Week of April 9

Bus/Parking Lot Duty: Smith and Gaynor
Monday 4/9:  8:00 Faculty Meeting 9:00 SMART board training - if you have or want a SMART board
Tuesday 4/10:  SAT's only Juniors come to school
Wednesday 4/11:  Kaiser @Prevention Conference through Friday
Thursday 4/12  
Friday 4/13

Bus/Parking Lot Duty: 
Monday 4/16:  7:00 Secondary Departmental Collaboration 8:30 Faculty meeting
Tuesday 4/17:  
Wednesday 4/18:  
Thursday 4/19  
Friday 4/20

Very Good News
Diana Baker has decided to accept the position of full time math teacher at Venture High School!  Diana,  I know I speak for all of us when I extend a warm welcome to you!  We are all here to support one another as we support the kids, so please feel comfortable reaching out to any of us if you have questions or if there is anything we can do to help.

VHS News
I will start posting VHS News on this  blog so we have one easy place to find it. ----> See left.
Please be sure to show it to your 21st Century Skills students.  The kids are working pretty hard on this and it is disheartening for them to hear that some classes didn't see it.  If there is a problem that we should be aware of that interferes with our ability to show it to all kids, please come see me or Lena so we can work it out.

Extended Learning
Today there were many, many, many students with passes.  Unfortunately, upon closer inspection, some of those students had incompletes in the grade book.  I don't want to belabor the obvious, but this won't work.  I don't feel great about the instructional time we're giving up and I feel even worse about managing 57 (yes, 57) kids in the common areas only to discover that a portion of them shouldn't even have passes.  The plan should look something like this... On Thursday, students pull up their grades; the teacher double checks and writes passes based on the information on the computer screen.  If they have some excuse for why it's an incomplete.  Ignore them (or call their teachers).  Students are unreliable reporters of their own grades.  The passes go to kids for whom the computer reports they have passing grades in all classes.  A passing grade is actually a passing grade.  It isn't an "I" with an explanation that it was turned in and is awaiting grading. 

Hard-wiring Happiness
Rick Hanson is my hero.  I've nearly read the words off the pages of one of his books, but for the time-challenged,  he does a nice job of delivering valuable mini-bites of content in his Ted Talks.  This video might be good for kids- especially juniors and seniors.  A brief incident of innuendo makes it slightly less kid-friendly, but I think it provides useful information that lends itself to rich discussion.