Bias--gender, race, class, sexual orientation, body size...

We all have cultural bias, racial bias. One of the difficult things around this subject matter is to deny that we have places we go to subconsciously, and unless you consciously decide that that's wrong and you've got to do something about it, especially if you're in a position of power, it won't change. “David Oyelowo”

While it may not be pervasive at NKHS, we would be kidding ourselves to say we do not have bias

among students and even ourselves, staff and teachers alike. This year with a helpful grant awarded to the PE Department from the RI Department of Health we will embark on this necessary issue. We had a healthy conversation at our Instructional Leadership Team meeting today and we look forward to taking an honest look at our school community this year in an effort to help our students recognize their biases, as well. This good work will ultimately lead to cultural acceptance of differences, empathy towards others and one day soon, celebration of those differences. For those interested in being part of the solution please email one of the following people: Lisa_Garcia@nksd.net, Julie_Maguire@nksd.net, or Denise_Mancieri@nksd.net, the advisors for the class of 2020. We would appreciate your thoughts on upcoming dialogues, actiivities for student growth, and professional development. Thank you.

Community in Action

Joint effort:

The NKHS Leadership Academy, Varsity Athletes Against Substance Abuse and the Interact Club joined forces to help Ocean State Job Lot with a recent literacy initiative. Job Lot's objective was to help replace books destroyed by hurricane flood waters, and in so doing ensure the learning process continues with as little interruption as possible. Job Lot delivered a tractor trailer load of brand new scholastic books to the schools in Houston. Each case of books was accompanied by a handwritten postcard from our NKHS students. A handful of students also volunteered on Saturday to offload the cases onto a conveyor system, open them, and sort them for delivery.

People’s Credit Union wins Desjardins Youth Financial Education Award

MIDDLETOWN, RI (October 19, 2017) — People’s Credit Union was recently honored with first place in Rhode Island for the Desjardins Financial Education Award. The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) established the award to recognize leadership within the credit union movement on behalf of financial literacy for all ages. People’s was recognized in the $250 million to $1 billion asset category at the state level, and the Credit Union’s winning entry will now go on to the national competition.

The award focused on People’s Credit Union’s partnership with North Kingstown High School (NKHS) where People’s sponsors the Rhode Island Financial Scholars Program at no cost to the school. The program is powered by EverFi, a leading web-based financial literacy platform that helps support teachers and schools by making critical skills education opportunities available to students. Working with Richard Garland, a business and finance teacher at North Kingstown High School, People’s Credit Union helped implement financial literacy coursework into the curriculum and expand financial literacy into other school programs.

Health & Wellness

From Jonathan Quinn--PE

October 20, 2017

Health & Wellness.

Before your willpower gets tossed away in a pile of candy wrappers, know you can have a piece of candy and be healthy, too …

It’s all in how you do it. Halloween can be the start of a season-long fight against the allure of comfort foods, festive meals, and sweets. Or, it can be a practice run for a healthier approach to the big-food holidays that follow.

Here are quick ways to stay on the wellness path, even when little goblins bearing bite-size sugar haunt your best intentions.

DO stock up on healthy snacks and fresh produce. Put these full-filling nibbles conveniently within reach. Make them the fastest, easiest option to ward off hunger. Mix sweet and savory for a multi-craving buster.

A festive mix, but not scary sweet.

Tip: Create your own Halloween trail mix with nuts, dried fruit, unbuttered popcorn, mini-pretzels. Throw in a small handful of chocolate morsels or candy corn for the right ratio of one part festive to five parts healthy.

DO give a healthy share. Trick-or-treaters, and their parents, will appreciate the novelty of decorative pencils, plastic rings, or fun stickers in their goodie bags. You can buy these in bulk where party goods are sold. Think outside the candy bag when you shop for treats.

DO plan a quick and healthy Halloween dinner. Regardless of which side of the door you are on, once twilight sets, you’ll be busy. It is hard to sit down to a full meal, but there are alternatives besides fast food.

Tip: Set out a buffet of fresh veggie sticks, cheese chunks, whole wheat crackers, and fruit. These can be prepared the night before and munched on while costumes are donned. Easy and minimal chance for mess. They also can be pulled out of the fridge later in the night, you know, in case any little candy hunters claim “hunger.”

On Halloween, DO manage to fit in a workout., knowing if you sneak in treats of your own, it is only one part of your otherwise healthy day.

Upcoming Events/Important Dates

October--Empathy

31 Halloween

November--Accountability

1 District Evaluation Committee Meeting, 4-5 pm, Admin Bldg

2 District Tech Committee Meeting, 4-5 pm, Admin Bldg

3 First Quarter Ends

8 Career and Tech Education Open House, 6:30-8 pm, Auditorium, followed by tours in the Spine and presentations in Pre-engineering Robotics, Finance and Computer Science Academies.

Teaching and Learning

Social Emotional Learning

From Cindy Zito:

Last week, in the Providence Journal, and in last Thursday's Standard Times, there were great articles that spoke about Scarlett Lewis and the Choose Love Movement/Enrichment program, that Scarlett created in the memory of her son, Jesse. It was through her post-traumatic growth that she was able to create a comprehensive k-12 program.

Today, I complimented a student about being courageous; she shared something very traumatic and because she took a risk, she is beginning the steps of moving in a more positive direction. I bring this up because the first unit in the high school curriculum is courage. The Choose Love program defines courage as the willingness and ability to work through obstacles despite embarrassment, fear, reluctance, or uncertainty. Courage involves making positive choices, even though they may be difficult. It takes courage to express our feelings,make ethical choices, tell the truth, admit mistakes, ask for forgiveness, and to be kind. This is especially true when others are not leading by example. Courage requires self-awareness and self-regulation (Greenberg, 2016). Students practice identifying feelings in themselves and others. The “courage” exercises teach students how to regulate their amygdalas by activating their prefrontal cortexes

(Martinez, 2015).

There are 42 lessons for high school students that involve the theme of courage! After the theme of courage is discussed, gratitude, forgiveness and compassion in action is addressed. During the second semester, it is my hope to try, during advisory, to get this off the ground...maybe visit 1 or 2 advisories once or twice a week to implement the curriculum.

Let me know if you want to read Scarlett's memoir; you will not be disappointed.

Thanks for reading ~ Cindy

Tech Tip

From Mark DeLucia

Week Ending October 27th

Applied Digital Skills

This week, I’m featuring a ready-to-use digital literacy curriculum created by a group called Google CS First. The curriculum focuses on teaching literacy in Google Applications through various project-based work which can be used across many disciplines, not only in Emerging Tech. Each unit contains a number of activities, notes the skills addressed, and displays the amount of time necessary for students to complete it. Some examples of the skills taught are research strategies, creating reports, implementing algorithms and debugging, evaluating bias and manipulating data. The program is certified by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and is completely FREE. Sign-in as a teacher, create a dashboard, and peruse the lessons to find some ideas for your classes!

Changing Passwords

For those who missed Donna’s e-mail, please ensure that you are using a safe and secure password for logging into school computers and Chromebooks. I recommend eight characters and including an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter, a number and a special character.

Articles Worth Reading

Need updated information on Anxiety and Teens?

Why are more American teenagers suffering from severe anxiety?

Educators Employ Strategies To Help Kids With Anxiety Return To School

Information on gender bias:

Research: Objective Performance Metrics Are Not Enough to Overcome Gender Bias

Videos Worth Watching

From Sherri Briggs:

New Teachers Take Note and great review for veterans.

Did you know you can email your child's teachers from your Aspen Family Portal? Using the email teachers feature in Aspen takes the guesswork out of email addresses and name spelling. Watch the 2-minute video included in the link below to learn how.

https://resources.follettlearning.com/support/aspen/training/aspen-students-and-families/aspen-emailing-teachers#

Food for Thought

“I will, til the day I die, be an advocate for the d-word: diversity.” David Oyewolo

Cannot send the blog without a few pics from the first annual outdoors Homecoming Pep Rally and Powder Puff! Thank you to Rob Silveira, Deb Hammersley, Courtney Greer and Emily VanGelder for their pics.