Great Things Going On
The whole Center school system is excited that the Viking Café is back up and running for the 2013-14 school year! Viking Café is operated by Brandon Selby’s Center High School Culinary Arts class and offers gourmet food to staff and community members on a weekly basis for a reasonable price. The food is great and the experience our students gain planning for and producing meals on such a scale is truly valuable to them.
Haskin Elementary School music teacher Gabe Swanson discovered a beautiful, yet unique painting in his storage area two years ago before we moved out of our old building. When he found it he had a hunch it was a pretty special piece and so set upon a quest to learn more about it. Just last week he made contact with the artist, the renowned Charles Ewing, and the description he got of the picture from him is as follows:
“I did this painting from a photo I took in Macchu Picchu, Peru back in the seventies. This fellow, probably only in his forties, was sitting in a window of the ruins playing a Churrango, a home made twelve string instrument endemic to Peru made from the shell-like back of the Peruvian armadillo. We had been hiking the seventy mile Incan road of paved stones from Cuzco, the old Incan capital, to Macchu Picchu, the last few miles dropping down from a 17,000 foot pass through a granite gate to the main ruins where this fellow was cranking out a tune and singing through a mouth full of coca leaves as a fog drifted like ghosts through the hand carved granite blocks of stone! Quite a sight! Thanks for sending the picture. It brought back many memories.”
Thanks Gabe, for bringing this painting to our attention and for working so hard to identify its origin. As it portrays such a unique instrument I can think of no better place for it to hang than in the elementary music room. Perhaps some day we’ll find a way to invest in our very own Churrango.
Haskin Elementary School music teacher Gabe Swanson discovered a beautiful, yet unique painting in his storage area two years ago before we moved out of our old building. When he found it he had a hunch it was a pretty special piece and so set upon a quest to learn more about it. Just last week he made contact with the artist, the renowned Charles Ewing, and the description he got of the picture from him is as follows:
“I did this painting from a photo I took in Macchu Picchu, Peru back in the seventies. This fellow, probably only in his forties, was sitting in a window of the ruins playing a Churrango, a home made twelve string instrument endemic to Peru made from the shell-like back of the Peruvian armadillo. We had been hiking the seventy mile Incan road of paved stones from Cuzco, the old Incan capital, to Macchu Picchu, the last few miles dropping down from a 17,000 foot pass through a granite gate to the main ruins where this fellow was cranking out a tune and singing through a mouth full of coca leaves as a fog drifted like ghosts through the hand carved granite blocks of stone! Quite a sight! Thanks for sending the picture. It brought back many memories.”
Thanks Gabe, for bringing this painting to our attention and for working so hard to identify its origin. As it portrays such a unique instrument I can think of no better place for it to hang than in the elementary music room. Perhaps some day we’ll find a way to invest in our very own Churrango.
Finally, last week our turnaround partners at Lindamood-Bell utilized Center Schools facilities to train a number of San Luis Valley teachers in the Visualizing and Verbalizing reading intervention. It was truly great to see the good work we have begun in Center being shared throughout the region for the benefit of students. This work is being done through a 1.5 million dollar grant the San Luis Valley BOCES received from CDE to focus on supporting special education students who struggle with reading disabilities. The grant benefits Center students by providing training for our new teachers who have not yet been taught the Lindamood-Bell instructional strategies and by paying for after school and summer reading academy slots for our most needy readers.
Big Things We Are Working On
At Center Schools we have been working for many years to increase student responsibility and improve behavior on campus. We do this by implementing a series of logical consequences for inappropriate behavior while also offering incentives to students who display great work and excellent behavior.
The consequences part of this plan include issuing orange tickets to elementary students as gentle reminders to behave in the hallways, in the cafeteria, and on the playground. Accumulating three orange tickets results in a student being issued a logical consequence such as lunch or after school detention, or in school suspension. Additionally, we have a clear discipline matrix that prescribes action to be taken with any student who violates our code of conduct. These actions range from lunch detention to single period, all day or multiple-day in school suspension, all the way to expulsion. Center Schools never suspends a kid out of school. Even our expulsion program simply isolates students from the rest of the campus while requiring them to keep up with their classwork on a daily basis. No matter what mistake a kid makes, our philosophy is that it is ultimately our responsibility, and a good thing for the community as a whole, to continue working with our kids so they can progress toward graduation. We believe the extra effort this takes, and the extra cost we may incur, is ultimately a great investment for Center as it results in students staying on course to complete their education and become contributing members of society.
When it comes to academic responsibility, Center Schools prides itself on always holding students accountable for doing their classwork and homework. In years past it was our policy to simply enter zeroes into grade books when students didn’t complete their work. This only resulted in them failing classes, becoming ineligible for activities, and worst of all, never actually learning the concepts we were trying to teach them. Then six years ago we instituted our ZAP (Zeroes Aren’t Permitted) program. The ZAP program guarantees that students always complete their assignments, no matter how long they attempt to put it off. When a teacher realizes a student has not completed assigned work, he or she writes a ZAP referral. Upon being issued a ZAP referral, students are given a set amount of time to complete the assignment they missed. If they do not turn it in before the deadline they must then attend a ZAP lunch session where they are required to complete the assignment. If at the end of ZAP lunch the student still has not completed the work, he or she must then report to the In School Suspension room after school and stay there until the assignment is finally done. In the end the student does not get full credit in the grade book for the work they completed late. However, the student is held accountable for completing the work and the teacher is able to gauge whether he or she successfully learned the concept or skill being taught.
The consequences part of this plan include issuing orange tickets to elementary students as gentle reminders to behave in the hallways, in the cafeteria, and on the playground. Accumulating three orange tickets results in a student being issued a logical consequence such as lunch or after school detention, or in school suspension. Additionally, we have a clear discipline matrix that prescribes action to be taken with any student who violates our code of conduct. These actions range from lunch detention to single period, all day or multiple-day in school suspension, all the way to expulsion. Center Schools never suspends a kid out of school. Even our expulsion program simply isolates students from the rest of the campus while requiring them to keep up with their classwork on a daily basis. No matter what mistake a kid makes, our philosophy is that it is ultimately our responsibility, and a good thing for the community as a whole, to continue working with our kids so they can progress toward graduation. We believe the extra effort this takes, and the extra cost we may incur, is ultimately a great investment for Center as it results in students staying on course to complete their education and become contributing members of society.
When it comes to academic responsibility, Center Schools prides itself on always holding students accountable for doing their classwork and homework. In years past it was our policy to simply enter zeroes into grade books when students didn’t complete their work. This only resulted in them failing classes, becoming ineligible for activities, and worst of all, never actually learning the concepts we were trying to teach them. Then six years ago we instituted our ZAP (Zeroes Aren’t Permitted) program. The ZAP program guarantees that students always complete their assignments, no matter how long they attempt to put it off. When a teacher realizes a student has not completed assigned work, he or she writes a ZAP referral. Upon being issued a ZAP referral, students are given a set amount of time to complete the assignment they missed. If they do not turn it in before the deadline they must then attend a ZAP lunch session where they are required to complete the assignment. If at the end of ZAP lunch the student still has not completed the work, he or she must then report to the In School Suspension room after school and stay there until the assignment is finally done. In the end the student does not get full credit in the grade book for the work they completed late. However, the student is held accountable for completing the work and the teacher is able to gauge whether he or she successfully learned the concept or skill being taught.
As I stated above, our expectations for student behavior and academic effort are not only predicated on punishment for not doing things as expected. To counter balance the logical consequences we try to employ for poor effort and misbehavior we have also have designed ways to reward students for great work, effort, and citizenship. The main ways we do this are through our class merit races in the middle and high schools, through the issuance of good conduct awards in grades 6-12, and through our PBIS (Positive Behavior Instructional Support) system in grades K-5.
At Skoglund Middle School and Center High School entire grade levels compete against each other in quarterly merit races by earning points for having the fewest behavior referrals, fewest tardies, fewest ZAP referrals, and best average scores on weekly academic vocabulary tests. When a class has earned a designated number of points it is declared the merit race winner and all students in the class get to choose a reward activity such as a swimming trip, a trek to the movies, a bowling activity, or some other reasonable option the children may request. Meanwhile, at the individual level grade 6-12 students can also be issued good conduct referrals that single them out for great work, exceptional effort, or outstanding behavior.
At Haskin Elementary School these good conduct awards come in the form of white tickets. When elementary students display exceptional behavior their teacher will issue them a white ticket allowing them to be eligible for a monthly prize drawing. Additionally, each month every student who was not issued a single orange ticket becomes eligible to participate in the monthly PBIS incentive activity. This month these Haskin students were able to go to the school auditorium to watch a the movie Despicable Me.
At Skoglund Middle School and Center High School entire grade levels compete against each other in quarterly merit races by earning points for having the fewest behavior referrals, fewest tardies, fewest ZAP referrals, and best average scores on weekly academic vocabulary tests. When a class has earned a designated number of points it is declared the merit race winner and all students in the class get to choose a reward activity such as a swimming trip, a trek to the movies, a bowling activity, or some other reasonable option the children may request. Meanwhile, at the individual level grade 6-12 students can also be issued good conduct referrals that single them out for great work, exceptional effort, or outstanding behavior.
At Haskin Elementary School these good conduct awards come in the form of white tickets. When elementary students display exceptional behavior their teacher will issue them a white ticket allowing them to be eligible for a monthly prize drawing. Additionally, each month every student who was not issued a single orange ticket becomes eligible to participate in the monthly PBIS incentive activity. This month these Haskin students were able to go to the school auditorium to watch a the movie Despicable Me.
The Past Week
This past week I worked on payroll duties on Sunday. On Tuesday I spent part of the day in Alamosa, along with Skoglund Middle School principal Carrie Zimmerman and Haskin Elementary teacher Jessica Stevens, at a US Department of Education visit related to our Race to the top of the Valley work. When I returned to Center director of finance Betty Casanova and I visited with Kristin Edgar, one of our school district lawyers from the firm Kaplan and Ernest. On Wednesday I was back in Alamosa for an Even Start board meeting, and again on Thursday along with Carrie Zimmerman and Haskin Elementary grade 3-5 principal Sarah Vance for a Colorado Legacy Foundation visiting the San Luis Valley regarding a SB 191 administrator and teacher evaluation grant BOCES is administering. On Friday I spent a good portion of the day preparing for administrator PLC work and teacher instructional walks.
The Week Ahead
This will be quite the busy week as on Monday we will be offering more Lindamood-Bell training to Valley teachers. In the evening I’ll be attending the Center Kiwanis meeting to present information on Amendment 66. On Tuesday we’ll have state health inspectors on campus. However, I’ll be driving to Denver to chair the Colorado Safe Schools Resource Center board meeting that takes place in the afternoon. On Wednesday I will remain in Denver to attend the annual Great Education Colorado luncheon in Denver where I’ll also be a luncheon speaker, while I will also be attending a BEST facilities work group meeting, and a CDE informational meeting about the Global Education Leadership Partnership project I will soon be participating in. Meanwhile in Center, Colorado State Board of Education member Angelika Shroeder will be conducting a short campus visit. On Thursday I will proceed to Colorado Springs where the San Luis Valley Superintendent Advisory Council will be conducting PLC work just ahead of the annual CASE Superintendent Conference that takes place on Thursday and Friday.
Thanks for listening once again.
George
Thanks for listening once again.
George