The warmer weather always excites me after the cold winter and reminds me that spring is near! The flowers start to bloom, and green leaves appear, making me excited to get outside and enjoy the fresh air! It’s a great opportunity to use nature for science lessons and to get active! One of the many reasons I love Compass is our flexibility to take the laptop outside for some sunshine and a change of scenery!

I am thankful for our amazing team of dedicated teachers and support staff that always put our scholars first! Let’s all make a point to take our learning (and working) outside and soak up a little sunshine and enjoy the birds, bugs, and flowers emerging before us!

Forever loud and proud,

Karle

New Yolo Service Provider Available - Exciting news, Yolo families! Our Options scholars have a new Mathnasium service provider in Rohnert Park.

Gardening Club- Scholars have been growing their own produce! One scholar has quite the carrot crop! We learned how to use egg crates as compostable seed starters with a kit that everyone received, and last month we transplanted them to our garden beds.

National Honor Society (NHS) - We have been getting ready for NHS induction and encouraging scholars to volunteer. Ms. Dong, one of our Yolo Supervising Teachers, has two NHS scholars on her roster who will graduate in June and have worked really hard to graduate successfully.

This has been an exciting quarter for Mrs. Lehman's seventh-grade Social Studies class as scholars learn about some of the earliest explorers from Europe to reach the new world in search of new opportunities during the 1600s. Scholars have used various digital tools to organize their learning, including keeping Cornell notes and using an interactive digital notebook. During learning labs, they applied spatial thinking skills using PearDeck to identify key points on a map and draw different voyages' routes. In preparation for their unit exam, they reviewed core ideas using a Padlet to collaborate and create a study guide together.

My name is Kristen Winter, and this is my seventh school year teaching with Compass! I am a high school PE teacher with Compass online high school. I have been teaching in public or public charter schools since 1996. This is my fourteenth school year teaching online.

I have always had a calling to help and work with people. I started babysitting at 11-years-old and continued to care for children throughout high school and college. In college, I started tutoring my peers and found a lot of satisfaction in helping them achieve better grades and reaching their academic goals.

In addition to helping people in an academic capacity, I also enjoy helping others reach their fitness and health goals. I am a certified personal trainer and have run a small fitness business working with people of all ages.

At Compass, I enjoy working with families all over California and helping them be

successful in their academic pursuits. I appreciate that scholars have the opportunity to choose the academic path that fits their needs.

The advice I would share with scholars and learning coaches is always to keep communication lines open with each other, your teachers, and your counselor. We are all a team working towards each scholar’s success.

One thing about me that very few people know is that I am a huge animal lover, and I am

obsessed with dachshunds. I currently have two miniature dachshunds and have had four other dachshunds over the past twenty years, including two rescues. I love the breed and would have more dachshunds if I could.

My family and I can be found either at a pool or the ocean in our free time. My two teenage daughters are competitive swimmers, and my husband and I are both masters swimmers. We also love to surf and prone paddle throughout the year. My husband and I also love to work in our garden and complete home improvement projects.

My name is Sandra Valladares, and this is my second year as a Supervising Teacher at Compass Charter Schools. I have been teaching since the year 2000, but I knew I wanted to be a teacher at the age of 14. Here at Compass, I love assisting and guiding my families to succeed in their venture of learning at home.

At 14, I started teaching piano to my younger cousins for some extra money. Soon I was teaching piano to all of the neighborhood kids, including kids my own age. I continued throughout high school and loved how teaching made me feel. Being responsible for sparking understanding and knowledge in someone was incredible.

For the first 10 years of my professional teaching career, I taught everything from preschool to eight-grade. After having my children, I began the Spanish program at their elementary school. From there, I found virtual learning and began teaching Spanish virtually to students from Transitional Kinder to seniors in high school. Once again, I fell in love with how teaching made me feel, and teaching virtually made it so much bigger. Once I was lucky enough to join Compass, I saw an opportunity to help families find that feeling. I now get the chance to see learning coaches spark that understanding in their own children, and it makes me feel lucky that they let me be a part of it.

I don’t consider myself an expert on anything because I know that there is ALWAYS more to learn from anyone and everyone. For me, teaching, as in life, is all about perspective. How we handle any given situation is because of the perspective that we have. I would advise scholars and learning coaches always to keep these seven perspectives of life in mind:

• Always be present

• Avoid getting overwhelmed over what you should and shouldn’t do.

• See things as they are and avoid blowing them out of proportion.

• Be courageous and begin facing your fears.

• Don’t rush things.

• Things are not always about you, so stop assuming what others think.

• Be grateful in life.

Something many people do not know about me, and it is my go-to relaxation activity, is that I love to do puzzles. I can get puzzles done very quickly. I once did a 5000-piece puzzle in 3 days. Of course, I get so obsessed with finishing them that I can only work on them during vacations.

I love to spend time with my family! We love swimming, riding our bikes, and having movie nights. My ten-year-old and my seven-year-old are super energetic and so, so funny. We love to laugh with each other and make up silly lyrics to well-known tunes.

Working at Compass has been a dream come true, and I am so grateful for all of the opportunities I have had to grow.