Posts

Friday, October 16, 2026

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      Friday Focus Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. As I make my way around the building each week, my main goal is simply to stay connected to the great instruction happening in your classrooms and keep a pulse on our shared goals. I wanted to share a quick update on what I’m actually tracking on my phone when I step into your room, just so there’s complete transparency around our walkthrough process. When I first walk through your door, I’m essentially capturing a quick snapshot of the room's immediate energy—taking note of what you’re doing, whether that’s leading a full-group lesson, working with a small group, or circulating for individual check-ins, alongside what the students are actively engaged in at that moment. Beyond that initial snapshot, I’m looking for the foundational APL routines we’re all familiar with, like smooth transitions, clear lesson objectives, and high-yield student engagement strategies. At the same time, I’m gathering evidence o...

Friday, October 9

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     Friday Focus Happy Friday! Thank you for all of your assistance during homecoming week and then we started this week out pretty busy on Monday too, Sophomore and Senior class meetings, college fair, and then parent/teacher conferences. I need to remember not to schedule so much around homecoming. If you didn't get a chance to make it down the college fair, it was a successful event. Not only did many of our students go through, but lots of other area high school students. A big thanks to Judd, Melissa, and Amy organizing this event. We are looking for a date in the spring to do a career fair that would follow the same format as the college fair. The career fair will be open to more students from our building. Judd and I will look at the calendar to try and find dates between the winter and spring sport seasons, stay tuned. I have been working on expanding our formal internship/apprenticeship agreements with our local industries. Currently I am working with a couple o...

Friday, October 2

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    Friday Focus Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great Homecoming week! I would like to recognized Mr. Bahr and Mrs. Cunningham for all their guidance for our student council to help pull off our homecoming festivities. I thought the auditorium was a great venue for the coronation ceremony Monday night.  Students will be in advisory until 10:15, then an announcment will be made to dismiss students to the competition gym. Please sit in the stands with the grade level of your advisory. Those that have mixed grades, please just pick one.  Just a reminder, I need to hear from you today if you do not want to be on the ballot to read names at graduation. Aides, this includes you too.  We will have our last night of parent teacher conferences on Monday. This is a great time to have those PASS plan meetings.  Reminders/Due Dates   Oct. 5 - Parent Teacher Conferences Night 2 Oct. 6 - Evac Drill #2 @ 1:10 pm Oct. 21 - End of 1st Quarter Enjoy the weekend! Ma...

September 25, 2026

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   Friday Focus Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week!  Congrats to Mrs. Carter for being named the Employee of the Month for the school district. Mrs. Carter was nominated by Mrs. Wonders and Mrs. Sadoski. Mrs. Carter's husband, daughter, and granddaughter were able to help us with the  surprise. Announcements Your Tier 2 Plans are due today. Please make sure they are in the shared drive in the Tier 2 folder.  I will be working on the Early Warning System and will be moving students around from study hall to the success center based on the current grades. Be patient with me as I get this done as it will take a little time.  Next week is homecoming, hopefully you have had enough time to find your outfits for each day. On Monday, October 5, I will have a sophomore class meeting regarding class rings in the little theater during advisory followed by a senior class meeting regarding ordering graduation cap and gown. We do have our second inservice day...

September 18, 2026

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  Friday Focus Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week! Hopefully this weekend's football results go better for me.  I wanted to take a quick moment to say a huge thank you for your focus and energy during our first Science of Reading session. I know diving headfirst into background theory and foundational research can feel a bit heavy, but getting aligned on the why makes all the difference as we move forward together. The great news? We aren't starting from square one. We are actually stepping into a multi-year, district-wide effort. In fact, our current Freshmen are among the very first students to benefit from this systematic approach at every single grade level before walking through our high school doors! To see how our work fits into the bigger picture, Scarborough’s Reading Rope gives us a great roadmap: Here is how the work breaks down across the grade bands: Elementary: Heavy focus on word recognition—phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition—w...

September 11, 2026

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    Friday Focus Happy Friday! This coming week we will have our first inservice day of the school year.  As we map out our professional development for the year, I want to give you a clear picture of where we’re heading and why. This year, our PD focus will center on the Science of Reading . I know the reaction some of you might have when you hear "reading PD" in a high school building: I teach Chemistry, Auto Tech, or Geometry. I don’t teach reading, so how does this apply to me? That reaction makes complete sense if we’re talking about teaching kids how to decode letters or sound out words. That’s not what this is. In a high school setting, this is about disciplinary literacy —how students read, process, and write within your specific field. A student can’t solve a multi-step word problem in calculus, analyze a source document in history, or execute a safety manual in shop class if they struggle to navigate the specialized language of that subject. You aren't being as...