November 30th - December 4th

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher Character Students of the Week

All 6 of these students displayed positive character behaviors within our 8 focused traits:  

Be... responsible, respectful, kind, safe, honest, loyal, compassionate, courageous.  

Students:  (left to right)

• Raquel Gomez (Silver)
• She can always be counted on to do a stellar job on every assignment and brings a positive energy to every class!
• Leslie Romero (Applied Academics) 
• She exhibits The Karcher Way daily through her kindness and by always having a positive attitude.
• Dawson Gurschke (Hive) 
• He was kind to his entire 7th hour class this week and continues to be responsible by turning in all his school work!
• Erin Torpy (Onyx)
• She consistently shows kindness, compassion, and respect towards all around her and puts 100% effort into her work and responsibilities at school.
• Brianna Eldest (Karcher Bucks)
• She consistently displays kindness and honestly throughout the school day.
• Addison Mangold (Diamond)
• She is always concerned with doing her best quality work in all of her classes. She is a positive influence and leader for her peers.

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Kudos

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• Jenny Geyso was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Jenny and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Alyssa Riggs, Jack Schmidt, and Patti Tenhagen for putting the advisory curriculum together for the iMovies!  
• Kudos to Ashley Parr's advisory and Mike Jones's advisory for having been voted the number one videos for 7th and 8th grade!

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Reminders/Information

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• Teachers: Staff meeting November 30th - topic is parent/teacher conferences.
• School Board Meeting - November 30th - School Improvement Plan.  I will be presenting our SIP as part of the K-8 school improvement plan.  I will briefly review this at the staff meeting on November 30th.  This information was shared with BLT and then the BLT teachers shared with their teams.  
• Teachers:  PLCs this week are in the library to learn about  our next literacy tool, vocabulary, presented by Molly Ebbers, Patti Tenhagen, and Jenny Geyso.
• Flexisched starts back over with intervention iTime for December 3rd & 4th and 10th & 11th.
• Literacy lessons this week will be utilizing the literacy comprehension strategy:  connections.   Everyone should have picked up their yellow, green, and pink slips from the table by ISS and had their own articles copied for your advisory team.  Additional cut slips are by ISS for the following week as well!
• The office area has had part of its face lift over break!  Wait until you see it - Kim and Jane have areas as they should :)  
• 8th grade students will continue to NOT have compass opposite PE through December 8.  They will continue meeting with Jean Freund and Steve Berezowitz to work through career cruising.  
• Staff get together has changed to December 4th at Barb and Steve Berezowitz's house.  People are invited to attend the basketball game vs. Waterford at BHS or can head over anytime starting at 7:00pm to the Berezowitz residence.  The White Elephant exchange will take place at about 9:30pm.  
• Please let Barb know if you plan to attend and around what time.  
• Special education aides:  This is just a reminder that there will be a training for all aides on  Wednesday, December 9th from 1:30 to 3:30.

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Pictures from the week

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Students in Ms. Sturdevant's classroom working on finding the surface area of different objects.  

Students in Ms. Tenhagen's classroom pairing solutions with equations.

Students in Ms. Berezowitz's class reading together to make connections.

Article of the week:  Interesting article when approaching parent/teacher conferences... 

Don't Forget Families

Calendar for December:

November 23rd & 24th

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

No Student's of the week as it is only a 2 day week!  The students will be pictured on November 30th along with the staff of the week as well :)

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Kudos

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• Thank you Marilee Hoffman for taking our Student Council students to the Leadership Conference in Oconomowoc.  The students I talked to said it was a great experience!
• Congrats to Kim Moss for being the Biggest Loser for our in-house Biggest Loser Challenge!
• Also, congrats to Bobbi Smith, Renee Hisey, and Kim Moss for the overall best team percentage!
• AND... congrats to Lori Iverson, Renee Hisey, Crysta Hernandez, Jane Peterson, and Kim Moss for all meeting the goal of losing at least 5% of their body weight!  
• Nice work everyone :)

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Reminders

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• • Monday and Tuesday we will be continuing with the modified schedule as we have assemblies on both days for the Character Curriculum Music Videos!  
  • Any questions see Patti Tenhagen, Alyssa Riggs, or Jack Schmidt.
  • Parent/teacher conferences meeting after school November 23rd (Monday) in the library to brainstorm/formalize how conferences will run for December 7th.  Please attend if interested in assisting.
  • Flexisched starts back over with intervention iTime.  
  • Flexisched has been reset and shows December 3rd & 4th and 10th & 11th.
  • The next literacy lesson will be November 30th and December 1st with the focus being connections. 
  • November 23 through December 8 our 8th grade students will not have compass opposite PE.  They will be meeting with Jean Freund and Steve Berezowitz to work through career cruising.  
  • Special education aides:  This is just a reminder that there will be a training for all aides on  Wednesday, December 9th from 1:30 to 3:30.

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Pictures from the week

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Students working on their Tin Man Projects in Ms. Sturdevant's classroom.

Student Council representatives at the Leadership Conference in Oconomowoc.

7th Grade Boys Basketball home game.

Look at all the Karcher Staff!  Rod Stoughton keeping the peace as the referee, Donna Sturdevant and Stacy Stoughton controlling the pace as score book and clock masters, Mike Jones assisting Brent Grochowski on the bench and Faith Trow watching the crowd.

Below are some items currently sitting in the staff lounge.  If you know where these items should be housed please assist with getting them to their correct home within Karcher - Thank you!

Article of the week:

• This is the same article as last week as it is a longer article.  This is a great article to read right before Thanksgiving Break.  It is important to think about the affect homework has on families and students.  

Homework over Holidays...

Calendar for :

November 16th - 20th

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher Character Students of the Week

November 9 - November 13

(left to right)

• Marissa Pena (Hive) 
• Showed leadership by organizing the Veteran's Day activity and was consistently kind and compassionate throughout the week. 
• Bronson Roanhaus (Silver) 
• Positive leadership in all of his classes and we appreciate his awesome sense of humor.
• Alexis Rodrequez (Diamond) 
• Very polite and hard working student who often helps out with little things that other students would ignore.  He treats all his classmates with respect.
• Dylan Umnus (Karcher Bucks) 
• Went above and beyond in PE class by assisting with cleaning up all the classroom equipment.
• Michael Bielefelt (Applied Academics)
• Being a positive leader inside the classroom and outside of the classroom.
• Alexandra Gauger (Onyx) 
• Positive attitude, work effort, always demonstrating "The Karcher Way" in terms of kindness, respect and compassion.

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Kudos

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• Bobbi Smith was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Bobbi and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Awesome job to Nicolas Buendia and all of our orchestra students for a GREAT fall strings concert.  I was REALLY impressed with the final number with students 7-12 - great performance!
• Thank you Brad Ferstenou & Katherine Botsford for putting the Chicago field trip together for the 7th grade class.  Below are pictures from the day.
• The literacy team, Jenny Geyso, Molly Ebbers, and Patti Tenhagen, did a GREAT job being instructional leaders for our PLC this last week - thank you for your hard work and time put into creating such engaging activities for our staff to use with our students.  
• Thank you ALL for a successful first Enrichment Week.  The rooms I attended had very engaging activities and the students were enjoying their learning/experiences.

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Reminders/Information

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• November 16th through Novmeber 24th advisory and iTime will be combined for Extended Advisory for our character curriculum with the focus being on each advisories iMovie creation.  
• November 23rd and 24th will be a modified schedule for our students to present their iMovies during an assembly.  The schedule is located at the end of the blog.
• Any questions see Patti Tenhagen, Alyssa Riggs, or Jack Schmidt.
• Flexisched starts back over with intervention iTime for 4 weeks then enrichment the 5th week.  Flexisched will have two weeks at a time showing up for this next round.  Our next Flexisched intervention will be December 3rd and 4th.
• The next Literacy Lesson will be November 30th and December 1st. 
• Student Council representatives will be attending the Region IV JAM leadership conference in Oconomowoc on November 19th.  See Marilee Hoffman with any questions.
• November 23 through December 8 our 8th grade students will not have compass opposite PE.  They will be meeting with Jean Freund and Steve Berezowitz to work through career cruising.  
• Special education aides' training scheduled for Wednesday, December 9th from 1:30 to 3:30.  Email Gail for details.
• Just a reminder when providing information for our subs:
• Provide very detailed and really well laid out plans.
• Provide accurate seating charts
• The placement of your sub plans needs to be easily accessible and easy to locate within your classroom for the sub to find.  
• With a subbing shortage these things really affect their desire to return to our building... so just be cognizant of these things.
• Lets see who is really reading the blog... :)  Email me your answer!
• I'm tall when I'm young and I'm short when I'm old.  What am I???

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Pictures from the week

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7th grade orchestra with Mr. Buendia

 8th grade orchestra with Mr. Buendia.

 7-12 grade orchestra students with Mr. Buendia on drums and    Ms. Soeth directing.

Our 7th grade students enjoying their experience at The Bean and Field Museum.

TED Talk to share:   Interesting to think about... 

The moral bias behind your search results.

Article of the week:  

• This is a great article to read right before Thanksgiving Break.  It is important to think about the affect homework has on families and students.  

Homework over Holidays...

Calendar for November:

November 9th - 13th

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher Character Students of the Week

All 6 of these students displayed positive character behaviors within our 8 focused traits:  

Be... responsible, respectful, kind, safe, honest, loyal, compassionate, courageous.  

Students:  (left to right) Spencer Crone (Onyx), Joel Fisher (Karcher Bucks), Kirsten Damrow-Blinderman (Diamond), Brian Fremgen (Hive), Wendy Villagran (Elective), Alex Hofer (Silver)

*** If you could please shoot Jane an email with WHY these students received your vote for student of the week I would appreciate it.  Moving forward we will put a quick sentence about why they were picked for the week.  Making it a bit more personal (thank you for the idea Stephanie Rummler).  So... for last week and this week please email Jane with the WHY.   Thank you.

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Kudos

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• Donna Sturdevant was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Donna and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Thank you Jacob Malewicki and Stephanie Rummler for taking the time to go see PBIS assemblies in action at Wauwatosa Longfellow Middle School.  The information you gained we are all excited to infuse into our PB_S here at Karcher!
• Thank you ALL for a great first term of the school year!  It is crazy to think we are already one term down.  Thank you for making my first 9 weeks working with all of you such an enjoyable experience.  I truly look forward to the rest of the school year with all of you!

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Reminders/Information

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• BLT Meeting on November 9th.
• Board Meeting on November 9th @ 7:00pm.  Larry Anderson's last day on the board as he has decided to retire.  He served for the Burlington Area School District for 18 years and on School Boards for a total of 36 years.  Come thank him for his service to the BASD.  
• Barry Schmaling was voted by the board last week to fill the open seat on the board for the interim time period until spring elections.  
• The String's Fall Concert is November 10, Tuesday night @ 7:30pm at BHS auditorium.  
• November 11, Wednesday the PLC will be in the library learning our new literacy comprehension tool.  
• November 12 and November 13 will be our first enrichment iTime periods.  Students all signed up on Friday and things are looking fairly even throughout everyone's classes for our first round!  Students will be in the same enrichment for both days (minus those going on the field trip).
• 7th grade field trip to the Field Museum in Chicago on Friday, November 13th (See Brad Ferstenou with any questions)
• Starting November 16 - November 24 advisory/iTime will be used for Character Curriculum with an assembly on the 23rd and 24th for the movies each advisory creates.  See Patti, Alyssa, or Jack for details.
• November 23rd and 24th will be a modified schedule - copies are on the counter in the main office.
• Student Council representatives will be attending the Region IV JAM leadership conference in Oconomowoc on November 19.  See Marilee Hoffman with any questions.

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Pictures from the week

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All of the below pictures this week are from my time on November 4th.  Sue Mosher and I had the opportunity to see personalized learning in action (fancy term for student-centered learning environments).  Below are some pictures I took of some different ways to think about the organization of your physical space to give students choice.  

Article of the week:  
A continuation from last weeks article...

Surfacing—and Challenging—Mindsets

Case studies have also revealed that data reports can be a Rorschach test for schools: What teams see in data says a lot about their mindsets about students and schooling.

In one urban middle school, conversations about improving student achievement focused mostly on sending "bubble kids" (whose results fell just below cut scores for proficiency levels) to tutoring or after-school programs (Horn, Kane, & Wilson, 2015). Teachers focused on what someone else might do and rarely touched upon how they might change their own instructional practices to boost student learning.

The school principal also revealed a behaviorist mindset about student learning by directing teachers to show students their test scores to motivate (in other words, scare) them into doing better. This leader also quipped that the after-school math program ought to be reserved for well-behaved students—showing no awareness that poor behavior might reflect student disengagement or difficulties. The school's mindset appeared to be, "We're okay; it's our students who are the problem."

Teachers in the other school profiled in the same study dug more deeply into student test data, examining questions students had missed to determine what concepts learners were struggling to grasp. Yet even as they surfaced possible misconceptions, the new teaching strategies these data teams came up with focused on helping students perform better on those particular test items, rather than on improving instruction (Horn, Kane, & Wilson, 2015).

Seeking "Kaizen"

Blockbuster's executives were smart people with good information. However, their mindsets got in the way. Many had come from retailers like Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven, so they focused on generating impulse buys in the video checkout aisle. They also faced pressure from shareholders demanding quick results—which may explain why they ousted Blockbuster's CEO when he proposed dropping late fees and investing heavily in a digital platform to rival Netflix's (Satell, 2014).

High-pressure environments—whether in schools or business—make it hard for people to own up to their shortcomings and work together. That's exactly what a study of high-stakes accountability in an urban district found. The longer low-performing schools faced the threat of sanctions, the less apt they were to examine their underlying assumptions and current practices—and pull together to improve them (Finnigan, Daly, & Che, 2012).

Educators who fear being judged by their shortcomings will be less likely to engage in self-reflection. Unless thoughtful leaders create a safe environment and set a tone akin to what Japanese manufacturers call kaizen—the view that "every defect is a treasure" that offers a chance to improve—teachers can have all the data in the world, but they won't be able to use the information to guide improvement.

Calendar for November: