Mustang Message
January 18, 2016
A Message from Jeff and Yolanda
At least the Martin Luther King parade went on as planned. Thank you to Jack Izbicki, Chris Fowler and students who represented our schools in the parade. While the parade is one way to remember Dr. King, there are many ways we can honor his work all year round by keeping his message of peace, love, justice, righteousness, accountability and humility at the center of our work. How can we create learning environments in our classrooms where voice and relationships matters? How can we invite more accountability for ourselves and our students and stress the importance of our interdependence of each other? How might Dr. King's message of more than 50 years ago be at the center of all that we do to remind us as that we all have a responsibility for making our world a better place? We will leave you with one of our favorite Dr. King quotes:
“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
Tech Corner
Speech-to-Text anyone? Have you ever wished for an application that would serve as a dictation that transfers your voice to text? You may already take advantage of that on most smartphone keyboards (or not?!), but what about on a computer? Assuming you have access to a microphone, you can try out either:
Dictation - a free web-based speech recognition service that takes your voice and saves it as a text file that you can then format in word processing or simply copy and paste in an email.
VoiceNoteII - an online speech-to-text service that you install directly on Google Chrome browser for easy access
Neither are perfect, but you can always edit and what a time-saver as our speaking is so much faster than our typing! :)
Did you know that you can access your CCPS home drive from home on your iPad or your home computer? There are step-by-step directions via iBriefings. Log in there and search for “remote access” in the Subject search bar. Though it is important to separate school from home, sometimes it makes weeknight/weekends more convenient when you can access that one file on your H: Drive. Let me know if you need any assistance.
A Note from our Wellness Champions
The Biggest Loser Contest is off to a great start. So far, we have 26 people signed up (both HS and college), so it looks like we are going to have a fun time and a lot of competition.
One of the questions that I was asked is, "Are there any helpful hints that we can supply?" One of the things I found that is very helpful, is a free app by UnderArmour called MyFitnessPal. You can do a food log, which one of our co-workers says she does every day. She didn’t need to join the Biggest Loser, so that says something. It also calculates how many calories you can eat during the day. The part I liked is that whatever calories you burn off while exercising is added to your daily total intake. There’s the reward for exercising! I go to the gym every morning and the machines tell me how many calories I expended. Now, I make sure I keep track of that number and enter it into MyFitnessPal. Another app that was pointed out to me is one that comes with the new iPhones. On the screen it is a white square with a red heart in the upper right corner and under it is the word Health. I haven’t really checked it out, but it does calculate walking/running distance, stairs climbed, body measurements, nutrition data, vitals, sleep analysis, etc.
I am pleased with MyFitnessPal, so far. This week they had a lot of good suggestions for weight loss. One of the articles is The #1 Habit You Should Have to Lose Weight. It is interesting, because, believe it or not, we are doing it. There are plenty of other good articles and if you sign up for MyFitnessPal, as they send you a newsletter each week with ideas, suggestions and recipes.
Another fun fact – we (HS and college) are entered in a District Wide Biggest Loser contest. The Grand Prize? --- Bragging rights for the school that loses the most weight. Let’s make this another “first” for LWTHS/LWTC!
Please share your experiences, ups, downs, suggestions for other apps, questions, diets, recipes, etc. with us. You can reach me at 70938 or you can email me at
WILKIP@COLLIERSCHOOLS.COM or you can reach Khris at 73347 or you can email her at BETTENKR@COLLIERSCHOOLS.COM.
Just a reminder, the weigh-ins for College will be on Fridays and High School on Wednesday with the Nurse (College side – sorry for the confusion this last week). Good Luck to everyone and let’s have fun while losing weight and getting in shape.
Happenings
- The creators of the Incubator program from Barrington, Illinois will be visiting the Anne Stout's Entrepreneurship class on 1/19.
- Calusa Park Elementary School 5th graders will tour the campus on 1/20 and 1/21.
- We wish the Entrepreneurship class the best of luck as they compete in the annual Palm Beach College Business competition on 1/22.
- Joann Cassio, Tara Barr, Dave Gabriel and Anne Genovese will take part in professional development opportunities over the next few weeks to prepare them to offer Industry Certification Exams for our students.
- The vote for School Recognition Funds "A+" monies was held on 1/11 and 1/12 with choice "A" being selected by a 23-1 margin.
Reminders
- PLT reflections are due January 31st
- High school staff, please continue to collect Title 1 Parent Surveys during your period/block 1 and block 3 classes. We are looking for a 100% return rate. The final day for collection is 1/28.
- Don't forget to nominate a staff member for the month of January by clicking on the Padlet link . Type the name of the nominated staff member in the "Title" portion of the Padlet post and your reasoning in the body of the post. Also you can nominate by grade level a student for the month of December by clicking the appropriate link below. Follow the same protocol of putting the student name as the title and reason for nominating in the body of the posting.
9th grade Link:
10th grade Link:
11th grade Link:
12th grade Link:
Spotlight on LWTHS Staff Member
David Gabriel teaches Hope and Chemistry at LWTHS. What keeps him most busy however is keeping up with his one and a half year old son. David grew up in Virginia in a school environment where he was always swimming and watching his aunt and mother who were in the teaching business. His swimming talents earned him a scholarship at Miami-Dade, then James Madison College. His wife was born in Russia and her family now lives in Greece, so he has become a world traveler. His favorite moment as a teacher is when he has a student have an “ah, ha” moment! David is very conscientious and likes to have things in order. He would definitely be a swim or volleyball coach if we did not have the good fortune to have him here with us.
Spotlight on LWTC Staff Member
Jean Cardarelli lived a lifetime in Rhode Island before she moved to Naples. She worked for the Providence School System for 18 years. She has a daughter and grand-daughter that still live in Rhode Island where she loved to ice skate and ski during the winter months. When she moved to Naples in 1990 she started a very successful cleaning company with most of her clients from the Port Royal area. She looks at her life being a cup half full, and tries to pay kindnesses forward to others. Jean is married and has a dog and two birds. She fondly remembers a time when she traveled to Hawaii and got her picture taken with Michael Landon. Jean is a hard worker who really enjoys all the people she spends her days with here at LWTC/LWTHS.
Kudos
- Lin Flood for having 18 students pass the Infection Control portion of the Certified Dental Assisting Exam
- Jeannette Kostka for having 18 dual enrolled juniors pass the Infection Control portion of the Certified Dental Assisting Exam.
- Jack Izbicki, Chris Fowler and our outstanding students for giving up their holiday to march in the MLK day Parade
- Amanda Vazquez for her work in ensuring students were entered into FOCUS for the new semester
- Karly Campbell, Khris Betten-Jutasi, Joann Cassio and Dawn Peck for sharing MLK activities
- Debbie Hoofer for having two more students pass MOS industry certification exams
- To all for hosting the Greater Naples Leadership Group
- Bruce Rutila for overseeing the Title 1 Parent Workshop, "Dealing with Test Anxiety."
- Neil Fehr, Lisa Perez and Pat Metcalf for helping out with midterm/final exam make-up on Monday.
- Bruce Peters for assisting with bus dismissal on 1/12 when the office staff was attending a support staff meeting.
Happy Birthday
Upcoming Staff Meetings and Trainings
- See the lwcampus.wikispaces.com for the LWTC/LWTHS meeting calendar.
Upcoming Student Events
- 9th Grade Quarter 2 Goal Reward at Olive Garden-1/22
- Senior Celebration Event-1/22
- Naples Council on World Affairs scholarships to Georgetown, Governor's Institute in Vermont, and Student Ambassador Program are all due January 23. Please encourage your junior students to apply. http://www.ncwfl.org/schooloutreach.html.