December 13, 2020

   

Kudos! 

• Kudos to Stephanie Rummler and Patti Tenhagen for your work with our students to infuse some holiday spirit into each school day!  
• Spirit Days are... 
• Monday/Tuesday - Ugly Sweater & Crazy Socks with Crocs or Birdenstocks! 
• Thursday/Friday - Christmas Jammies!  
• THANK YOU to Mike Jones for all of his Holiday games, prizes, activities, etc that started right after Thanksgiving break!  It takes a lot of time and effort to put this all together for staff - please make sure you say THANK YOU to Mike for all of his time and effort to bring some cultural fun to staff!  
• Thank you again to Mike Jones along with Stacey Stoughton for your time and efforts playing around with the potential thoughts for the technology in the new 6-8 building for academic classrooms.  We think we have found a GREAT flexible option and they will be passing the technology along, to 7th grade math next, after the Holiday Break!  The technology that will be coming around for staff to try out is the 86 inch TV, iPad, and Apple Pen.  When these items come your way please try them out for two days and then pass them along to the next academic teacher!  These will most likely be the items purchased for our academic staff (Math, ELA, Science, Social Studies, Spanish, and Self-Contained Special Education), initially, as we work to stay within our budget.  
• Thank you to Kailee Smith, Patti Tenhagen, Scott Staude for taking the initiative to utilize some of the furniture options with students in order to gain their feedback as we work to develop our final furniture selections.  

Information/Reminders

• The BHS/KMS Competition is ON!!!!!!!  
• We hope you all have fun participating in the friendly competition from Headquarters!  
• SLO/PPG - Those of you who have not submitted your SLO/PPG yet, your initial one, please do so ASAP as they should be in by now!  
• Elective Staff:  
• Please make sure your course selections for the 2021-2022 school year are in THIS slide show no later than Wednesday, December 16.  
• Please do not email me your course selection information with a different email - we are wanting everything in one location to assist with planning and ensuring we have all the information together.  If you don't like the template provided not a big deal!  Look at slides 40 and 41 if you need an example as Wellness has their courses in the slides the way we would like to see them.  
• Once they are in the slides I will come and touch base with you as touching base is much easier when the information is in the document to discuss.  
• Monday, December 14 - BLT meeting via Zoom from 2:40-3:30 
• Focus:  6-8 updates, what does iTime look like after Christmas Break (using Winter iReady data).  Please add anything your team has wanted you to discuss at BLT to the agenda!  
• Wednesday, December 16 - Special Education Meeting starting at 1:30 via Zoom.  
• Wednesday, December 16 - BHS/KMS Meeting starting at 2:30 in either the commons area or the gym (will get you the location prior).  This is in relation to the team activity we have set up this week!  
• Friday, December 18 - End of term 2!  That's right... half way there!  
• The grading window will open Monday, December 14th and remain open until Wednesday, January 6.  Grades will then post on Friday, January 8th and should be sent home (grades 3-4) with students on the 8th.  
• Also the iReady diagnostic window will close on the 18th!
• Saturday, December 19 through January 3 - Winter Break!  
• Monday, January 4 all of our staff and students will return for the start of term 3!  Students who are switching from JEDI to in-person learning will be joining us starting on Monday, January 4th!  

Looking ahead:  

• Your Mid-Year SLO/PPG will be due by Monday, February 15

Pictures from this past week! 

 

Student council working to bring some Christmas spirit to staff and students!

Kurt Rummler and Alyssa Riggs having students make connections to the text by playing quick games within class that are mentioned within the text!

Part of News Crew working on this week's segment!

Students in 8th grade Science with Dina Weis developing snowman babies with the focus of genetics and the impact genes have!

As a reminder, as we near the selection of academic classroom furniture, the below image is the built-in storage in every academic space!

Parts of the 6-8 building will have stained concrete - below are samples of what it will look like.  The top left and top right will be the colors used in the building.  The others were additional choices that were not picked.  There will also be the natural concrete look infused as well (natural is the space between the colors).  This process is planned to begin this week!  

Garage doors have been installed in the STEM rooms!

Shelving for robotics in first STEM room.  

Framing of the wall overlooking the commons area.  The upper level is where 4 of the science rooms are, the opening will be where the windows go and the metal you see will be covered with wood!

New curtains at BHS in the gym if you can't see those yet!

December 6, 2020

 

KUDOS!  

• Thank you to all of our elective area teachers for your leadership and time spent with your K-12 colleagues to develop and determine the 6-8 course selections for the 2021-2022 school year!  As I shared last week, I will shoot each of you an invite for us to meet and go over what the team came up with as I know you have some questions, etc.  Look for that invite in the days to come!  
• Thank you to Mike Jones for his dedication to KMS as he did it again... he brought some serious holiday cheer and togetherness for the Karcher Staff with all the fun activities each day!  Tomorrow, Monday, is coffee and hot chocolate day!  The coffee will be from The Coffee House!  Both the coffee and hot chocolate options will be in room 237 for Karcher staff to enjoy!!!  If you haven't already... please thank Mike for all his time and effort he has put into everything!  Simply awesome!  Can't you just picture Mike as the lead GOOSE saying... come on guys... getting tired... well don't I just have the thing for you... fun & games & prizes &, &, &... we got this!  Thanks again Mike!!!  
• Thank you to Kurt Rummler, our SHARE Club advisor for his dedication to our students, school, district, and community as Kurt has been attending and participating with our administrative team with some PD from the National Equity Project (NEP).  Kurt was asked to involve some of our SHARE Club students to participate with the NEP as well - they will be meeting via Zoom with other students across the nation tomorrow Monday!  Thank you Kurt for being such a lead GOOSE!!!  
• Kudos to Amanda Thate and our special education teachers  for your behind the scenes work to make some tweaks to student IEPs so we can continue to evolve our practices to meet the needs of individual students!  Amanda's ability to create systems and processes for the team to follow is something to see - and - I don't know how she can develop them so fast!!!  Thank you Amanda!
• Kudos to Jenny Geyso for her continued work with our JEDI students!  And thank you to our staff for your willingness to think differently as we work to infuse new ways of delivering instruction virtually to students in lieu of JEDI for semester 2 - more to come!  

In lieu of an article... 

Greetings, All!

Eric Burling and I have a quick announcement for you. We wanted to find a way to thank all of you for your hard work and to show you how much we appreciate each of you. We decided to hold a unique HOLIDAY CONTEST to find a group who impresses us the most with their creativity and team skills. We also have some fantastic PRIZES picked out for the winning team as our way of expressing thanks for your effort and success. 

We are calling it “The Holiday Contest”, and it’s scheduled for after school December 16th at 2:30 in the Commons or Gym (TBD). You will receive more information regarding the team to which you are assigned (mixed between BHS and KMS staff) on December 11th. The BEST team will be the one that is the most creative, most daring, and most enthusiastic….so bring your game faces!

To start us off, we have a little puzzle: 

B.H.S.A.K.M.S.W.N.S.A.H.P.L.A.C.L.A.P.H! 

Tell us what that stands for and we’ll be impressed. Put your guesses in  THIS FORM!!! You can  submit guesses  more  than once :)  

That’s all the information we can give you at this time. We have wanted to hold this contest for some time, and the time is finally right. We hope everyone has fun!  

Best of Luck, 

Eric, Ryan, Emily, Annie, and I :)  

P.S. We can already read your minds and let us assure you: Other than solving a riddle or two and talking with your team, this won’t add any extra work. 

Information/Reminders

• Monday, December 7 - Emmons Furniture Information 
• Furniture pieces that are either in the running or will be infused in the new building will be brought over to BHS and placed (initially) in the upstairs corner by the elevator or in the library.  
• ELA staff - please utilize the pieces within your  classroom spaces as your spaces are the most conducive at BHS for additional furniture pieces to be infused in your spaces to be used with students.  
• Other academic staff - please take the opportunity to bring ALL  students, iTime students, etc into the library where the pieces will be to gain feedback from students.  More so about the stools and their preference for wheels or a wobble base.  What seats would they want to run into the classroom to utilize?  Will want their feedback from you by Thursday morning this week!  
• Classroom Teachers:  
• Please rank the three student desks in THIS Google Form.  This is the same one from the email shared with you over the weekend!  
• Here are the furniture teacher rankings compiled from Emmons of all the furniture you viewed and ranked right before Thanksgiving or  this week!  
• Tally of staff rankings
• Rankings shown by furniture images 
• Monday, December 7 - District Essential Skills Committee Meeting from 3:45-5:15 via Zoom.
• This committee's time is being spent analyzing and working to develop our K-12 grading practices.  How does late work, redos/retakes, homework, formatives, summatives, and other student habits all fit into the scope of teaching and learning while ensuring an academic grade truly reflects academic growth  and learning around grade  level  proficiency.  
• iReady Winter Diagnostic 
• Thank you to everyone for starting the iReady diagnostic this past week and for working to ensure the diagnostic is taking in-person for as many students as possible.  At the 7-8 level, if students are absent and you are unsure about their return please have them take the diagnostic virtually - reminding them of the importance of taking their time and taking it themselves (without support from others or the Internet).  Knowing you only see your students 4 more times between now and Christmas Break we know it might be tough to get the diagnostic in with absent students - do our best to hold off so it is in-person and simply use your  judgement on who you are asking to take the assessment at home.  
• Term 2 Grading Window Information 
• Term 2 ends on December 18th.  The grading window to post grades will open on Monday, December 14th and remain open until January 6 at 3:30pm.  Grades will then post to Family Access on Friday, January 8th!  

Picture from this past week!  

Band and Orchestra with Dustan Eckmann working on some serious disciplinary literacy when reading music (I learned a far amount about sixteenth notes... 1 e + ah...) and then to play while reading their music with the new knowledge... great to see!

7th grade ELA with Kailee Smith, Ellen Murphy, and Kelly Fulton - students were writing about the changes within characters noticed within a short story.  Utilizing text evidence to support their reasoning of course!  

Students in 7th grade Science with Barb Berezowitz, Andrea Hancock, and Kelly Fulton working on the skill of making observations using different tools to describe an array of objects (including one student cutting out a chunk of his hair to observe under the microscope - oh  yes... even 7th graders want to cut their hair.  Teaching sure does provide us with a heck of a lot of funny stories in comparison to other careers!)