Eagle Express
LHS Staff Newsletter--Year 18, Vol. 28, 03/18/19
Principal's Message
Last Wednesday high schools across the city experienced technical difficulties with the online English 11 Writing SOL. We faced many challenges during the Wednesday testing time, but so many people came together to ensure our students were well looked after. Special thanks to Kara Barco and her team of proctors who maintained calmness during the storms. Thanks also to Wellinthon Muñoz for his help and leadership during the testing. Thanks to the teachers who were involved in the testing and doing everything you could to help our students be successful. Finally, thanks to the Block 1B teachers who had an extra extended class time for keeping students engaged and in class.
Kara and her team were receiving information from central administration and formulating plans to accommodate our students throughout this experience. She will continue to apprise us of the plans moving forward. The bottom line is that we are going to do everything needed to assure our students have the opportunities they need to complete the English 11 SOL.
I Make a Difference
From Cheryl Askew
It is a blessing to be at Landstown High School and to be surrounded by so many people who make a difference in the lives of our students every day. The list of folks who deserve this I Make a Difference award is overwhelming. I so appreciate your hard work and what you do for our students every day!
For this week's I Make a Difference Award, the recipient is a person who we all go to for advice, a kind word, or just because she is a great listener. Terri Muench has served Landstown High School for many years. She knows the history and heritage of the school. Terri arrives at work early and often stays late or takes work home because of her dedication to our staff and students. She is extremely conscientious and know that everything we do is for the benefit of our students. Terri transitioned from an office associate position to become our office manager three years ago. I don't know what I would have done without her wise counsel and help these past 3 years. She is always willing to listen to staff members and help them any way she can. Terri Muench truly makes a difference at Landstown High School!
Basketball Championship Shirts
We will also have a jeans day fundraiser for the boys basketball team's rings. If you would like to wear jeans on Monday, March 25, you need to give $5.00 to Christina or Julia in the main office. A sticker indicating your support of the team will be placed in your mailbox as your "ticket" to wear jeans on 3/25.
Professional Learning Program
As part of the division's PL program, instructional staff, including teachers, counselors, and specialists, engage in both essential (required) and choice professional learning sessions. In previous years, the majority of sessions for the upcoming school year were released for registration at the same time during the first week of May. Now the publication of choice sessions can be ongoing, released for registration throughout the year to allow staff to better make decisions based on their schedule and needs at that time, rather than registering for sessions months in advance. Essential sessions, however, will continue to be published with an official launch dat of May 2. Please remember:
- Publication of choice sessions will occur throughout the year in Frontline.
- All Essential sessions will be published and opened for registration in Frontline May 2.
- It is vital that profiles in Frontline be set to accurately reflect the current teaching assignment and to allow notifications.This ensures that as relevant sessions are added, an email notification will be sent. You can find instructions on setting up your profile here.
Upcoming Events
Monday, 03/18 (A)
PBA PL, 2:20, Library
JV Softball @ Kempsville
JV Soccer @ Kempsville
JV Baseball vs Kempsville
Tuesday, 03/19 (B)
VBCPS Equity Council Student Showcase, 4:30
Girls Tennis vs Maury, 4:00
Softball vs Salem, 4:00
Baseball vs Salem, 4:00
Soccer vs Lake Taylor, 5:15
PTSA Board Meeting, 6:00, Library
Wednesday, 03/20 (A)
SCA General Assembly, 11:50, Auditorium
ILT, 1:00, ECC
Parent-Teacher Conferences, 2:15, Cafeteria
JV Softball vs PA, 4:00
JV Soccer vs PA, 4:00
JV Baseball @ PA, 4:00
Softball @ Western Branch, 5:00
Thursday, 03/21 (B)
Girls Tennis vs Hickory, 5:00
Soccer vs Western Branch, 5:30
Winter Sports Banquet, 6:00
Friday, 03/22 (A)
Leadership Workshop @ Jamestown 4:H
Softball vs Great Bridge, 5:30
Celebrate March!
Announcements & Reminders
Army STEM Display: On MARCH 19th (“B”) day during 2nd and 3rd blocks, the Army will set up a STEM day in the side parking lot close to the gym/athletic field. Please park closer to the athletic field in case there are several students outside there is more space. The Army is bringing 7 large vehicles with various STEM related demonstrations including: night vision goggles, robotics equipment etc… WE WOULD LOVE TO HAVE A HUGE TURNOUT! Please plan to bring your classes down as it sounds like a really cool event – no class sign up is necessary. Teachers must remain with their students at the display.
Ring Dance Chaperones: The Junior Class is asking all staff to consider chaperoning the Ring Dance this year. It will be held on Saturday, April 6 at the Virginia Beach Convention Center. Please use this Google Form to indicate your intent to attend. Thanks!
Sub Folders: Teachers, please make sure there are updated class rosters in your sub folders. This will ensure accurate attendance for our students in your absence. After an absence, please check your sub folder and replenish your class rosters as needed.
Student Agency PL: The Student Agency PL pathway will meet on 3/26/19 at 2:20 pm in the library.This will be an opportunity to share an instructional strategy you used in your classroom that promoted student agency and to hear about your colleagues' strategies. Prior to this session, please type up a brief description of how you used the strategy with your students and a brief answer to these 3 questions:
- What part of the learning did the students own?
- What did you learn alongside your students during this lesson?
- What new conclusions did you reach after reflecting on the lesson that will impact your teaching going forward?
One PL point will be awarded based upon your attendance to the session and the written submission of your strategy and response to the reflection questions.
PBA PL: Performance-based assessment PL pathway option this week on Thursday, March 21st at 2:20 in the LMC where we will briefly talk about rubrics. We’ll evaluate a sample “project” with different rubrics to get a taste of standards based grading and see how each criterion we include can impact learning and grading outcomes. The pre-reading included below will give you background into rubrics; please feel free to bring ideas to the meeting on how rubrics have both strengths and weaknesses in terms of grading assessments. It’s all up for discussion. Pre-reading linked here: Prezi- (Press the forward arrow just under the presentation to proceed through)and Rubric Intro. Anyone is welcome to join.
Summer Digital Learning Summit: VBCPS is once again hosting its annual Digital Learning Summer Summit. You can now register to attend in frontline.
Ring Ceremony: Our Junior Class will have their Ring Ceremony on April 2nd during 1st block.
Kudos
Congratulations to the LHS Women’s Ensemble and Madrigal Singers. Both groups received superior ratings at this weekend's choral performance assessments at Norview high school. This is the top rating that they could get!
Congratulations to Cristelle Camarillo who auditioned for and was accepted into the All-Virginia Chorus. She had the best score out of hundreds of auditions from our district. She will be participating in the All-Virginia event April 4-6.
March 20: Bridgette Jackson, Special Education
March 22: Stacy Siock, Math
March 24: Kay Gramling, FACS
New Parent/Teacher Conference Feature
We have added a new feature to our regularly scheduled parent/teacher conferences. In addition to counselors, teachers and parents can now arrange a Wednesday Parent Conference. Parents can visit the counseling webpage and click on a link that will bring them to a Google Form to register for a conference. Teachers can click on the link and complete the form for the parent as well. Just remember—If you set up a conference, you need to make sure the parent is on board and knows to attend on that date! Our wonderful school counselors are, of course, still willing to contact parents and set up conferences in the usual way as well.
Beach Bags Food Drive
The division's Office of Community Engagement is once again sponsoring a community food drive for the Beach Bags program. There will be a one-day collection at Pembroke Mall from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on March 28th; however, LHS is participating by collecting from March 13 through March 28th. A collection box will be placed in front of the Library. Please encourage your students, clubs, teams, parents, etc. to donate to the Beach Bags project.
Monetary donations can also be made. In fact, every $3.00 donated fills a Beach Bag! Checks should be made out to the Virginia Beach Education Foundation with “Beach Bags” written on the Memo Line.
Social Media Requests
We’ve been receiving quite a few requests lately to post various activities, events, and news to our official school social media accounts. We love to do this to spotlight the fantastic things happening in our building and to more effectively keep our students in-the-know about upcoming events! To more efficiently handle the requests, we’ve created a form for all staff to complete if you’d like something posted on the official school Instagram (@landstownhighschoolvb) and/or Twitter (@LandstownEagles) accounts. This form will allow you to submit a photo/video and a caption. It will require that you be logged into your school account, as it will collect your email address, and that you have checked to make sure all students involved do not have an opt-out media release form on file in the office. If you have questions about posts, see Jason Stanley. If you need help with submitting your information via the form, see Krissy Sanderlin.
Brickell Scholars Program
The Virginia Beach Rotary Club is accepting student nominations for the E. E. Brickell Scholars Program from all juniors with a GPA of 3.5 or above. As seniors, Brickell Scholars will have the opportunity to attend a series of three seminars in order to compete for a prestigious $5000 scholarship. Any student who is interested in being considered for Brickell Scholars should see Mrs. Calma in the library office for an application packet. Packets are due 4/1.
If you know a junior who qualifies, please encourage him/her to apply!
TalentEd Info
Principal's Advisory Committee
The Principal's Advisory Committee serves in an advisory capacity to address employee concerns as they relate to site conditions that negatively impact on high student achievement and high employee morale. The PAC is committed to resolving issues professionally and in a timely manner. The following staff members have been elected to serve on this year's PAC: Katie Bennett, Caroline Clark, Jae Clark, Terri Gayer, Woody Gehlert, Kay Gramling, Kathy Holbert, Suzette Johnson, Connie Martinez, Michael Robinson, Kelly Singer and Anne Marie Sprague. Use this form to submit concerns to the PAC.
Our Guiding Questions
- How do students determine and engage with their learning targets?
- What is the evidence that students are exercising their voice and choice throughout the learning process?
- What evidence is there that the teacher has planned opportunities for students to choose from a variety of tools/structures during their learning?
- How are teachers using assessment tools as part of their assessment strategy?
- What evidence exists that supports student collaboration, exploration, and creation efforts?
Landstown High School
Email: cheryl.askew@vbschools.com
Website: http://www.landstownhs.vbschools.com/
Location: 2001 Concert Drive, Virginia Beach, VA, USA
Phone: 757-648-5500
Twitter: @LandstownEagles