CLIF NOTES
50 Years Of Preparing Students To Be Career & College Ready
August 2018
Welcome Back
Dear Faculty and Staff,
Today is a great day to be a Cougar! On behalf of the Delcastle administrative team, it is my pleasure to officially welcome everyone back for the 2018-19 school year! This year will be a monumental year for us with the celebrating of our 50th year equipping the local and global workforce. In addition, for a few years, we have discussed becoming a 1:1 school and now it is finally here. On August 1, we began our soft deployment of Chromebooks to 65 students on the first deployment day. Parents/guardians have been going online to complete all the required paperwork for the school website (delcastleths.com). Special thanks to Dr. Olsavsky and the deployment team for creating such a smooth process. It is our hope that the majority of our students will have their Chromebooks on the first day of school.
Now that we are embarking on a new frontier, our 1:1 journey will provide us with some ups, and I can imagine, a few unexpected twists and turns. In order to maneuver through this process, we must continue to model for our students what it means to be life-long learners. Knowing how and when the best time to use our new 1:1 tool to provide quality instruction will come with practice and learning from our failure.
This year we will continue with communication skills as our focus. We will increase the number of opportunities that our students have to read, write and discuss the content each day. In addition, the technology that we have will serve as a tool to assist us.
If you have not reviewed your class schedule, please make sure that you log onto eschool and look at your schedule. Please contact Mr. Rabinovitch or your department chair if you have any questions.
Finally, this newsletter will provide you with some of our summer highlights, important information, and various changes. Again, welcome to Delcastle and here’s to a fabulous school year.
Sincerely,
Dr. Clifton Hayes
Principal
Dates to Remember:
August
20 – Teacher Leader Mtg. C100 8:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
21, 22, 23 – Professional Development Days
22 – New Student Orientation, 6:30 p.m.
23 - Senior Class Meeting & Chromebook Distribution
24 – No School/Offices CLOSED
27 – First Day of School Freshman & Seniors
28 – First Day of School Sophomores & Juniors
29 – All Students Attend School
31 – No School/ Offices Open
September
3 – No School/Offices CLOSED
4 – Faculty Meeting
6 – Professional Development Day
20 – Parent Night
National Competition
Seventeen students traveled to Louisville, KY to compete in the National SkillsUSA Competitions. All of the students did an outstanding job representing Delcastle and the great state of Delaware. Congratulations to each of the students that participated and their career area instructors. The students below placed in the top ten:
o Sheet Metal – Alex Perez - (Silver Medal)
o Career Pathway Showcase - Cosmetology – Alyssa Todd, Courtney Respes, Denise Alonzo (7)
o Employment Application Process - STEP – Nick Lauber (7)
o Welding Sculpture – Savion Hollis (7)
In addition, students traveled to Dallas, Texas to attend the national Business Professionals of America (BPA) competitions. Congratulations to Business Tech students for winning two gold and two silver medals at Nationals. Amy Caceres won 1st Place Fundamental Word Processing and Axel Castro won 1st Place Fundamental Desktop Publishing. Additionally, Ascuena Ayllon placed 2nd for Fundamental Desktop Publishing and Alan Castro received 2nd Place Fundamental Word Processing.
Each student spent hours preparing to compete on the state and national levels. Their success is a reflection of their hard work and quality teacher instruction. Congratulations to each student and their instructors!
SkillsUSA Silver Medalist
SkillsUSA
SkillsUSA
Delcastle Students And Teachers Attend UD's STEAM Summer Academy
High school teachers from across the state worked together to design the labs. The goal for each teaching group was to focus on one theme, but parse it out across disciplines through lab activities and each teacher’s area of expertise. In its fifth year, more than 30 teachers from nine Delaware high schools and about 70 students attended.
The camp serves as an extension of a professional development workshop sponsored by the Delaware Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Education Mathematics-Science Partnership and UD. The winter workshop focused on working across disciplines and ways high school teachers could enhance their lessons.
John Jungck, director of Dupont Interdisciplinary Science Learning Laboratories and principal investigator of the Delaware Interdisciplinary STEAM Citizens Science Project (DISCovery Project) said the question his team is continually trying to answer is, “How do you build the village of support to have students succeed?”
That is the challenge presented to the team of high school teachers, he said, but every year the teams rise to the occasion. That’s why this program benefits not only students but also teachers because they get to collaborate in ways they may not be able to during the school year.
To see more of the article by Carlett Spike please push the following link. https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2018/july/steam-summer-academy-high-schools-teachers-students/