LCHS Friday Focus

     Happy Friday! Only 2 more teaching days to go (not including today) before our break for Thanksgiving. I won't be writing a Friday Focus for next week, so I hope you are able to rest and relax during the break. When we come back, we will only have 14 days of instruction and 3 days of semester test.  Hopefully you all have seen the email from Mr. Ludwig regarding toner and copies. Please plan accordingly for semester tests. If you can give it using Schoology, I am sure it would be appreciated. Now that we are pass our 2nd quarter midterm, I will be meeting with Seniors that are in jeopardy for graduation. Mr. Formanek is also pulling opens from seniors who are failing classes.  We will start our registration process for next school year in January. I do not want to take away first semester days since it is shorter. The plan is to do our 8th grade career day mid-January and the 8th grade parent's night around that same time. Mrs. Hill and Mr. Kopperud will co...

    Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. You still have tonight or tomorrow to catch the production, "Once Upon a Pandora's Box". Performances are at 7:00 pm each night.  Midterm is on November 17, which is also the last day of Trimester 1. Trimester 1 grades are due on November 22. We will mail Trimester report cards home that day. Midterms will be handed out on November 17 in 8th period. Thank you for your work during in-service on Wednesday. As we continue along our PLC journey and become more familiar with the process, we will be able to focus on more skills and interventions for those that need it. Reminder that the 4 PLC questions will guide us in what we do. 1. What do we want students to know or be able to do? 2. How will we know if they learned it? 3. How will we respond when some students do not learn? 4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? PASS Plans need to be completed by the 17. Right now I show we have 162 kid...

   Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. I had a good discussion with one of our peers regarding some of our students and lack of work ethic. I know many of you have had the student who will take the test not prepared and will just say I'll take the retake. How do we help students develop that work ethic? Where has the "grit" gone in our students?  Unfortunately, this is not something that is unique to our school or to our students. And not every student is this way. But we are seeing more and more students struggle with school. Some of the struggle comes from gaps in skills and others come from a lack of effort or what I call "stick withitness". How do we emphasize the work ethic students need, not only in school, but in life? Not only are some students missing this key trait, we are also seeing a rise in anxiety. I think these two things could be related. Think about your experiences growing up, for some of you this isn't that far back, but for m...

  Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. As we get into second quarter, remember PASS Plans should be completed by Nov. 17. The 17th is mid term of the 2nd quarter. I am getting the PASS Plan spreadsheet updated. So please check that to make sure I have a copy of any plans you may have made.  We do have some seniors who could be hurting credit wise. If you have a senior that is failing a class, please make sure you are making contact with the parents, either arranging a meeting or updating them. Don't necessary rely that they will be checking PowerSchool.  On Tuesday, Mrs. Hill, Mr. Kopperud, and myself attended a workshop titled "Future Ready Iowa". Future Ready Iowa is the state's push for PK-12 programs to make sure all Iowa students are ready for life after high school. We looked at some of our post-secondary data. The state tracks students for 6 years after they graduate high school. They look at how many students we say are going to attend post-secondar...

   Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. I think this week, more than any other week so far this year, the students have been a little wound up. I don't know if it was the full moon or the change in the weather, but they were a little more crazier than normal. I know have talked with a few teachers this week and understand the behaviors are getting to us. I have found myself more impatient when dealing with the students. I need to remind myself that I need to try and get to the root cause of the issue/behavior. Many times this has nothing to do with what we are doing here, but what is going on outside of our walls. As our demographics continue to change, we need to keep this in mind. We have more non-traditional families than we have had in the past. Unfortunately, I have also seen an increase in the number of parents that throw in the towel when their student gets into high school. Continue to be patient, and remember the students are not scheming on how to make lif...

  Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. Thank you for your discussions during in-service. There was a common theme coming out of all the groups and it deals mainly with student maturity/behavior issues. This is a good time for us to hit pause and maybe reteach expectations. If a student struggles after the reteaching, they may need to come in and have a private reteaching session. I also heard we are having an issue with students doing homework. If that is the case, reach out to the parents to let them know that if their student comes to class and does not have their homework done, they will be staying after school to do this. Way back when I was still in the classroom, I would take students out to football practice with me so they could finish their homework and then give it to me so they could leave. After a couple times doing this, the students knew I was serious, so they just did it so they didn't have to come to practice with me. I know there were several PASS Plans ...

  Happy Friday! I hope everyone had a great week. We are quickly approaching the end of the first quarter. October 20 marks the end, grades will be due on October 25 at 8:00 am. Please make sure everything is current at that time. Deb and Amy will run the report cards and will mail them out that day. Ineligibility list will come from Mr. Formanek that day also. Remember, the quarter policy is that students must be passing four full time classes.  Thank you for the discussions you had on Wednesday regarding your assessments. I know the internet was down so groups were not able to work in their document. We will give you some additional time during our 2 hour in-service to work on that.  I'll be making an announcement this morning regarding video surveillance. We will be setting up temporary cameras to record parts of hallways that have some behaviors happening we do not want. It will also allow us to see who is accessing what restrooms at what time. I also ask that their i...