As we come to the end of another school year, I think it is always fun to reflect back on the year and think about our accomplishments! We started the school year focused in three areas:
Brain Aligned Strategies/Trauma Informed Care: This was our first full year for the Project Aware Grant, an IDOE grant aimed at increasing mental health training/practices in school. Shelly Kunkle was able to train us how to lead Brain Smart Starts, as we help teach students how to stay regulated while in the classroom so that the most learning can occur! We increased our SEL curriculum, especially in the junior high through our Ron Clark House System. The grant also allowed us to purchase Panorama, a program that helps us track at-risk students and create small groups for skills development. Restorative Practices were also implemented, especially for students who had to utilize ISS. What success we have had with this!
* We know that part of Brain Aligned Strategies includes posting classroom expectations. If students know what is expected of them, they will have less anxiety and meet our expectations. About 90% of our classrooms had posted expectations this year - our goal was 100%.
Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum - Last summer English and Social Studies began reading Mike Schmoker's book, FOCUS. We are learning the most valuable work we can do as a school is to ensure guaranteed and viable curriculum. After some work throughout the school year, we started re-reading his book and reminding ourselves of this work. In math, science, social studies and English, we are now meeting as teams and determining our power standards, with our next steps being to increase the amount of authentic literacy and writing in all classes! The junior high math got through their first year of Ready Math curriculum and English made it through their first year of Lucy! Both math and English have been increasing Performance Tasks in preparation for ILEARN.
* One of the measurable goals we had for the year was to increase the number of teachers who posted meaningful learning objectives. When we left in March, 70% of teachers were posting meaningful objectives - and we know we will get to 100% soon!
Formative Assessment - Knowing that Formative Assessment is one of the most powerful learning tools that we can provide our students, we made it a focus for the school year. We have read, talked and learned many things from each other throughout the school year - including through Instructional Rounds! Heidi Zellers and Abbie Brockman helped us organize our first round and we all learned so much! Our goal was for 75% of classrooms to have regular formative assessments embedded in the classroom, and we reached 52%! Thumbs up if you agree that this is a valuable tool!
At Perry Central Jr./Sr. High School, we like to have fun too! Buddy Berry and Ron Clark both taught us the importance of Surprise and Delight! We embedded several fun opportunities throughout the school year, including a flash mob, Mr. Gehlhausen and Mr. Barnett playing Fortnite in the cafeteria and more! We were able to send two teams to the Ron Clark Academy - and it was such a great experience for all of us as he is teaching us to embed rigor, develop relationships and ensure engagement. We also hosted our first every Commodore Day of Caring for all junior high students as well!
By increasing our community partners in advanced manufacturing, business, agriculture, construction, etc. we continue to develop rigorous career pathways that are aligned to the community's needs. Our partners help us develop authentic learning opportunities that teach not only academic and technical skills but professional skills as well. Our goal is to increase these partnerships and continue to be an entrepreneurial school community. We were recognized as one of the first high schools in the nation to offer a national Additive Manufacturing Certification!
On top of all of this, we have been hit with the pandemic health crisis and were forced to learn how to teach remotely. Our busy lives were abruptly halted as we were ordered to stay at home. Our classrooms were turned into zoom meetings and our lives were no longer controlled by bell schedules and ball games. We have learned to be nimble and had opportunity to learn how to leverage technology for learning in a whole different way!
Due to the pandemic, the many ways that we use to measure a student's yearly growth were cancelled. Even though we do not have a lot of data to back the learning that happened this year, we know that our students grew.
And still, after all of this, our focus continues to be on the student. The day in and day out of conversations, smiles, laughs, light bulbs going off. . . all of it keeps us coming back for more! We didn't know how much we would miss it until it was gone and now we long to go back to the days we are back together again.
Even though the future of education hangs in the balance due to the pandemic, Perry Central Jr./Sr. High School will still be rooted in continuous learning, hard work and strong relationships. The 2019-2020 school year proved to be a productive, strong year of learning and growing. Can't wait to see what we get to accomplish next year!
Important Information:
ACE Training - As promised, we will have three hours of ACE training the last week of school. Our High School Training will be on
Tuesday, May 19th from 8:00 - 9:00 a.m. and then again (same day) from 12:00 - 1:00 and then Thursday, May 21st from 10:30 - 11:30 a.m. It is really important that all of you are there. Through the Project Aware Grant, Shelly has been able to be trained as a certified ACE instructor. I think you will find the information she shares with you enlightening. You will receive an email with a zoom link soon!
No Internet Students - Here is a link to our list of
No Internet students. If you are emailing your assignments to me, if you could please make sure I get them by noon tomorrow - that would be helpful. Also, if you can keep sending me the names of the students who are supposed to get the work, that is very helpful as well. I get a lot of work from a lot of different people! :-)
Senior Parade - We have many items we need to finalize with the Class of 2020 as we come to the end of the school year. As a way to celebrate this class, and also gather them together one more time to collect important materials (chrome books, calculators) we have decided to have a community Honor Parade for seniors. On Sunday, May 24th at 2:00, students will start at Perry Central and be escorted by State Police up Highway 37 to Michael's Market and then start their drive back to Perry Central down old 37. Parents and members of the community will be invited to park in their cars along the side of the road and wave their favorite senior on.
Teachers - if you would like to enjoy the parade, we would like to invite any of you who are interested to meet at Perry Central at 2:00 (please do not come much earlier - we are trying to really make sure we are socially distant). After the student leave, we will line you up in the parking lot and let the students drive back through to wave at you. Please remember it is important to bring along your masks! We hope you can come - it should be a fun event! Teachers can park up in the bus parking lot and if the weather is nice, we will have you get out of your car and line the parking lot in person.
Student Touch Points - We know that developing relationships with students and creating touch points with students (just times of reaching out to check-in) can really help our students stay connected and increase their emotional well-being. This summer, we would like to make sure that all of our students have a touch point and we wanted to see if you would be willing to help! We have created a document (
link attached) that has all of our students in grades 7-11. If you would be willing to sign up to make contact with 1-10 students at least one time in June and one time in July, we think this could really help keep our Commodore family pulled together. Please think about kids you will see because they are your neighbor, go to your church, work at the gas station you always stop and purchase a drink at.. . . . whatever the case may be. Athletics is a great touch point for us as well. I have tried to mark many of the kids that are involved in athletics as their coaches are reaching out a lot right now (I may have missed some - so feel free to mark ones I missed.
Please know this is not a requirement - but just an opportunity to keep relationships with your students and help them maintain a healthy social/emotional state during this time as we let them know how special they are to the Commodore Family.
Different kind of Feedback: Dana Harris and Jill Taylor spent several hours on Zoom last week as they interviewed each AP Biology student individually. Students made their own review guides and sketch notes or concept maps from each unit. Students in return had to "re-teach" the teacher, explaining topics to Dana and Jill that were aligned to the AP Biology test. To receive a 4, they had to make connections across content! Dana and Jill asked clarifying questions and allowed the students to share what they learned. They reported that the students did a great job and even surprised them about what they learned during this e-learning time.
Grade Book Meetings: Just a reminder that we have set up times to meet with each of you the last week of school to look over your grades and see if you have any questions/concerns. I have attached the assigned times
HERE. If you need a different time, please let us know.
Important Dates:
Wednesday, May 13th @ 6:30 p.m. - Awards Banquet Recordings will be posted
Thursday, May 14th - Team Meetings: 8:30 - 9:30 a.m. - English, 10:00 - 10:45 - Math, 11:00 - 11:45 - Science 12:30 - 1:15 - Social Studies
Friday, May 15th - Scholarship Banquet will be posted in the evening
Tuesday, May 19th - ACE Training 8:00 - 9:00/ 12:00 - 1:00
Wednesday, May 20th - Last Day of School
Thursday, May 21 - ACE Training - 10:30 - 11:30 a.m.
Friday, May 22 @ 11:59 p.m. - Grades are due in Skyward
Sunday, May 24th @ 2:00 p.m. - Senior Parade
This really isn't the end, but a pause until we see each other again in August. Please take these few weeks to rest, reflect, spend time with your family! Next August could prove to be an interesting one - but we will get through it together! 
