Trauma Informed Care

Trauma informed care and brain research are certainly hitting the national press.  We understand the impact in our own classrooms and schools.  Research is showing us that discipline is not the answer as our students need healing and support.  Perry Central is working to be a Trauma Informed School and we are working on Professional Development for all of you!  We have a team of dedicated reading a book called "The Trauma-Informed School" by Jim Sporleder.  I haven't gotten very far in the book, but I am already empowered by some of the key cornerstones such as:

  - "Trauma-Informed model works for ALL students.  Everyone benefits from being treated with kindness and connecting to a caring staff.  This model is an everyday process for every student."  
  - "Trauma Informed schools are a shift from fear-based culture to relationship and love-based."
  - "Brain drives behavior."
  - "The best way to describe someone that resists the new model is: fear."

Oprah Winfrey brought this pandemic to the national spotlight in her recent article in USA today, that is posted below.  She feels her life will forever be impacted by this information as she looks at individuals differently.   

I know you probably get tired of me writing about this area, but it is such an important piece to understanding our students and helping them meet their needs.  I am thankful that all of you are willing to learn with us.  I would encourage you to read Oprah's article.  It is inspiring! 

Oprah Article can be found HERE. 


School Notes:

* National School Walk-Out:  I will remind you of this information on Wednesday, but Wednesday, March 14th has been designated as National School Walk-Out Day.  At 10:00 a.m. across all time zones, this group is encouraging students to walk out of their classrooms for a total of 17 minutes to raise awareness and push for legislation that would be centered around gun violence and safety in schools, homes and places of worship.

Our administration team met with the Junior/Senior High Student Council members last week to talk about this event and other safety topics.  The student council did not believe that many students planned to participate in the event and even recommended that we did not promote it.  (They are such good kids - they said that students would get out of class just because and it wouldn't help anything.)

There is a potential that a small group of students may participate.  If at 10:00 a.m. you have students walk-out of the classroom, please allow them to do so.  Students wanting to walk-out should report to the football field.  We will allow them to be on the football field for 17 minutes and then make sure they are back to class.  If all of your students participate, please escort them to the field.  We want to help students that are interested make an appropriate stance, but we hope this does not bring a lot of disruption to the school day. 

Standards 201 Training:  This week on Wednesday and Thursday we will divide the staff up into two groups for some training during lunch/WIN for our PLC teams.  This was the training that we were going to try to have but instead had snow days!  We will be providing lunch for this training. More details will be forthcoming!

Wednesday (March 14): English Team, Social Studies Team, Carrie Guillaume, Nancy Poehlein, Mary Hagedorn

Thursday: (March 15) Science Team, Math Team, Carol Schwoeppe, Josh Craney, Keith Pierrard, Andrea Clark

Tech Changes:  I want to apologize for not getting this communication out earlier.  Dr. Clark reset this system a few weeks ago and I forgot to send the information.  To help ensure that students are getting replacements for broken computers, we have tried to develop a different system.  Students who have broken computers are encouraged to fill out a Tech Support Ticket.  Dr. Clark moved the link to the Tech Support Ticket to the front page of the school website for easy access.  If a student cannot get access to someone that can help them with a ticket, students are asked to please take their broken computers to the ISS room.  Mrs. Taylor is set up to help students write out the ticket and take their computer.  This will ensure there is a record of this event.  Students who do not have chargers should also report to the ISS room.  She has replacement chargers for students to use.  Students will be charged a fee for lost chargers.  Bottom Line - if students have computer issues, send them to the ISS room, NOT the tech room for the best results! 

The more you can help us make sure students are completing the Tech Support Tickets, the better this system will work.  We know our loaner bank of computers is low.  Next school year, we will be requiring that all classrooms have at least two desktop computers in them for students with computer issues.  We know that the computers are typically a very important part of your lesson plans and we want to make sure we are doing the best we can to accommodate these issues.  Please see Jody if you have questions about this process.

* Virtual Day - Just a reminder that Thursday, March 22nd will be a virtual day for students.  We are encouraging you to get that information out to students by Monday, March 19th.  This will allow students time to finish the work while they have help and hopefully help make sure work gets completed before they return in April.  I have had requests from several families to be gone during different days of our spring break.  Students are supposed to be contacting teachers for this work.

* Disability Awareness Month:  Faculty and staff are invited to wear jeans this week (March 12 - 19) in honor of National Disability Month for a donation to our program.  Donations can be made in the high school office.  Thanks to Kris Walsh for leading this charge!

* ASPIRE:  On Tuesday, March 13th, Perry Central will host all 10th grade boys from the county for our annual ASPIRE event.  This event is sponsored by the College Success Coalition and is a very large career awareness program.  Over 40 community representatives will be on hand to speak to our students.  We are excited to host this event!  Girls from across the county will be driving to Tell City High School for the other half of the event.  Girls will be leaving around 8:45 a.m. and boys will be released by intercom around 9:15 a.m.  The event will be over around 1:30 p.m.

* Safety Audit:  On Friday, Perry Central hosted over 30 individuals from several community agencies to talk about safety at Perry Central.  It was a great meeting and walk-through.  We learned several ways we can continue to work together to make Perry Central a safer campus; many of which we have already shared with you in the past couple of weeks.  We are very thankful to live in a community where so many people care so much about our safety.  Just a reminder we will have safety training on Thursday, March 22nd as our professional development opportunity.

ISTEP:  Thanks to everyone for a successful ISTEP testing week.  I tested several students and all of the students worked so hard.  Our next window will open the last week of April - Week of April 23rd - May 4th is the official window.  There are several more tests in the second window.

Important Dates: 

Monday, March 12 - School Board meeting 6:30 p.m. in high school library

Tuesday, March 13 - ASPIRE for all 10th grade students

Friday, March 16th - FFA Leadership Contests @ North East Dubois.  Bus leaves right after school.

Thursday, March 22 - Virtual Day for students/Professional Development Day

Friday, March 23 - First day of Spring BREAK!!

Friday, April 6th - Career Day during 3rd and 4th periods for students in grades 7,8,9