WOLF PACK UPDATES
Scholar and Staff Highlights Edition
TAF@Saghalie Student Spotlights
12th Grade Student - Daniel Chung
Daniel Chung is a senior at TAF @ Saghalie. He is a positive influencer amongst his peers and the Federal Way community. This month he was featured in the Federal Way Mirror for his article title, “Who’s Going to Change the World”. This article is about inspiring our youth to use their voice to make a positive change in the world. TAF @ Saghalie is so proud to have Daniel be an advocate and voice in our community!
Click on the link below to see his article!
https://www.federalwaymirror.com/letters/whos-going-to-change-the-world-letters/
6th Grade Student - Marcus Swanson
The Mid-Autumn Festival is also called the Moon Festival. In Chinese culture, the full moon symbolizes reunion so people will reunite with their families for celebrations. They worship and appreciate the moon together, enjoy reunion dinner or BBQ, and make and eat mooncakes to celebrate the reunion.
Great job Marcus!
7th Grade Student - An Nguyen
Many interesting stories and legends are told, the most famous one is the "Chang E (Goddess) flying to the moon.
Students in Chinese learned how to celebrate the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival at the beginning of October. We had a drawing competition. These are a few of the winners!
Amazing work An!
7th Grade Student - Aubrey Phillips
Aubrey has shown some amazing perseverance in keeping up with her work, her positive attitude, and her support of her peers and her teachers.
11th Grade Student - Irene Leung
Irene is excelling in AP 2D Studio Art. Here is an example of her exceptional art skills. Her task was to create a sketchnote of an experience. She used elements and principles of art to create a work of art that tells us a story about her trip to Alaska and takes her audience on the journey with her.
7th Grade Student - Elijah Davis
TAF@Saghalie Staff Highlight
Mr. Bacon has demonstrated a masterful way of organizing his knowledge of students. He uses our IRLA and iReady data to leverage their strengths, to support his team as they plan connected projects and to advocate for his student’s best interests.
He is a strong advocate for supporting ALL students as they meet and exceed their reading growth goals. He knows that supporting them in their reading skills supports kids in how they perform in other classes! Mr. Bacon’s focus on data and reading growth supports these scholars in increasing their voice, their innovation, and their ability to be critical thinkers!
Here's a Pixton class photo from comics they made earlier in the year.
Technology Access Foundation Staff Spotlight
My name is Darrot Bun and I serve as the IT Support Manager for TAF. I provide direct support to teachers and students at TAF@SGH! My role within the school is to ensure the technology is properly running efficiently within classes, and to provide trainings to educators to enhance and further their technology use within the classrooms. Some of these trainings can involve things such as troubleshooting IT issues within their own classrooms, updating educators about the state of technology within education technology, sharing newly discovered software programs to be implemented within the classrooms, and much more!
One of the many benefits to having a co-managed school and being a partner with TAF is the opportunity to provide unique learning experiences for students. One example of this is a program I manage called the Tech Ambassador program. The Tech Ambassador program allows for students of all ages to be able to gather their interest and curiosity within the tech field while building a sense of community within an inclusive group of likeminded individuals. Within this group, students have the opportunity to learn advanced IT troubleshooting skills, gain exposure to help desk ticketing systems, and have the chance to interact with IT professionals from the many fields in IT including coding, networking, cyber security, system administration.
Any students who are interested in becoming a TA should email me at darrotb@techaccess.org. I will be hosting an Information Session via Zoom for those who have expressed an interest in being a Tech Ambassador in the coming weeks - more details to come soon! I look forward to working with returning and new students this year as we continue to develop 21st Century Tech skills to help our students be successful in school, college and the workplace!
Here's a picture of Mr. Darrot and his first group of TAF@Saghalie Tech Ambassadors!
Where To Find Grades and Assignments
ParentVue/StudentVue:
This is the location of where all your scholar’s grades will be located. Please click the button on the left side that says gradebook. In there you will see your child’s grades for each class.
Here's the link to Parent/StudentVue: https://grades.fwps.org
In ParentVue/StudnetVue= Assignments vs. Standards View
Individual assignments are listed under the assignment tab. The default setting is seeing the standards view. Please click the “Expand All” button to see all assignments in this default area.
Grading Scale and Insufficient Evidence (IE) - At the bottom of each gradebook, you will see a scale (gray box) that explains the scores that appear in the gradebook. A score of insufficient evidence (IE) may occur when a teacher doesn’t have enough evidence to report a grade for a student (ex: learning tasks or assessments are missing) if a student has 60% of (IEs) in the gradebook per reporting standard, they will have an IE as their reported grade.
Scholar Led Conferences Updates
Thursday, November 5, and Friday, November 6 will now be learning days. More information about these learning days and the rescheduled SLC dates to come very soon!
School To You Distribution Monday, November 2nd
School to You material and supply pickup for our school is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 2nd. We will notify you if your child has supplies being delivered for their class.
Remember to check ParentVUE to confirm your child’s assigned bus stop location and time. To locate this information in ParentVUE, please select “Student Information”, then look for the new section called “School to You”.
If your child is attending TAF@Saghalie through Choice Enrollment, you may pick up supplies at the school during our scheduled Wednesday pickup times.
To help keep everyone safe and healthy, wear a face covering when picking up supplies.
Parent Zoom Survey and Next Parent Zoom
https://forms.gle/nYpf6q1QrNsvPcw1A
Mark your calendar for the next Family Zoom November 4th.
Here's the link: https://fwps.zoom.us/j/95528336534
TAF@Saghalie's College and Career Fair Wrap Up
TAF's annual College & Career Fair was a little different this year. Normally an all-day fair in our school's gym, where students walk around and meet representatives of local and national colleges, businesses, non-profits, and career development programs, this year's virtual learning meant that the fair had to be online. On October 21 and 22, we made it work with Zoom! In the course of two hour and a half sessions (three for 8th grade and high school), TAF@Saghalie students were introduced to seven companies, including Amazon and construction firm WSP, and over 50 post-secondary institutions or programs. One upside of the virtual world is that we were able to connect easily with colleges from across the U.S. that usually can't make it in person to our annual fair: from as far away as the University of Hawaii or Bates College in Maine, to the Ivy League Princeton University in New Jersey, to the "West Coast Ivy" Stanford University, to the east coast and southern HBCUs Howard, Morgan State University, and Dillard University. We also learned about some more local options: Washington State University, University of Washington's Computer Science, Honors, and ROTC programs, Cascadia College, Pacific Lutheran University, and Bates Technical College all gave great presentations, too. Specialized schools and programs were represented, including DigiPen and AIE, two local college programs that train students to become video game coders and digital arts developers. We also heard from Year Up, a post-secondary training program that puts young people in high-paying IT jobs within one year of high school graduation. In the career readiness workshops, 6th and 7th graders got to participate in a hands-on engineering challenge led by college students from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, met local tech industry professionals from Comcast, Amazon, WSP, and Fresh Chalk (a Seattle-based tech company), and got virtual tours of the Museum of Flight and Green River College. They also got to talk with TAF alumni who are now in college, who shared their struggles and successes.
What did our students learn from this experience? Let's read it in their own words, from comments shared in the College & Career Fair Passport survey: A 7th grader says that one piece of advice they got at the fair was, "Manage your time and know what you need to do to get to where you want to be." A 10th grader learned that it's important to "reach out to people to get interviews, don't be shy." A 6th grader shared that the presentations helped them realize "that college isn't as hard as I thought, and is a lot more fun than I thought."
Finally, a piece of advice that made an impression on one of our 8th graders: "Push for my future no matter how hard or how many times I fail."
Students who completed the online College & Career Fair Passport were entered to win drawing prizes. The following students for were randomly selected--congratulations! And great job participating in the virtual fair!
Grand Prize (An Echo Dot)
- Jaden Greer, 9th
- Janessa Smith, 7th
- Raiyan Mussa, 6th
- Jonathen Kenworthy, 8th
Gift Cards to Beyond Barcodes Bookstore:
- Suzanna Williams, 8th
- Sebastien Cross, 8th
- Chase Roberts, 8th
- Riley Davis, 8th
- Delilah Flores, 7th
- Amanuel Endale, 7th
- Forsina Rabauliman, 7th
- Emily Nuila, 7th
- Katelynn Hong, 6th
- Aarav Kundra, 6th
- Naomi Morales Lozada, 6th
- Miles Wilson, 10th
- Aiden Blanco, 12th
Contact Information
Email: jciotta@fwps.org
Website: https://www.fwps.org/Domain/1360
Location: 33914 19th Ave SW, Federal Way, WA, USA
Phone: 253-945-5000
Facebook: facebook.com/TAFatSaghalie
Twitter: @TAFatSaghalie