In Support of Your Work

Dear SUHSD Staff, Students, Parents, and Community Members,

In support of your work and continued effort to provide our students with quality learning experiences, the Siskiyou Union High School District Board of Trustees adopted Resolution 11-18 at the December 14th board meeting. This is a statement of support for your work and a recognition that you are at the forefront of an effort to prepare our students for the 21st century. This efforts takes time, learning, leadership, creativity, collaboration, and risk. 

The Board of Trustees appreciates and stands firmly behind your work and as stated in the resolution:

"The Siskiyou Union High School District commends its teaching and support staff for their learning and efforts, and urges the administration, the teaching and support staff, and the communities to continue in their efforts to provide all students with relevant and engaging learning experiences that prepare them for success in the 21st century."

SISKIYOU UNION HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT

RESOLUTION NO. 11-18

The Siskiyou Union High School District recognizes that the process of preparing students for careers, college, and citizenship in the 21st century requires our schools to be interactive and supportive learning environments that provide all students with learning experiences that are relevant, engaging, and lead to the development of identified academic standards and interpersonal skills.   To bring all students to a level of proficiency with these identified standards and skills, each school must develop projects and experiences that are intentionally planned, provide specific instruction and opportunity to use and develop a variety of skills, and provide students with direct interaction with their communities.

The Board of Education and District Administration recognizes the learning and change that this direction requires of the teaching and support staff. The Board of Education and Administration unequivocally support their learning and development of these important Project Based Learning experiences that will prepare our students for success in the 21st century.

The Siskiyou Union High School District declares:

WHEREAS, all of our students need to be proficient with identified academic standards and identified 21st century skills; and

WHEREAS, students desire to be involved with engaging and relevant projects and activities that allow them to use and develop their talents and interests; and

WHEREAS, Project Based Learning is a proven method and instructional strategy of developing identified standards and identified 21st century skills; and

WHEREAS, teachers need to collaborate with each other and with community members to develop these types of projects and learning experiences; and

WHEREAS, teachers need to learn, innovate, develop new skills, and develop community partnerships in support of the learning experiences for students, and

WHEREAS, in a variety of ways, efforts will be made to identify and enlist the support of community members for community-school partnerships, and  

WHEREAS, the Board of Education will provide teachers the autonomy, support, and encouragement necessary to develop these types of experiences for all students; and

WHEREAS, this effort involves a fundamental shift in our structural, cultural, and educational expectations; and

WHEREAS, the future of our high schools and rural communities depends on the preparation, involvement, and success of our schools and students,

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Siskiyou Union High School District has adopted this Resolution in support of a Project Based Curricular focus, in support of the learning and implementation efforts of our teaching and support staff, in support of the development of community partners to support the learning experiences of our students, and in support of the future of our students and rural communities.

The Siskiyou Union High School District commends its teaching and support staff for their learning and efforts, and urges the administration, the teaching and support staff, and the communities to continue in their efforts to provide all students with relevant and engaging learning experiences that prepare them for success in the 21st century.

PASSED AND ADOPTED this 14th day of December, 2011, by unanimous vote.

Teaching 21st Century Skills

Image from http://pathubert.wikispaces.com/21st+Century+Skills

Based on our work during our opening staff development at our Magnet Schools - Magnet Communities Educational Summit, and continued research in the area of what our students will need to have  in order to be successful after their high school experience, I have assembled a first draft of the Profile of a Siskiyou Union High School Graduate. This first draft includes the 21st Century Skills portion of the profile. Still to come will be the academic content standards, and a section of specific experiences that we want all students to have during their high school years.

The Profile opens with the statement:

To succeed in college, career, and be a productive citizen in the 21st century, students must be supported in mastering both content and skills. In addition to core subject proficiency, we must provide all students with experiences that ensure they are:

• Critical Thinkers
• Problem Solvers
• Researchers
• Communicators
• Collaborators
• Information and technology users
• Innovators
• Leaders
• Creative
• Motivated and persistent
• Resilient
• Self-aware and Self-disciplined
• Honest
• Reliable
• Civic-minded

The specific standards and skills can be viewed here:
Siskiyou Union High School District Graduate Profile - Draft 1.1

I will be going to staff, students, parents, and community to seek their input regarding this first draft of identified skills and start the process of identifying the experiences that we want all students to have. As the state makes the shift to the Common Core Academic Standards and related assessments, we will work to develop the academic portion of our Graduate Profile.

The identified 21st century skills need to be consolidated and written in a format that is user friendly. I also want to provide a reference or resource section for each of the skills that will help staff develop places and methods within their content focus that provide students with the ability to become proficient at these skills.

As we continue to develop projects and experiences for our students that will ensure they are proficient with these skills, we will build our own expertise and community resources that support the process. We must also look at what others are doing and saying about the teaching and learning of 21st century skills. This post in the Harvard Educational Letter by Nancy Walser is an example of such a resource.

• How can we weave 21st century skills into our projects, lessons and experiences? 
• How can we most effectively teach these skills? 
• What types of experiences help students become proficient collaborators, problem solvers, researchers, communicators, creative thinkers, time managers, citizens?
• How do we balance the importance of these skills with the importance of our content standards?
• How do we assess that our students are proficient at these skills?
• What support do we need from our communities?

What are your thoughts about the first draft of our Graduate Profile? How are you teaching these skills or providing students with the opportunity to become proficient with them?

Our Very Own II

Dave Bruce is working to learn about and embrace the new communication and collaboration platforms that are now available to staff and students throughout the district.

Take a look at the Learn.. To Live! classroom site he has set up using Google Sites, and the Student Portfolio start-up document  he has created in Google Documents. You can also add ideas or comments to his Learn.. to live! blog .

These communication sites are becoming collaborative resources for his students as well as interactive platforms to highlight the work they are doing.

Doing Our Best ... each day!     All of us have our areas of outstanding qualities and skills ... as well as some weaknesses.  I'll be featuring some of these strengths for our students each month.  Students are encouraged to add on to this effort of paying more attention to our strengths, talents, and dreams!  (add comments below)                 Freedom AwardsPost Comments
Posted Oct 13, 2011 10:34 AM by Dave Bruce

This is another example of the outstanding work and leaning our staff is involved with as we continue to pursue ways to improve what we do for the students of our communities. 

Dave, inspiring work and learning. 

Chris Lehmannn

Chris Lehmann talks about the concepts of Project Based Learning in a passionate and realistic manner. Chris is a principal at Science Leadership Academy.



What are your thoughts and what components of these or other ideas are we working to apply as we work on our Project Based Learning Journey.

Our Projects

I was proud to present our Fall Projects Templates to the Board of Education last Wednesday at our Monthly Board meeting. I appreciate your efforts to include these project in your curricular experience for all of our students. Remember we are on a journey to provide all of our students with an education that prepares them for life in the 21st century. As we continue this process we will be able to better define what it is our students need in the way of skills and standards and truly include students in the process of defining and enhancing their learning experience with us.

Inspiring Work!

Siskiyou Union High School District  - Fall Projects



Happy Camp High School

• Drug Fact Awareness
• Oliver, Bearding, Sherman, Laney
• Sportsmanship/Teamwork
• Ekman-Macdonald, Attebery, Bearding, Oliver, Sherman, Timbrook, Laney, Garcia
• Benches
• Bearding, Timbrook

Jefferson High School

• Shastice Park Brochure and Trail Insert
• Loughlin, Moore
• School Reform Survey
• Brown

McCloud High School

• College Visits/Presentations
• Sanchez-Alves, Michael, Spaulding
• McCloud Storage Shed/Bus Stop
• Spaulding

Mount Shasta High School

• Resource Management Issues
• Chapman
• Senior College Readiness
• Phillips
• Fit For Life
• M. Erro, T. Erro
• Careers and Jobs in Law
• Nichols-Stock
• Geometry-Linus Quilt Project
• Goodrich-Jones, Killingsworth
• Understanding Sustainability
• T. Erro, C. Harryman, C. Repass
• French Revolution Newspaper
• R. Harryman

• Assisting in Developing a Natural Habitat with Audubon Society
• Nesheim, Wallace, Eastman
• Powerful Historic Words
• Villarreal, Westcott
• Teaching Spanish at MSES
• Steve Abbott

Siskiyou Pathways

• Student Portfolios: Finding a passion in your heart and your community......
• Bruce
• Elementary School Teacher Training
• Tift, Anderson, Bruce

Weed High School

• Sustainable Schools, Sustainable Communities
• Coffman, Greenspan
• High School as a Journey
• Manley, Heilmann, Oates, England, NeVille, Van Baren
• Business and Education Partnerships
• DeRoss, Kirwin, Neel

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs: In Memoriam

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-in-memoriam/

Learning from others is an important aspect of what we do as educators. These are inspiring clips of his life and experience that are so relevant to the work ahead of us.

Our Very Own

Our very own math teacher, Serge Killingsworth,  assembled a group of math videos designed to provide students with specific assistance with key standard areas. Serge used a Staff Development Internship to complete a series of thirteen videos. The videos are now available for all students and staff to use. You can find them on schooltube.com or his staff web site at mountshastahighschool.com.  (here)




Great Work Serge! Thank you for sharing.

The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education

In his Article, Steve Denning discusses his concept for reforming K-12 Education. His basic concept supports our Project Based Learning Curriculum focus and Peer to Peer observations and collaboration.

 He states:

"Given this context, I believe that the single most important idea for reform in K-12 education concerns a change in goal. The goal needs to shift from one of making a system that teaches children a curriculum more efficiently to one of making the system more effective by inspiring lifelong learning in students, so that they are able to have full and productive lives in a rapidly shifting economy."







Read the full article here: 


I would recommend you also take a look at these links that are in the article:
“dynamic linking”
 ELLI assessment tool 

Thanking Our Community Partners

The Mount Shasta High School Leadership Class and teacher Sue Villareal, put together a MSHS Community Partnership bulletin board located in the front hall way of the school. This is a way they are  recognizing and thanking our community partners. Great work MSHS students and staff. In order to build and sustain our partnerships, we must recognize and thank them for their contributions to our schools and communities. A partnership is a two way exchange of support and mutual benefit.

"Embrace and Drive Change"

Happy Camp Principal, Angelika Brown, shared her notes with me from their opening site staff meeting. I was inspired by the conversation and the staff response to the question "What are the qualities of change?". It sure helps to put qualities behind a statement or value such as "Embrace and Drive Change". It helps us and our students embrace the values and work toward achieving them.

Notes from the meeting:

Norms for staff meetings:

Take turns talking, no side conversations, come prepared, and come on time!

Angelika will ask everyone for their opinion and we are taking turns so everyone will be heard or a person can say pass after they feel they said everything that they wanted to say.

When your turn comes please stay on the topic and not more than a 1 minute response.

Staff is always encouraged to share topics and can be put on the agenda for the weekly staff meetings.

Motto of the School Year:

“Embrace and Drive Change”

“Change is the end result of all true learning” Leo Buscaglia

What are the qualities of change?

Staff responded:
complain less, acceptance, focus on current needs and less on past mistakes, flexibility, awareness of different student’s needs, role modeling, look straight at the heart, open mindedness, positive focus, willingness to learn, long suffering, patience with ourselves, learn new technology, change brings inner growth, diversity being able to change quickly, innovation, change is a potential solution, “I can’t versus I can”, productive don’t get sucked into their drama, talk less, sharing/collaboration, be kind to each other, patience, more humor laughing and chocolate, support each other, be kind to each other, respect our students, remember we are the teachers and they are the children, don’t lower ourselves to their level, building rapport

Great Work

School Is Open!

You know something is different in our small communities when you experience a traffic jam on a street that is normally calm and quiet at 7:45 am. Today each of our High Schools opened for the 2011-12 school year. As parents and students made their way to their local high school, the streets filled with anticipation and excitement. This year we will graduate the class of 2012. Thank you to our staff, students, parents, and community members for all your support and encouragement during our opening staff development work and planning. We are proud of our communities and we look forward to an outstanding school year.

This year as we work with each of our communities to forge new partnerships and work to develop new and exciting learning experiences for our students, we must work with a sense of urgency. We must provide our students with the skills and tools that they will need to face and deal with the changes in our society and communities that are occurring at a rapid pace. Working together we can build a sustainable educational and economic foundation for our schools and communities and provide our students with the experiences and support necessary to become citizens of our communities and our global society.

The educational experience must look and feel different for our students. We must lead the change by being willing to learn and be the seekers of new experiences for our students and ourselves.

We are going to continue to develop our organizational values. Several that I recognize are going to be important to embrace as we move forward include (many of these are taken form Zappos.com but I believe they are relevant to our educational organization):

1. Deliver WOW experiences for all students
2. Develop partnerships that support the learning experience
3. Embrace and drive change
4. Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble


Have a great year.
Sincerely,
Mike Matheson

Educators Today

How do we ensure that we are doing this? How can we keep our organization and profession current with the latest teaching and learning practices?

Proud of our Teachers and Students

This past week I had the pleasure of hosting our very own Damon Zeller and Randi Greenspan as presenters at the Weed Rotary Club. They and two students gave a presentation about the new Geometry and Construction Program that they have developed at Weed High School. It is impressive how these teachers and students have taken on a project that is bigger that any one individual teacher, student, or community partner. This is truly a collaborative effort that takes commitment, learning, and risk to implement. Take a look at the Power Point Presentation that they put together. The last slide shows the variety of community partners involved in this project. We can all be proud of the efforts and accomplishments of our Siskiyou Union High School Staff members as they work to develop the programs and experiences that prepare students for success in the 21^st century. Thank you to Randi, Damon, and your students for your outstanding work.

Welcome to geometry & construction whs

View more presentations from mathesonm.

Do Your Own Research

The other day I was working to develop a management meeting agenda and because of some articles that I had been reading I wanted to talk about 21^st century skills. What are they, how do we teach them, and how do we measure them?

So I started my research here: Google – 21^st century high school learning standards

And ended up here:

http://cell.uindy.edu/NTHS/NTHSresources.php

and here

http://cell.uindy.edu/docs/NewSkillNewCentury.pdf

and here

http://www.p21.org/index.php

and here

http://cell.uindy.edu/NTHS/NTHSVideo.php (watch the video)

and here

http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning (wow - look at these videos)

Try it for yourself. Google 21st century learning skills and see what amazing places you end up visiting. Share them with me and others by posting what you fine here.

Learning and Teaching in the 21st Century

This short video illustrates how learning and teaching should be evolving to prepare our students for success in this ever changing world.

The question I keep asking myself is what do we need to do so that we can make the pedagogical shifts necessary to allow this type of learning and teaching to take place in all settings?

Source: http://esheninger.blogspot.com/2011/03/teaching-in-21st-century.html

Comments?

Thinking

How do we learn to think or how can we teach a student to think? We use the term critical thinking a lot in education. What does it really mean to be able to think critically? What does it look like when a person is a successful or proficient critical thinker? These are important question for our organization to answer as we move forward with redefining the experiences we want our students to have in our classrooms, schools, and communities.

More on this topic at Education Week Leader Talk

New Harvard Study Supports Multiple Pathways

Although my first reaction to this report was, "it is interesting to note that it takes a Harvard Study to determine what we know is the right thing to be doing for our students", it is encouraging and legitimizing to see this type of information about preparing our students for the 21st century gaining traction.

Our schools need to provide students with multiple pathways to successful futures.

Rather than solely pushing more students to apply to traditional four-year institutions, the authors of the study said educators should encourage students to look for alternative opportunities to advance their education as well, Education Week noted. At an early age, students should receive sound college preparation and rigorous, career-focused learning opportunities with clearly defined paths to certificate or college programs. (CTICareerSearch)

Harvard Study Report

Pathways to Prosperity Study

Take a look and leave a comment.

Did You Know

The challenge of preparing our students for college and careers of the future is becoming more complicated by the minute. This video was created several years ago but is still very relevant today.

What do we need to do to address the questions and issues that this video brings up?

Observation, Reflection and Dialogue: Can it Improve Instruction and Student Learning?

Teaching is a very difficult and complicated profession. Because of this, it is important that we develop effective ways to reflect on and continually improve our instructional practice. Lately I have been reading about various forms of dialogue and reflection and thinking about how we can develop a method of reflecting on the instructional practice that teachers engage in daily with their students. One technique that is being used in a number of educational and business settings is a peer to peer observation process. From the beginning it must be understood that this process is not in any way shape or form evaluative. The purpose is to create dialogue and allow for reflection of the instructional process. The goal is to increase learning by focusing in on various instructional strategies that are identified as effective and then work to assist each other with the implementation of these strategies.

The process starts with the staff of a school working together with their principal to identify the instructional practices or focus areas that they agree to work on and develop. The following items are examples of practices that would be a part of my list. I wouldn’t recommend including this number of items, but I left them all here as examples:

• Teacher greets students at the door or as they enter the classroom.
• Clearly stated objectives as to what the students are expected to learn or do by the conclusion of the lesson. This may be an agenda or something (on board, verbal, weekly sheet) that lets students know what they are going to be doing for the day and why – standards etc.
• The standards are identified to the students and are grade and subject level appropriate.
• A starter activity or anticipatory set that motivates the learner, reviews prior learning, makes connections and brings relevancy to the new content being presented. Something that students start right at the beginning of the period that gets them engaged without a lot of downtime.
• A variety of student-centered learning activities where students are afforded the opportunity to think critically, solve problems, work in cooperative groups, and create manifestations that demonstrate learning is taking place. Students are actively involved in the learning process.
• Lecture (no more than 10-15 minutes)
• Group work
• Lab or project work
• Interdisciplinary connections
• Work is connected to appropriate standards
• Informal and formal means of assessment in which the students have a clear indication of their performance in relation to expected learning outcomes. Rubrics or scoring guides should accompany any activity that is to be graded.
• The routine use of positive reinforcement to commend and praise students for taking risks, whether they are wrong or right.
• Positive and comfortable interaction between teacher and students.
• A stimulating learning environment that promotes inquiry with student work proudly displayed.
• Samples or models of expected work are use to guide students toward effective completion of assignments and projects.
• Effective technology integration.
• Teacher enthusiasm. If teachers aren’t enthusiastic about the lesson or content then how can they expect their students to be?
• Effective classroom management and room organization.
• A closure to the lesson or activity that includes next steps, homework, etc.
• Specific strategies are used to foster effective relationships with students

Once the list is compiled, teaching staff set up times to observe each other and look for the various agreed to strategies. A form is used to document the observation. A sample form is attached. The observations can be from 20 minutes in length to the entire period.

Some processes call for a brief pre-observation meeting to discuss what is going to be happening in a particular class. The most important part of the observation process is the post observation discussion. During this post discussion, colleagues have the opportunity to dialogue about the instructional practices that were observed. This dialogue creates the opportunity to reflect on and refine the instructional practices. It is important that this dialogue and reflection occurs between colleagues. It is not effective if it is used as a Checklist Leadership or Checklist instructional strategy process. (Bill Ferriter-The Tempered Radical)

As a teacher, principal, superintendent, and coach of my son’s soccer team, I truly appreciate feedback, ideas, or constructive criticism about what I am doing. It keeps me thinking, invigorated, and connected to the world around me.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas about the potential of an observation process and how it can help to improve instruction and student learning.

Links that I used to develop this post include:

Eric Sheninger: A Principals Reflections

Carol J. Downey: Classroom Walk-Throughs

Bill Ferriter: The Tempered Radical

Tiger Mothers

What provocative topic - Tiger Mothers: Raising Children the Chinese Way

This is going to be quite the discussion of the parenting and educational community.

Relationships and Uncertainty

Relationships lead to learning. How can we foster relationships with our students that allow us to increase the learning potential and connect our students to our schools?

Take a look at this article on the Connected Principals blog titled Relationships and Uncertainty . There are some very specific strategies that we use to help us build these effective relationships.

These include:

• Engaging students in relevant work
• Acknowledging the limits of our own understanding and use uncertainty which can lead to inquiry, analysis, and process rather than mastering basic skills.

I look forward to hearing your ideas about strategies that foster relationships.

Teaching Reasearch

From the Philly Teacher - Research is one of the hardest things you will ever do. I would add to this "and teach". Today more than ever the ability to research is a critical skill. The research process must include a critical analysis of your sources.

Check out her ideas (here) and share with me and others how you approach teaching students to research.