North Kingstown High School Weekly Focus: Week Ending February 19, 2016

“In so many ways, learning is a fundamentally social act. From circle time in kindergarten, to study groups in college, to team projects in the workforce, sociability has always greased the gears of learning.” -Daniel Pink

There are multiple priorities in our district, our school, and your classrooms. Teachers across the district have attended Kim Ramos’ Google Bootcamp series to learn additional technology skills. Our next faculty meeting on March 7, which will concentrate on technology, is designed to be a social learning time, as well. As the months pass, professional learning and faculty meeting time decrease; we need to be creative on how to attend to our goals. Planning is most important if we want implementation, whether it's in the classroom or at the building level. Additionally, at the building level, the next step in planning/gathering research for our school schedule is to visit a few local schools whose daily schedule was of interest to the focus group--Coventry, Narragansett and Tiverton. Barbara will visit each school with 1-2 teachers from this focus group. Please email her if you are interested in participating.

Corrections

Maxwell Michael Polseno--1 Day Old

Like all ethically published media, one must recognize an error or two. The GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) has changed its name aptly to SAGA (Sexuality and Gender Awareness) not SOGI as was published last week.

Good News

Received permission from Rich Polseno (English Department) to share this collage of Maxwell. Sheri and he are over the moon with Maxwell’s arrival. Thank you goes out to his sister for the collage.

Teachers as Learners

The Instructional Leadership team, which includes all department chairs, will be meeting next Tuesday to review at-risk data that was collected on the final day of midterm exams. Together the group has been using protocols for text discussions, looking at student work (we did as a fishbowl activity for the October faculty meeting and by department Nov 6 PD morning) and now we will use the Atlas Looking at Data Protocol to make meaning of the data from January 29th.

One particular characteristic I truly enjoy about NKHS is that our faculty are continuous learners. You often learn side by side with your students and I like to learn side by side with you and from you. I am spending this year facilitating the protocols with the ILT so that they will become comfortable with the process and continue to share it with our departments. If data are your thing or not, knowing the indicators to support and provide evidence for effective teaching, interventions, or re-allocation of resources is a good thing to have before requesting changes or making decisions. I asked the department chairs to let everyone know that we will be using this protocol. If any teacher is interested in learning more about the Atlas Protocol please tell your chair so we can get you in the loop. MUST SEE VIDEO from Dr. Elizabeth City of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, as she talks about the use of data protocols to analyze data. For those teachers participating on Tuesday this is a great explanation of what we will be doing.

Student/Teacher Learners

Kevin with Sandy Taylor,
the President of the NK Rotary

This past Tuesday was North Kingstown High School’s turn to have a faculty member and student recognized for their service above self. Kevin Barry, was the student recognized by the North Kingstown Rotary. If you know Kevin Barry you need no words to understand why he was selected. For the teachers that have not had the pleasure, here are a few words from Keith Higgins:

Kevin came to me last year as a peer partner for my adapted PE class.

He possesses a natural ability to connect with the students in the class and that became evident instantly. His interactions with his classmates are always very positive and sincere. He is one of the most mature, caring and conscientious young men that I have had the pleasure to work with. He consistently serves as an fantastic role model for his peers to emulate.Kevin Barry is unquestionably one of NKHS' finest.

John, with Sandy Taylor, and me
at the NK Rotary Meeting last Tuesday.

It was also my pleasure to introduce Mr. John Boutcher to the NK Rotary. John Boutcher is a quiet leader. He knows no boundaries when it comes to assisting others, be it a student who needs an AP BC Calculus course that is not offered, an at-risk child in need of extra help that is not on his classroom roster, a teacher in need of mentoring, or an administrator who is technically challenged. John’s appetite for learning is insatiable; it is part of who he is. He has taken tools given to him, not waiting for training simply because his abilities far surpass most trainers. When advanced training is offered he jumps right in and looks towards how it can be used to assist the students. Then, he is generous in sharing his knowledge without a word or need for public recognition. He is the consummate professional, whenever he sees a challenge he does not shy away, instead he presents solutions that are in the best interest of students while considering the teachers’ perspective as well. Thank you, John, for all you do for NKHS.

Health and Wellness

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Upcoming Events/Important Dates

February 23 – School Committee Meeting 7pm

February 26 -- Winter Pep Rally (rescheduled due to snow day) Fifth Period

February 26 -- Rewind Dance

March 4 – Musical – “Fiddler on the Roof” 7 pm

March 5 – Musical -- 2 & 7 pm

March 6 – Musical -- 2 pm

March 8 – School Committee Meeting 7 pm

Student Services Office (Donna)

Congratulations to Emily Bell for being nominated for this week's Skipper Pride for Excellence Award by last week's winner Kathy Whaley. From Kathy:

"For many years I have observed firsthand your caring attitude towards your students and your strong sense of teamwork! I was one of the lucky teachers that got to co-teach with you; you always made this collaboration easy. Co-teaching with you to meet the needs of our students was always a success because of your philosophy and shared responsibility of implementing lessons.”

Congratulations Emily. Looking forward to see who you will pick next week.

Thank you to everyone who attended the Student Handbook meeting on Friday. A few teachers asked to attend another session, I will have one planned in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.

Morgan Sherburne's Senior Project, a Winter Pep Rally will be scheduled on February 26th during 5th hour. In the next few days, I will be sending out a modified schedule for that week so there are no instructional minutes lost that week. The Winter Rewind Dance has been postponed until February 26th.

I will be scheduling the Rhode Island Student Survey that is required by the RI Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals. The survey takes about 30 minutes, so I will extend the survey during advisory into period 3 on March 2nd. I will send out a link with instructions. Students can take the survey from their phones. Otherwise, I know many of you have technology in the classroom.

Community

From Ruthann Baker: The German Club typically works to welcome all of our International Students at our first opportunity (generally, February). Patti Kirwan's kids were really delightful, expressing sincere gratitude for the chance to be part of the fabric of NKHS. In fact, none of them could recall a single complaint, which we all found impressive -- even uplifting.

Quite a number of our students baked and shopped to make this event a treat on several levels. It was also an honor to have several teachers join us, including Cecile Jones, Patti Kirwan, and Darrell Sutton.

There is interest in keeping this group together by forming an NKHS International Club (in case you know of a faculty member, who might be interested in hosting such a group).

Technology

Mark DeLucia is the building Technology Support person and doing a great job. However, in departments around the building there are a group of teachers that are comfortable with the technology and are assisting their colleagues. Mitch Cournoyer has been taking the lead in the Social Studies Department and has shared a great idea for uploading documents to your Google Drive or Google Classroom. It could even help solve the copier lines in some areas.

I asked Mitch to explain how the app works. His response follows:

I think there are a number of app's out there that may do the same as this one but the app is called Scanner Pro The app was free when I found it, but it looks like they have added a price now. In any case, I take a paper document and place it on a clean surface, open the app and hover over the paper like I was taking a picture of it. The app automatically finds the borders and takes the picture. Once you have the image you can do a number of things, email, send it to your google drive folders or to your google classroom or keep it as a PDF.

Over this past SY, I have been trying to take all of my paper files and digitize them onto my Google Drive and then sent them out to my classes. I find this to be great when I have kids who are out and can't get access to the docs. I hand out paper copies and then place the same PDF on my Google Classroom so that they will have a copy of it. I am planning to start assignments as Rick Powell showed us earlier this year.

After reading Mitch's response, I emailed Kim Ramos to ask her to offer a similar scanning app for no cost. Kim suggested reading this article with Five Best Mobiile Apps for Scanning.

Finally, Kim emailed me one last time and her email read as follows:

I already had the Google Drive app on my phone. I hit the + for "new" and chose Use Camera. I took a photo of an article and it automatically uploaded to drive as a jpeg. I printed it and compared it side-by-side with the original. It wasn't perfect, but not bad.

If you are in a pinch and have the Google Drive app already on your phone, try it, you may like it! Thank you, Mitch for the detailed information on a great tool for the classroom. Kim, thank you for all of the alternative free ideas.

Happy scanning. Need more time? Our next faculty meeting will concentrate on technology, apps, and use in your classroom.

School Culture

From the Deans:

PBIS/Dance Team groups have rescheduled the Winter Rewind Dance to this Friday, February 26th from 7-10 pm. We are still in need a couple more chaperones if you are available. This date has changed since the email earlier in the week to accommodate the rehearsal for the musical. Thank you to Dave Cesaro and Cindy Zito for helping us get the lunch detention project off the ground. This has certainly helped us to ease into the Restorative Justice practices, by providing students with options for discipline. Lunch detention is designed to allow students with after school obligations to forfeit their social time during lunch and serve their detention in room 202. Lunch detention is held during all 4 lunches, where students are held to the same standards as after school detention.

Videos Worth Watching