PantherReport-October 1

Celebrating Success:

Woo hoo!!! Homecoming week is behind us and a great success at that. Thank you everybody for your support, patience and flexibility this week. A HUGE thank you to Gaby for all your work to bring it all together for our students. The high spirited energy in the gym during the pep assembly was telling of how much this school means to so many people.

Coconino Academic Booster Club held the first annual tailgate party before the football game on Friday. Close to $800.00 was raised to help support and recognize academic achievement at CHS.  Thank you to all of you who helped with this event and if you happen to run into our PTO President Lydia Hemphill-Smith, please thank her for all she does for our school.

Now back to business. AIMS is quickly approaching. This year we have testing tables, which means we will not need to disrupt the learning environment by moving desks out of classrooms. The big Bleaker Box in the North Parking lot will be used for storage of these tables. Letters to juniors and seniors who have not yet passed AIMS will go out this week.  Between Writing, Reading and Math, we have about 300 students who will be required to take the AIMS. Please let students know that we have free academic tutoring on Mondays and Thursdays after school in the counseling conference room.

October 23~Writing

October 24~Reading

October 25~Math

Sore Subject

Thursday Interventions/Panther Pathways. Argggg! Please know that I understand the burden this has placed on all of you and I am sorry.  We are looking carefully at ways we can improve what we’re doing with our students on Thursdays. The study halls seem to be working fairly well. Interventions, for those who show up, are valuable, but the trick is getting students who REALLY need interventions to get there. The system is flawed and honestly at this moment I am not sure the remedy.  We are exploring ways to improve all parts of the Thursday programs. Thanks to those of you who have offered possible solutions. Thank you to Dave Tessmer for your effort in creating comprehensive lists to help us all to know where our students are supposed to be during ASP and Pathways.

PLCs

Contrary to how I feel about Thursdays, I strongly believe that what we are doing with our collaboration time on Wednesdays is very worthwhile and look forward to continuing this work.  This Wednesday October 3, you will meet first in your subject area PLCs, then we will gather together in the mini-theater at 1:45PM. When in your PLCs please review your agreed upon essential outcomes and develop Content Objectives based on your essential learning outcomes. All the while keep in mind our school wide goal of increasing opportunities for students to write.

This week at CHS

• October 3 is College Visitation day at CHS.   Wednesday Morning from 8am-9:15am we will host 13 colleges. All seniors and their parents are invited to attend.  The event will be in the large gym and it is free to all CHS senior students.
• Wednesday following our PLCs we will have a faculty meeting beginning at 2:00 P.M. At 2:30 P.M. Ken Garland, FUSD Director of Finance will visit to give us an update on the upcoming Bond Election.
• The October Northern Arizona Food Bank Food Drive starts tomorrow.  If you are participating, please remind your 1^st hour students.

Observation/Evaluations

At the meeting on Wednesday there will be a sign up sheet for 15 minute pre-observation conferences.  Cris, Steve and I look forward to meeting with each of you to establish the components of your observation and evaluation. 

Need your good thoughts

Maggy Loritz,  CHS behavior Support Teacher had surgery last Friday to remove an intrusive tumor in her colon. She is recovering nicely and hoping to return to school in five to seven to weeks. Our best to Maggy for a speedy and full recovery!

Have a great week!

Celebrating Success
Yay! Thursday ASP and Pathways last week was the best yet. Thank you again for your perseverance, patience and flexibility.  Thank you also for your wisdom and enthusiasm in sharing ideas about how to increase opportunities for students to write at CHS. While we talked about the need to focus on writing  to increase student achievement as measured by the AIMS, the truth is, ultimately our goal is in line with many educational scholars such as Wineberg and Martin 2004, who state that the job of educators is to "To cultivate students abilities to participate in the literate activities that our society demands. This means teaching students to be informed readers, writers and thinkers."


Freshmen Pathways
A special thank you to Karen Hughes and Steve Craig and counselors for putting in motion the theme "Commit to Graduate".   Last week during Panther Pathways each of our Freshman students signed a giant diploma and made a pledge to graduate in 2016. This was a cool event.  Thank you to all the teachers who helped by hosting a group of freshmen and to all the support staff who organized and served over 400 root beer floats.
We will need teachers this week again to help with this Thursday's Freshmen Pathway event. We have 26 guest professionals from our community who will be visiting our freshmen and sharing their stories.  If you do not have an assigned Pathway, intervention or study hall please let me know. 

Whoop whoop again!!! Congrats to Frosh, JV and Varsity Football teams for another big "W".  Congrats also to Varsity Volleyball for their win this week as well.

Homecoming
This is CHS Homecoming week.  Remember we have combined lunch each day and the week concludes with the CHS Homecoming parade first pep assembly on Friday. For the pep assembly please accompany your students to the gym and sit, or stand, if you prefer, with your class. Click here for this week's bell schedule.

IEPs
I realize there are MANY meetings happening throughout the building and we are busier than ever, but I want to remind you what an important role you play in the IEP Process. Your input is very valuable and provides critical information for the success of our students. By law there needs to be a general education teacher at each of these meetings.  If you know in advance that you are unable to make an IEP meeting, please make contact with the case manager (either through email or in person) as far in advance as possible and give a report on the student's strengths and weaknesses. Your presence is preferred, but in your absence a written report will help the IEP team make appropriate decisions about each student's individual education plan.   Please know that when you are paged to attend a meeting, this is just a friendly reminder.

Thanks for your support of our special education students here at CHS!

This week at CHS
9/25 Volleyball @ FHS 
9/26 PLCs (Collaboration with colleagues in other schools or in regular CTs)
9/26 PBIS Mtg 3:00 PM
9/26 Frosh FB@ home
9/28 Homecoming Parade 1:00PM followed by Pep Assembly 1:20PM
9/28 Homecoming V Football game @ home v. Mingus

Trivia question continued...
Last week the question was what does the number 37 represent? The same question again but the number has changed. What does the number 30 represent? 

PantherReport

Celebrating Success
I had a chance to visit with some of you about your ASPs. The feedback is important, the good, the bad and the ugly.  Kelley Smith has it going on in his room.  Last week he conferenced with each student; checking grades, attendance and discussing what's going right while identifying areas that need a little more effort.  Kelley said his students were very receptive and appreciative of the attention. This is what it's all about.  Thanks Kelley and all, for helping our students become more successful.

Go Panthers! Another whoop whoop for our Panther Football Team. Friday night win against Lake Havasu, Congratulations!

TPEC
For those of you who were unable to attend Dietrich Sauer's Teacher Performance Evaluation presentation on Friday, there will be a make up presentation after school in the near future. I will let you know as soon as I hear from Dietrich about the time and place.

PLC Update
This Wednesday we will meet in the mini-theater at 1:30 right after the BBQ. We will continue our work examining AIMS data and how this data fits into our day to day instruction.
Also, just a reminder that the last Wednesday of each month will be set aside for teachers to work with colleagues in other buildings or within our building who are not necessarily on your subject area Collaborative Team. This will not be formally organized by administrators.  It is an option for you all if it fits into your plans for the year, but not a requirement. If you wish to meet with colleagues in the middle schools or at FHS, you will need to make those arrangements. Wednesday 9/26 is the last Wednesday of September.

Thursday Intervention and Panther Pathways
Yes, still in the monitor and adjust stage. As Cris mentioned each week gets a little smoother. This week is the last cycle of the three week intervention cycle. This means that next week 9/27 students might be leaving intervention and entering Pathways. If you assigned students to intervention and they have since improved their grades, they will be eligible for Panther Pathways. Cris will let you know how to notify the ASP Teachers if students will be moving out of interventions after next week.

Academic Tutoring
Please encourage your students who might need additional academic help to attend our after school tutoring on Mondays and Thursdays.  Currently the tutoring takes place in the small conference room in the counseling office, as we get more students we will expand to other locations. Also, beginning next Thursday, September 27 Ann Hurst and Lorena Vera-Trejo will work with small groups of 11th and 12th grade students who still need to pass the AIMS. These sessions will take place during Intervention time on Thursdays.

Flashmob
Could be fun. I have a crazy idea for the pep assembly before the CHSv. FHS Football game on October 19. If you are curious and want to know a little more, please stay in the mini right after PLCs on Wednesday and I'll explain.

Content Objectives
As you know C.O.s, Learning Targets and Essential Outcomes have been the topic of many conversations this year at CHS. Interestingly Dr. Schmoker has spent a great deal of time researching and writing about Content Objectives and their relationships to highly effective instruction. He says
 "Clear Learning Objectives should be built around a topic, skill or concept selected from our agreed upon curriculum; the assessment or demonstration of what will be learned during the lesson should be clear, or at least implicit. " I would venture to guess we would all believe this to be true. Our work with Dr. Schmoker will be fun and reassuring that we are on the right track. Our first meeting with him will be Wednesday, October 10, at 1:00PM. Please mark your calendar.

Looking ahead
Next week 9/24-9/28 is CHS Homecoming week. Gaby will be sending out a schedule of events, times and places soon.

This week...
9/17 Eng Dept mtg 2:30 Tim Aydelott's room
9/19 Faculty BBQ in the cafeteria 1:00PM
9/19 PLCs 1:30PM in the mini-theater
9/19 Frosh FB @ home 3:30
9/20 JV FB @ home 3:30 

Trivia Question What does the number 37 represent for CHS?
The first person to email the correct answer gets a special prize.

Vibrant CHS

Celebrating Success
I think there is at least one part of our vision that is quickly coming to fruition.  That would be the "vibrant" part. It has certainly not been a dull start to the school year. A big huge thank you to everyone for your patience and support as we work through our new Thursday school day plan. While the first iteration of Intervention and Pathways was good for our students it took it's toll on us. A special thank you to Kerry Kriesel, Tim Fox, Daniel Vandervalk and Eric Ashcroft who gladly welcomed over 300 students between the four of them and then quickly came to talk with us to come up with some solutions to the over population problem. And thanks to all of you who pitched in to help out. In order to help ensure students made it to the proper destination on Thursday we assigned some teachers to monitor the hallways and exits. A few of these teachers will be reassigned to help with the larger Pathways, and some will stay on duty for a while. We are also going to add a new pathway or two to help. Other than the overcrowding issue, Thursday was pretty cool!
 
Positive comment
I thought this worthy of mention; Nick Bowling, Student Teacher for Abel and Assistant Volleyball Coach was excited to tell me last week that for the first time in the eight years that he has been coaching EVERY SINGLE PlAYER was eligible to play after the first round of eligibility checks. Gotta love that!

PLCs 
I know you all need some time to come up for air.  How about we take "five" this week? We will not meet together as a faculty and you can you use your Wednesday afternoon however you see fit.  No notes necessary. We will reconvene next Wednesday and we'll sart with a faculty BBQ provided by Paul Pavlich and James Ingram. Not this week, but next 9/19/2012.

TPEC (Teacher Performance Evaluation Committee)
Just a reminder that Dietrich Saouer will be here on Friday 9/14 during prep hours.  Please plan to be in the mini-theater during your prep for Dietrich's presentation about the new teacher Observation/Evaluation tool and process.

Walkthroughs
It has been great to be able to observe many of you teaching. Last week we traveled around in a large group that included Dr. Schmoker, visiting classrooms. He was very complimentary about the teaching and learning we saw during these brief walkthroughs.  As Derek Born shared with you all, these informal walkthroughs are NOT part of your formal observations. They are merely for us to see what 's happening in the classroom on a regular basis.  One of my goals this year is to be in your classrooms as often as possible. Cris, Steve and I will continue to make every effort to be in your rooms for brief observations. And just so you know,  throughout the month of September in our walkthroughs we are checking out your content objectives and the learning focus of the learning of the lessons we observe. Keep up the good work!

Tutors
Beginning this Monday and every Monday from here on out we have tutors available for our CHS students. The tutors are from the Northern Arizona College Resource Center (NACRC) and they are volunteering their time to tutor our students. Tutors will be in the small counseling office from 2:20-5:00 P.M. every Monday. Please refer any student you feel would benefit from this service.

Finally I want to share a quote I came across this weekend...

"The real path to greatness, it turns out, requires simplicity and diligence.  It requires clarity, not instant illumination.  It demands each of us to focus on what is vital-and to eliminate all of the extraneous distractions." 

Hang in there everyone, its going to get better. Have a great week!




 

Updates September 4-7

Celebrating Success
Congratulations! Our Back-to-School Fall Open House was successful and well received. The atmosphere of the evening was noticeably professional and academic. The parents who were there were happy and several people went out of their way to pay compliments to our CHS teachers and to tell me how much they appreciated all of you. Thank you for being there and showing our CHS families what an excellent school we are.

CHS at the County Fair
Thank you Vicki for setting up the beautiful CHS art exhibit. Another shining star for CHS.

Master Board/ Class Sizes
Thank you for your patience as our counselors continue to work hard to balance class loads. This is a complex process and takes some time. Also we are aware that some of the ASPs are quite large. We will do our best to make some adjustments so that students are more evenly distributed.

ASP/Panther Pathways
This week our regular  ASP schedule will begin and the period will last twenty minutes. Panther Pathways, Structured Study Hall and Interventions will begin this week as well. You will receive a list of where each of your ASP students will go for Enrichment or Interventions this week.

New CHS Faculty
Please join me in a warm welcome to Steve Craig, CAVIAT Counselor and Barrett Tritle, S3 Positive Response Team Leader.  Welcome, we are glad you are here.

Staff Web Pages
Jen Parker will be hosting an after school Web Page refresher workshop for teachers. Date and time TBA soon. Everyone is welcome to attend and if you sponsor a school club or activity please plan to attend so Jen can help update information on our school site.

Teacher Observations/Evaluations
Formal observations will not begin until after our TPEC Training during prep hours on Friday, September 14. In the meantime CHS admin will be popping in for informal observations. Thanks in advance for sharing your classroom with us.

Duty
Morning and afternoon duty should last around twenty minutes. Even though our after school buses are arriving later this year, you do not have to wait for the last bus to leave for your duty to end. Of course, you are welcome to stay as long as you wish, but, please know, you may leave your duty post by 2:45PM.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work through some of the beginning of the  school year speed bumps. 

Dates to Remember
9/3  Safety Committee Mtg 3:00 PM Room 309
9/5 PLCs in the afternoon.  Meet briefly in the mini-theater 1:10-1:25 PM
9/5  Frosh VB @ Home 4:00 PM
       JV VB @ Home 5:00 PM
9/6  V VB @ Home 6:00 PM
9/7  V FB @ Home 7:00 PM

Go Panthers!!!