultimate goals were to boost school morale and motivation, build on strong parent-teacher relationships and reinforce good classroom behaviors.
“ The positive calls break the negative news cycle and create a more inclusive culture,” he said.“ Any reason to give a positive call is always constructive.”
Faith builds on the positive culture at the middle school, which he credits to Superintendent Dr. Greg Taranto, a previous middle school principal, and the school’ s current principal, Ken Schrag. The positive calls initiative is not his only vehicle for spreading positivity around the school. He and Zachary Loutsion, an eighth-grade social studies teacher, host a Citizens of the Month breakfast, where a student from each academic team is selected for a special breakfast. Faith also likes to give shoutouts to students for acts of kindness with pencils, certificates and other acknowledgements. He hopes to continue building on the culture of positivity by implementing a new initiative for the coming school year.
“ Educating the whole child is important to us,” Faith said.“ We look at ways other than test scores and assessments to teach kids the right way to do things. Most of the positive phone calls are social-based, as they involve being kind, doing the right thing and trying hard in school, rather than focusing on grades. They’ re reinforcing the intangibles, which make people successful in life. Positivity usually gets more positivity.”
CANON-MAC ❘ SUMMER 2025 39