Pitts receives MMS Milk-Bone crown
Anthony Brown
Maryville Middle School Principal Kevin Pitts was crowned and congratulated by his students Friday upon winning the MMS Golden Milk-Bone Award for service and civic leadership. The honor was bestowed during a monthly recognition assembly following Pitts’ selection as Principal of the Year by the Northwest Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals.
Students at Maryville Middle School on Friday dedicated a large portion of their monthly recognition assembly to honoring one of their own — Principal Kevin Pitts.
Late last year, Pitts learned that he had been selected as Principal of the Year by the Northwest Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals, a professional organization representing administrators in about 60 school districts across the region.
In recognition of that honor, MMS students decided to present Pitts with their Golden Milk-Bone Award, which is traditionally given to a civic leader whose actions benefit not only local schools but the Maryville community as a whole.
Known for his ready humor and easygoing personality, Pitts was all smiles as a group of nine students, including his two daughters, eighth-grader Josie and Maryville High School sophomore Abby, presented him with a gilded paper crown, a balloon bouquet, and a spray-painted plaque bearing the bone-shaped dog treat for which the prize is named.
“I’m really honored,” Pitts told those attending the all-school assembly, a crowd that included his boss, R-II School District Superintendent Becky Albrecht, “But this is really not about me, it’s about all of you guys.”
Pitts, a native of Fontanelle, Iowa, holds three education degrees from Northwest Missouri State University and has worked as a professional educator for 20 years, the last dozen of them as MMS principal.
He started off teaching fifth grade, then spent two years as the elementary principal at South Harrison R-II in Bethany before coming back to Maryville as MMS assistant principal.
Since 2014, Pitts has earned recognition for helping the middle school staff implement “The Leader in Me,” a personal development curriculum aimed at preteens and teens developed FranklinCovey Education.
The program is based on the book “The Leader in Me – How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Child at a Time” by the late self-help author and speaker Stephen Covey.
Designed specifically for young people and those who seek to educate and mentor them, “The Leader in Me” uses material adapted from Covey’s earlier work for adults, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” which has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide since first appearing in 1989.
Both works promote what Covey called “The Character Ethic,” which he defined as aligning one’s personal values with “universal and timeless” principles.
At MMS, teachers were tasked with incorporating the “Seven Habits” into lessons and class projects covering virtually every academic subject. The habits, which amount to strategies for achieving both individual and team success, call on students to “be proactive; begin with the end in mind; put first things first; think win-win; seek first to understand, then to be understood; synergize; and ‘sharpen the saw,’” this last being Covey’s term for rest and recreation.
Pitts sharpened his own saw a couple of summers ago by attending the Missouri Auction School in St. Louis, where he learned the rhythmic, rapid-fire chant that auctioneers use to sell everything from prize bulls to roasting pans.
“It’s just a hobby,” said Pitts, who occasionally exercises his talent for fast talk at local livestock sales.
Now that he has been selected as a regional Principal of the Year — not to mention winning the Golden Milk-Bone — Pitts becomes one of about a dozen public school leaders eligible for the statewide award, which will be presented in March during the Missouri Association of Elementary School Principals’ annual meeting at the Lake of the Ozarks.
“It’s a great feeling,” he said of the accolades. “I just wish there was a better way to share it with everybody. … This is really a recognition of our school — all of our teachers, all of our kids, and our community. We all work together and good things happen.”
