Clif Notes 10/21/19
Preparing Students To Be Career & Post Secondary Ready
DATES TO REMEMBER
This Week
Monday - 8am Start for Extra Help
Tuesday - CTE PLCs
Wednesday - Academic PLCs; After-School Snow Hours Session;
Principal for a Day: Stewart Wiggins
Thursday - Academic PLCs
Friday - Steering Committee Meeting; Staff Wear Green; 1st Marking Period Ends
Upcoming:
10/28 - 2nd Marking Period Begins
10/28-11/1 - College & Career Application Readiness Week
11/3 - Open House, 12-3pm
11/5 - Faculty Meeting
11/6 - Report Cards Delivered Avail in HAC
Birthdays This Week
October 26: Chris Bree; Lisa Sherman
October 27: Tim Dorsey; Michael Kittel
2019 Delaware Governor's 5K
On October 17th, 450 students, faculty and staff participated in the Governors Cup offsite option. Participation in this event demonstrated the importance of physical fitness. Special thanks to Ms. Anderson, who mapped out the route and the entire Health and PE Department, who participated with their classes. Each PE Instructor walked at least 3 of the 4 miles. Great job to all who participated. Kudos to Mr. Howell for presenting the Governor's 5k to Delcastle.
Principal for the Day
On Thursday, October 24th, Delcastle's Principal for the day will be Stewart Wiggins. He will spend the entire day in classrooms and meeting with students. Please give him a Delcastle welcome when you see him. Please take a moment to review his biography below.
Stewart Wiggins is one of those leaders in the business world who knows how to build relationships, trust, and support with almost anyone. Throughout his career either as a military officer living in Germany leading military and civilians alike, as a civilian leader navigating both union and non-union workplaces, or as an independent consultant helping a small business stabilize its best practices and grow its sales, he has demonstrated the ability to engender trust, and build relationships with the most diverse populations.
His grounding is in supply chain and logistics, but more specifically in leadership and general management. Whether in transportation, retail distribution, medical device and pharmaceutical distribution, or even wholesale grocery and consumer packaged goods sales and distribution; building teams, developing leaders and growing the business with a scrupulous eye on the bottom-line have been at the centerpiece.
Stewart likes to win; he is a state wrestling champion and bronze medalist. This afforded him the opportunity to attend Delaware State University as a student athlete on a wrestling scholarship. During his matriculation he was one of the first two students to cross enroll at the University of Delaware and successfully complete Army ROTC, graduating as a Distinguished Military Graduate. During his service to his country, he completed tours both outside the United States and within the U.S.
After completing his service obligation, he has held a number of leadership roles of increased responsibility in operations and human resources. In recent years he was President of McLane Eastern, Inc., responsible for $100 million dollar budget, and over $3 billion in sales; owned his own medically certified weight-loss business and most recently Stewart is the Director of Membership Sales and Engagement at the Western Family YMCA.
Stewart looks forward to leading in the most diverse and challenging situations. He likes to say “The Greatest Opportunities Come From The Greatest Challenges."
Stewart is an active member of several boards, including the Board of Directors for the Upstate Hospital in Syracuse and the religion centered Think Tank Cross Talks. He has certifications as a Six Sigma Green Belt, Project Management, and Lean Logistics.
Stewart enjoys life, gourmet cooking, wine, working out, international travel, and sports.
Twin Poets Pay Delcastle a Visit
Homecoming
Thank you to all the Delcastle staff members who worked tirelessly to make this year’s homecoming memorable. From the new pep rally additions such as the career area gym parade and drumline to the chaperons and chefs. So many of our staff members made contributions in order to allow our students to enjoy an amazing pep rally, football game, and dance. A special thanks are extended to our SAC, Discipline Team, School Spirit Committee, Class and Club advisors for collaborating to make our homecoming special.
Delcastle Technical High School Alumni in Action Award
During the homecoming football game, Delcastle and the Mill Creek Fire Company Honored Wayne Steen by presenting his family with various awards. Wayne was in Delcastle’s first graduating class and continued his education to become a plumber in night school at Delcastle. Wayne joined the Mill Creek Fire Company after graduating from Delcastle. During his years at the Mill Creek Fire Company, Wayne served the Company with Integrity, Respect, Honor and most certainly Valor! He was an Ambulance Lieutenant, Rescue Lieutenant, Assistant Chief, Deputy Chief, and served on the Board of Directors, demonstrating leadership and tenacity in each role.
Unfortunately, while performing his duties as Deputy Fire Chief on June 12th, 1995, Wayne was managing a very stressful scene of a fatal motor vehicle crash. This incident was the most devastating incident the Mill Creek Fire Company had ever responded to. It was at this incident that Wayne suffered a brain aneurysm rupture. He battled complications from this injury for many years and lost his battle on September 26, 2001, making Wayne the only Line of Duty Death in the 92-year history of the Mill Creek Fire Company.
In concert with Delcastle’s 50th Anniversary Celebration, Wanye became Delcastle's first recipient of the Delcastle Technical High School Alumni in Action Award for his outstanding achievement and Service in the Community. This award was presented to Wanye's family during halftime.
PSAT
Paraeducator Support in the Classroom
Paraeducators are an invaluable asset to our Inclusion Program because they are able to provide targeted small group or 1:1 support for students with such a prescribed statement of service in their IEP. Here are some ways that paraeducators can support the needs of students and instructors in the classroom:
• Assist in the educational and social development of students under the direct guidance of the classroom teacher and Learning Support Coach.
• Assist classroom teacher in the maintenance of student records, management/distribution of instructional resources, and effective classroom transition.
• Provide support for individual students inside and outside the classroom to enable them to fully participate in activities.
• Support students with emotional or behavioral concerns and assist them in developing appropriate social skills.
• Assist classroom teacher and Learning Support Coach with preparing items to support instruction and testing accommodations.
If you have any questions or would like the opportunity to discuss how to strengthen collaboration with paraeducator support, please do not hesitate to contact our Inclusion Program Team Leader, Jennifer Lyman or Nathalie Princilus, assigned administrator for Inclusion Program and paraeducators.
Career & College Fair - Wells
Delcastle will be hosting its annual Career & College Application and Readiness week from Monday, 10/28/2019, through Friday, 11/1/2019. We will also have a Career & College Fair for the juniors and seniors on Friday, November 1st.
Wednesday, October 23rd
Google Forms for Parent and Students Surveys
Learn how to use Google Forms to gather beginning-of-the-course data and involve parents in the process. In this session, we will go over how to create a survey, attach a syllabus to a survey, and teach parents how to log into their Schoology account all in one form!!! The goal is to implement this for 2nd semester.
Classroom Screen: A Free Tech Resource
Thanks to Vonetta Pierce for sharing this neat resource!!!
Classroomscreen.com allows you to display multiple widgets on your screen while students are working. Widgets include a countdown timer or clock, a stoplight, a sound-level meter, QR codes for activities, work symbols, drawings, text, polls, and a random name generator!!! All of this can be displayed on the background of your choice.
For directions and to see an example, please click below.
As always, if you need more assistance or have questions please contact me.
~Tara
Delcastle Instructional Focus
Interesting Read - Taking Action on Adolescent Literacy by Judith L. Irvin, Julie Meltzer and Melinda S. Dukes
Conditions for Engagement
The literature is full of examples of how the climate and conditions of the classroom really can make a difference in whether or not adolescents choose to engage in literacy tasks. We know that the learning environment and culture within each classroom play a part in supporting or undermining the chances that middle and high school students will participate in, and therefore benefit from, literacy development through the engagement-instruction cycle. This is the case with students at all literacy levels, including struggling readers and writers, English language learners, reluctant readers and writers, and aliterate students (those students who have adequate reading and writing skills but typically choose not to read or write). This understanding means it is well worth paying attention to the elements of classroom culture and environment to ensure that the conditions for literacy learning are in place. The following vignette describes students' engagement with a variety of literacy tasks when these were assigned within a motivating and supportive learning environment coupled with effective instruction.
The 8th grade students on the Dream Team at Lincoln Middle School were studying the topic of water quality. For this interdisciplinary unit, Kamal, Ayan, Mara, and Erika were put into a group. None of them really understood why watersheds were important when they began the project. The first assignment was to read and discuss a chapter in the science book. The terminology was hard, and they really did not understand what the chapter was about even after previewing it. But the science teacher provided strategies for learning the vocabulary and reading the text, so even though the group members were not inspired, they were able to complete the assignment.
Members of Kamal's group became more interested when they saw the results of a local survey of waste disposal habits of businesses and households. The results indicated that “really disgusting stuff” was being dumped near the city's main supply of drinking water. Students listened to a local scientist and a government official talk about watershed and water treatment issues—policies, pollution, protections, and current threats. Students then took a tour of the local water treatment plant. In social studies class they debated the pros and cons of bottled water in terms of environmental and equity issues. Based on additional research and responses to e-mail questions submitted to the speakers, the students created a physical model of the watershed and the water treatment facility and discussed possible areas of concern.
Each team of four identified key questions and went into the field to conduct tests of water and soil for the presence of pollutants. Then they learned to read government charts representing safe levels of these substances in the public water supply and technical documents describing the treatment plan for the city. Kamal's team carefully compared its test results with the information on the charts. What they found was disturbing. Levels of certain toxic substances and bacteria were high in the reservoir, but the water treatment facility was not addressing the problem by changing the treatment of the water, suggesting that the city's drinking water may not be safe. The teachers encouraged the students to report their findings using PowerPoint presentations. Students were given a specific format for presenting their questions, data, conclusions, and recommendations. Together with teachers, the students developed a rubric for each component of the presentations. The two presentations with the highest scores based on the rubric would be presented to the city council.
The members of Kamal's team worked hard on their presentation—harder than they had ever worked before. Kamal and his fellow group members checked and rechecked facts, read and reread articles, discussed and debated what the recommendations should be, and revised and edited their presentation. To make sure they understood what they were reading, the group took the articles to the Learning Center during lunch, where a teacher showed them some strategies for finding facts and taking notes. They used these strategies to tackle some tough text, including findings from a scientific report. The two students with limited English proficiency in the group, Ayan and Mara, asked the others repeatedly if what they wrote was “OK.” Kamal, usually apathetic when it came to school, saw this issue as important—he had four younger brothers and sisters, and his family used tap water for cooking and drinking all the time; he wanted it to be safe. Erika, who was usually shy in class but who really liked music, made up a theme song about water safety to accompany their presentation.
When Kamal's team's presentation was chosen as one of the two to be shared at the city council meeting, their classmates were surprised. But Kamal and his teammates were not—this was an important opportunity to be heard. In their minds, this was much more important than the rest of the stuff they usually did at school—and they were willing to put in the time and effort to do it right. When a staff writer from the local newspaper attended the presentation and pressured the city to respond to the students' findings, the students knew their effort had been worthwhile.
In this vignette, several key factors relating to motivation inspired Kamal's team to engage with much more rigorous reading and writing than was typically the case. The students were working together on an issue they thought was important; they had choice and autonomy in the decisions about how to gather and present the information; and the presentation was for an authentic audience beyond the teacher or their peers. In Guthrie and Knowles's 2001 review of the empirical literature and their three-year study of K–12 classroom events that prompted sustained literacy interactions, they outline seven principles for promoting motivation to read:
- use of conceptual themes to guide inquiry,
- real-world interactions as springboards for further inquiry,
- encouragement of self-direction,
- the existence of a variety of texts,
- support for the use of cognitive strategies,
- social collaboration, and
- opportunities for self-expression.
Guthrie and Knowles see this network of variables as those “likely to spark and sustain the long-term motivation required for students to become full members in the world of engaged readers” (p. 173). Like many researchers and practitioners, Guthrie and Knowles stress the connections between the affective, social, and cognitive aspects of reading. Although this research was not solely focused on adolescents, all of these factors were in place during the water quality project described in the vignette, and they contributed greatly to the engagement and success of Kamal's group.
***** Read more next week.
Classroom Management & Discipline - Student Advisors
http://blogs.edweek.org/topschooljobs/careers/2017/07/classroom_management_and_disci.html
-Calling Parents
The relationship a teacher builds with parents plays an important part in the classroom. The teacher makes sure the student is on top of their work while in class and the parents can make sure the student is on top of their work at home. It's crucial that a teacher builds a relationship with parents early in the school year. This way they are aware of the teacher's policies and how they tend to run the classroom.
This is important because the teacher doesn't want the first conversion with a student's parent to be about how their child is frequently interrupting class. If the relationship is already there, there is more trust and the conversations tend to be more open and productive.
-Is it effective?
When a situation becomes serious enough for the teacher or principal to get the parents directly involved, the hope is that a child realizes how their actions affect everyone on a much larger scale. Not all discipline can be handled inside of the school. There are many times when it will become necessary to get parents involved to ensure that such behavior does not continue, and a student's parents should be kept in the loop for all major issues. This can be effective for students who have a healthy relationship with their parents because the parents will take the necessary action at home.
Disciplinary actions taken on a larger scale should be a team effort from both the school and parents. Relying only on regularly scheduled conferences leaves too much time for poor behavior choices to become a habit instead of corrected.
Children require structure and support to flourish. Some teachers have found that greeting each child, individually, every morning establishes mutually beneficial respect and an environment of consistency. Some classes function better with a little less structure and can utilize an open seating and honor system for bathroom visits. Do what's best for you and your class while following guidelines of your school and discussing with other education professionals who can offer tips and best practices.