Friday Update 11/18/11

This has been a fantastic week for fine arts at Assumption!

Congrats to our students who participated in the Iowa State Thespian Festival this past weekend.  872 students attended the festival where there were 10 judged events.  Our AHS students placed in the top three in three different events:

Large Group Musical Theater: Congrats to the cast of “Canaan Days” on receiving 2^nd place and a superior rating.  Liam Baldwin, Mundo Cadena, Sam Fer, Sam Jones, Jake Hannon, Patrick Kakert, Tanner Konrardy, Caleb Neff, Jacob Neff, Ben Pashon, Andrew Skalak, and AJ Skinner!  

Duet Acting: Congrats to Jacob Neff and Sam Jones who received 2^nd place and an excellent rating for their piece from Arthur Miller’s All My Sons!

Costume Design: Congrats to Bailey Hager for winning 3^rd place and receiving an excellent rating for her costume design for The Tempest!

Sam Jones is also now the co-Chair of the Iowa State Thespian Student Board, an awesome accomplishment.  

Congratulations also go out to Alex Underwood for winning a blue ribbon in the Quad City Area high school art display at Festival of Trees.

Finally, we received the great news just this afternoon that Emma Simmons is sitting 13^th chair of 21 on Clarinet, and AJ Skinner is sitting First Chair Euphonium at the All State Band Festival this weekend. In laymen’s terms AJ Skinner is the Top Euphonium player in the STATE of Iowa!  They will perform this weekend in Ames, but you can catch their performance the Sunday after Thanksgiving at 5:30 p.m. on Iowa Public Television.

I attended the Scott County Catholic Schools Advisory Board meeting on Monday.  We spent a lot of time hearing about the Iowa Education Blueprint and the challenges Catholic schools may face if the proposed salary structure would go through.  Hopefully everyone’s concerns will be lessened by the news this week that the governor’s office will not pursue this reform this year.

We also had a discussion about 1:1 computer initiatives and how this would impact the schools in the Diocese and learned that the Diocese will be working on a strategic plan this winter focusing on Catholic identity, enrollment and funding.  

There was lively conversation at our administrative meeting this week about ways to improve the educational process at Assumption.  While we all feel that we currently do many things well, we also know that we must continue to look for ways to best prepare students for their lives after they leave the halls of Assumption.  I will meet with our senior English classes after Thanksgiving break in order to hear firsthand where they feel the strengths and weaknesses have been in their education at Assumption.   

The marketing committee met on Wednesday and we continue to work on “ways to afford a Catholic education.”

The Annual Appeal is at the printer, and it should arrive at most houses after Thanksgiving.

We have been working on upgrading the sound system in the large gym.  The seniors have expressed interest in using the profits from the Spaghetti Supper to help with this process and student council would also like to donate some of their dance proceeds to this project.  It is great to see our kids get behind a project and work to see it completed.     

The President’s Appreciation Dinner was held at the Blackhawk hotel on Wednesday night and was a huge success. thanks to the hard work of Liz King.  We had a great turnout and the speeches by Mrs. McGuire and Coach Barrer were fantastic.  It was a great chance to celebrate the generosity of our donors to Embracing our Future, the STO and the Annual Appeal.  It also was a great chance to highlight not only the accomplishments of our students, but also all of the facilities upgrades we have completed in the last year.  

Have a great weekend!

Weekly Update 11/11/11

We have entered the part of the fall that is definitely the “calm before the storm.”   Winter sports are just beginning, the weather is starting to turn much colder and the dark seems to be starting earlier and earlier.  It seems crazy that in two weeks we will by celebrating Thanksgiving, watching our wrestlers and basketball teams compete and worrying about how much snow we will get.  

A couple of updates for the week:

We have hired David Pai to take over as our replacement for Sharon Deyo as kitchen manager.  Sharon accepted as a position in the Davenport schools.  We wish Sharon the best in her new opportunity and we are excited for Chef David to begin his new position.  He seems to have a lot of new ideas on how to improve what is already a solid lunch program.

I attended the Diocesan administrator meeting at Iowa City Regina this week.  I don’t usually attend these meetings, but Cedar Valley Schools was there to present on their 1:1 initiative.  I learned so much about the entire process of implementing one computer for every student.  I feel very confident that we are taking many of the correct steps in moving toward this goal.  

Moving in this direction of innovation always comes with concerns about student’s access to technology.  I happened to run across a study entitled: Teens, Kindness and Cruelty on Social Network Sites:  How American Teens Navigate the New World of "Digital Citizenship."  I found the information in it absolutely intriguing.  I encourage all of you to check it out at http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2128/social-media-teens-bullying-internet-privacy-email-cyberbullying-facebook-myspace-twitter

In the development department Annual Reports have been mailed and I hope everyone has received their copy.  Please let me know if you did not get one.  I hope everyone agrees that the design of the report and layout was beautiful.  This week we also put the finishing touches on the Annual Appeal.  Liz King has come up with an incredible idea and her execution of that idea is flawless.  I look forward to being able to send it out soon.

Lastly, we are trying to fix up the lobby to the gym prior to the basketball season.  Eric has removed the cracked tiles.  We are repairing the cement around the entrance doors and are rehabbing the doors by fixing the crash bars and weather-stripping.  

Have a great Veterans Day and weekend.  God Bless those who serve our country and protect the freedoms that we hold so dear. 

Friday Update 11/4/2011

Monday morning our students had an opportunity to sleep in while our teachers and administration were working hard at Assumption.  The focus of our morning meeting was technology.  In order to provide opportunities for exposure to some new and possibly useful tools, we spent some time exploring a few websites including:

Gmail:  www.gmail.com

Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/

TitanPad: http://titanpad.com/

Google Docs: https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=1209600&continue=http://docs.google.com/&followup=http://docs.google.com/&ltmpl=homepage

Google SketchUp: http://sketchup.google.com/

Survey Monkey: www.surveymonkey.com

Wikispaces: http://www.wikispaces.com/

Go 2 Web 2.0: http://www.go2web20.net/

Solution Watch: http://www.solutionwatch.com/512/back-to-school-with-the-class-of-web-20-part-1/

After taking some time together to explore each of these sites, teachers had the opportunity to explore other online tools to be used in their classrooms.  The teachers then completed a brief “homework” assignment which was emailed to me.  I compiled and shared their responses using TitanPad.

The faculty also discussed social media and its significance to our roles as educators.  It was a great opportunity to discuss the changing communication between our students, parents and teachers.

In the afternoon we had a presentation from our new 401k provider, Edward Jones.  After their group presentation, the faculty was given an opportunity to schedule a one on one meeting to discuss their investments.

The Policy Committee met Tuesday afternoon.  Thanks go to Nancy Hines, Bill Bush and Larry Rodl for taking time to review the 100 and 200 series policies.  We have some changes that will be brought before the Board at the next meeting.

Congrats to Emily Faulhaber and the many students, faculty and volunteers that sacrificed a night out of their busy schedules to make Information Knight a success! Around 95 students attended this year, and the new setup which incorporated our academic departments in the gym instead of classrooms, was well received.  I received several compliments on the evening.

I had an opportunity to listen to several lobbyists speak at the AEA regarding educational issues that the House and Senate will be concentrating on in upcoming legislative session.  Their main focus was on the Blueprint released by the Governor’s office.  In their opinion it will cost at least $250-300 million for the Blueprint, which is of major concern due to unemployment and lower than expected state revenue.  They believe many of the legislators will be looking for a way to get property tax relief, and not increase revenue through taxation.  They will likely draft legislation for each issue within the Blueprint, and then the most “cost effective” options will be chosen.  Most likely the four tier performance based pay system will be dropped and the focus will be on professional development measures for teachers.   

I know, I know, this isn’t the most exciting stuff for people that don’t deal with education every day, but many of the measures outlined in the Blueprint could have a direct impact for our Catholic Schools in the near future. 

I also had the opportunity to hear an individual speak on the Chinese education system.  The think I took away was the feeling that the Chinese have created this passion amongst their people to “best” the United States in education.  This reinforces my belief that Assumption needs to continue moving forward, always looking for ways to improve.

The K-12 marketing committee met Thursday, and we brainstormed ideas for this year’s marketing plan.  It was a productive meeting, and I think there are some great ideas on the table for the upcoming school year. 

Linda Duffy and I spent some time working on the upcoming Embracing Our Future project.  Our focus this week was on enrollment, and what those numbers tell us about the initial campaign’s effect on our Scott County Catholic schools.  The deeper we get into the numbers, the better things look.  There are some very visible changes that have occurred in our enrollments in the last 6 years.  More on that to come!

I spent around two hours this week out in classrooms watching teachers teach and students learn.  There were some great student presentations in both Spanish and English, I had the opportunity to witness “frosting Friday” in foods, and I truly enjoyed briefly listening to Mrs. Martin’s mitosis presentation.  Being a former biology teacher the science classes are always a joy to observe. 

Finally, I would invite everyone to come see Almost, Maine this weekend (shows are at 7:30 Friday and Saturday, and 2:00 Sunday) and to attend the Spaghetti Supper on Sunday between 4:00 and 7:00.  Is there a better way to spend a weekend than supporting our talented students?  I hope to see you all this weekend!