Based on nominations from Eckstein parents, the Golden Acorn committee has chosen Kathy Briggs as the 2010 Eckstein
PTSA Golden Acorn Award winner. Congratulations, and thanks to Kathy  for her nearly decade-long contributions to Eckstein!

Other nominees this year:

(more…)

don’t establish the
boundaries
first,
the squares, triangles,
boxes
of preconceived
possibility,
and then
pour
life into them, trimming
off left-over edges,
ending potential:

A.R. Ammons

Dear Colleagues and Families~

Closings are always bittersweet and today I write with great affection for you and our community.   The work we have done this year was single mindedly focused on our children and it makes me proud to be a part of this community.

It is in the midst of a tinge of sadness that we send you off with the hope of a joy filled summer. Please take time to rejuvenate yourselves.  I know for some of you this means being with friends and family, while for others it will be climbing mountains and biking through Europe.  The time will fly.

I would like to take just a moment before we all depart for the summer to both reflect on this year and look forward to the fall.

The work we did this year provided opportunities to increase the support and collaboration we have among our staff members.  Our Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) provide us a framework for looking at four essential questions of teaching and learning:

• What do we want kids to know and be able to do?
• How will we know if they’ve learned it?
• What do we do if they haven’t learned it?
• What do we do with students who already know it?

Our focus next year will be to continue to learn more about the processes for strong professional learning communities and specifically, common formative assessments and our response to interventions.  We are a staff who looks at kids and responds to their needs.  We don’t put them in preconceived squares and triangles. We should all be proud of how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time.

To facilitate our continued work in professional learning communities for next year we agreed on Schedule option “B”.  From now on we’ll just call it the 2010-2011 professional development calendar.  This provides one two-hour early release day a month.  Every other Wednesday we will devote our meeting time to working in PLC’s.  I am attaching a copy of the calendar so you can have it for your planning.

The other decision we had to make for next year was the bell schedule.  Providing students and teachers with two fifty-minute blocks of Homeroom time this year opened up a number of opportunities.  Students were able to use the time to make up assignments and labs as well as get additional help from their teachers.  More importantly, we were able to continue our Cohort homeroom for 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade students.  We just started to scratch the surface of more interventions for students.  The Math Mentor Program is only one example of this.  I know that by continuing to provide time we will develop more interventions for students who are struggling in school. With this in mind, we will continue to offer two, fifty-minute study hall periods on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The bell schedule for next year is included below.

BELL SCHEDULE AND HOMEROOM/STUDY HALL:

2010-2011 Bell Schedule

Classes on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays are 55 minutes long.  Classes on Tuesday and Thursdays are 45 minutes long.  The study halls are 50 minutes each. The study hall time will be used for cohort, the math mentoring program, silent sustained reading, ASB, assemblies and activities.  We will also be able to have grade level lunches on Tuesday and Thursday.

We will continue to evaluate schedules and calendars in the upcoming months.  All changes will have opportunities and challenges and it’s up to us to evaluate and maximize the strengths. What I am sure of is that we will work together to make things work for our kids.

We will have some staffing changes for next year and this means the loss of some wonderful teachers and friends.  Below are the staff members who are moving on:

Carl Chew – Science

Orleen Baugh – LA

Kimberly Reagan – LA

Dianne Siasoco – SS

Kristie Fowler – LA

Paul Cavendar – LA

Clayton Townley – Music

We have had the opportunity to hire two teachers for next year.  Please join me in welcoming Sara Hoofnagle and Al George to Eckstein.  Ms. Hoofnagle will be joining the 6^th grade science team.  Al George will be a new PE/Health teacher at Eckstein.  Both were teachers at Summit K-12 and are excited to be at Eckstein next year.

We will keep you updated on any additional hiring that occurs this summer.

Have a wonderful summer and we’ll see you in the fall.

Best,

KW