Bucket Fillers

Fill a Bucket

Our mission is to create a world of bucket fillers. A person can be a bucket filler or a bucket dipper. The way to fill a bucket is to be kind to someone.

For our Students...

Our students come to school each day with a variety of experiences - some bucket filling, some bucket dipping.  As an educator, our hope and dream is to be the bucket filler for all of our students.  There are days that it is difficult, when our patience is being tried, but try to remember that positive teacher-student relationships can enable students to feel safe and secure in their learning environments, and provide the scaffolding for important social and academic skills (Baker, et al, 2008).  In addition, teacher-student relationships can have a significant effect on the peer acceptance of students. Teachers' interactions with students can affect classmates' perceptions of individual students, in turn affecting which students classmates choose to interact with and accept (Hughes, et al, 1999). So the bucket filling you do will have a huge impact on the social and academic success of your students.

For each other...
The Houlton staff family knows each other so well that you all just seem to know what each other needs. The bucket filling to each other is endless. I have seen you do things such as adjusting a recess schedule to accommodate others, cleaning tables for a colleague, writing positive notes in the staff lounge, helping each other with challenging students and/or transitions, being flexible with intervention times - compromising to help meet the needs of a teacher or team, or to best meet the needs of the entire school.  These all showcase our way of doing something for others - filling a bucket by being kind to someone.  Your actions serve as an inspiration to adults, and build you as a role model to our children.

This bucket filling for each other not only contributes to our colleagues, but it has a positive impact on our students.  It is no surprise that students of high-ability teachers outperform those of low-ability teachers, but studies have also found that gains are highest among students whose teachers were both high-ability AND have stronger ties with their colleagues.  Research has found that even lower-ability teachers can perform as well as teachers of average ability if they have strong relationships with coworkers.  When teachers trust one another, they are more likely to reveal their weaknesses, and perhaps even address them, using the support and guidance of their peers (Washington Post, September 10, 2014). 

So continue your work as Bucket Fillers.  Collaborate, compromise, be playful, work hard, make student success a priority - and continue to support your students, and each other, in this exhausting yet invigorating journey called education.

Bucket Filling Song (if you want to introduce this concept to your students)