Mr. Bell on Crazy Hair Day

National Robotics Week (Notre Dame) - Sunday April 14 @ 10am-3pm

R2D2, robots that fly themselves and dance.  Robotic Angry Birds game, invisible musical instrument, heart rate read by a webcam....?  It's all real!  See flyer:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ak3uhk6a1tfb24l/2013%20National%20Robotics%20Week%20Flyer.pdf

Spirit Week Starts Tuesday 3/26

Tuesday is crazy hair day - wear your hair in an unusual way! 

Wednesday is hat day so wear your favorite hat or one that is silly. 

Thursday is beach day so break out the shorts, leggings, sandals, flip flops, etc. It may be cold out but we will imagine the warm weather! Let's beat the winter blahs this week! 

Kennedy Planetarium - Astrofest Friday, April 19th 6pm-9pm

Newly Remodeled Planetarium with shows every 20 minutes.
PDF Flyer: https://www.dropbox.com/s/etvlifalwv5zxn0/ASTROFEST2013.pdf

Kennedy Planetarium Website

Snow make up days - April 8th and May 24th

Students will be in school both of these snow make up days.

Arbor & Earth Fest - April 20th 10am - Howard Park

Click on the image for a larger view

26th Annual - Free Community Event

Discussion of Pre-K Education on Radio (listen online anytime)

Discussion of Pre-K Education on Radio (listen online anytime)

http://indianapublicmedia.org/noonedition/prek-education/

"Preschool education became the center of attention last month when President Obama mentioned pre-K funding during his State of the Union address. Changes are coming to pre-K, as Head Start funding will be cut 5 percent by automatic federal spending cuts, and in February, the Indiana House passed a bill that would fund a preschool program for low-income families.

This week on Noon Edition, we’re talking with educators and preschool program administrators about what changes to pre-K education mean for them."

Pictures from Mrs. Strunk's classroom - Mar 22

I took all of these pictures within 3 minutes of each other.  The students were all doing their works (some independently, some in small groups).  I get to see it frequently but it's still amazing to see so many different tasks and projects going on simultaneously, in a calm and quiet classroom!

Do you have ideas for Teacher Appreciation week in May?

Thanks to Soo Kim, Angela Bryant and the many parents that donate and volunteer for our monthly staff treats, and lunches on teacher record days, we're able to show Teacher Appreciation throughout the school year.

May 6-10, 2013 is Teacher Appreciation Week across the country.  Our annual efforts have included a staff-wide lunch and thank you notes from students.  Do you have other ideas?  Here are some suggestions from PTO Today - how can you help us show our staff how glad we are to have each and every one of them?

Creative Ways to Say Thanks (PTO Today)

Teacher Appreciation Toolkit

1st/2nd Grade Choir Performance - May 21, 2013 6pm

This is an optional program that 1st and 2nd grade students can elect to participate in.  Rehersals will be during school time, not after school like the 3rd & 4th graders.

Additional information and participation form is attached (note this is the same form that went home about a month ago, I just didn't have a copy to post online).

Kathe Streeter presenting at the American Montessori Society Annual Conference

At the American Montessori Society Annual Conference, Mrs. Streeter did a presentation on "Placing Seeds: Science and Ecology Education Development Series at a Public Primary Montessori Academy"

Here's a picture of "one of ours" with the poster she used during her presentation.

Link to the poster (11MB PDF download) - not great for mobile phones.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m71fsfpaedphvhv/streeter%20and%20mikels.pdf

Introduction:
Placing SEEDS is a collaborative research project beginning with the premise that what you touch with the hand touches the mind. By linking research and teaching, we seek to uncover the affectual outcomes of this Montessori approach to education. Educators seek to ignite a sense of wonder, however it is difficult to measure how much that spark carries forth in the development of a child’s environmental ideology. Here we present data using sociological social psychology as a tool for uncovering environmental attitudes as one component of children’s environmental  ideology.

Research Questions
1) What are elementary aged children’s attitudes towards the natural environment?
2) Do teacher environmental attitudes and exposure to environmental education and the outdoors influence children’s attitudes over the course of a school year?
3) How can we apply knowledge about kids’ attitudes to improve environmental education?

Piano Recital @ Notre Dame this Friday (Free)

Notre Dame Department of Music

Location:
Annenberg Auditorium, Snite Museum of Art

Guest Artist Inna Faliks, piano (solo recital)
Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:00PM - 8:30PM
Free and open to the public
http://music.nd.edu/events/

http://music.nd.edu/events/2013/03/06/12115-guest-artist-inna-faliks-piano/

Notes from Title I Parent Advisory Council Meeting

John Ritzler, Executive Director, Research & Evaluation was the presenter.  Below are my notes from the meeting, which reflect my opinion and not that of SBCSC or the Marquette PTO.

• Perley went from being an A school to an F in one year (how flukey of a system must we have if the evaluations can go from top to bottom in one year)
• Previously there were issues for schools having to meet different standards under PL 221 (state law) and AYP (No Child Left Behind – Federal law)
• PL 221 used to have a matrix that accommodated high performing schools (ok that they didn’t have huge improvement) and low performing schools (they were given credit for big improvements even though achievement wasn’t meeting standards yet), once Indiana applied for waiver from NCLB, we went to letter grading system (A-F schools) and that matrix went away
• One potential issue is that only ¼ of schools in Indiana can show high growth in a given year (this is because the stats are normalized/measured against other schools in the state that year)
• Not sure how long the waiver from DOE (so we don’t have to comply with NCLB) lasts
• For Primary Centers, only 3^rd and 4^th grade students take ISTEP so: the letter grade assigned to the entire school is based off of two main components
• Test results of the 3^rd and 4^th grade students (think of this as the baseline)
• The individual improvement/change of the 4^th grade students from last year’s test results (this is segmented several ways, so the performance of students in the bottom ¼  of all students can impact the top ¾ etc (think of this as assessing progress/improvement and modifying the baseline from there)
• (this is obviously problematic especially in a school with a transient population – if 25% of your third graders are new to your school this year, they still make a huge difference in your test results), but this is nonetheless how the public and gov’t view your school!
• There was some controversy when the State Board of Education revised PL 221 to adopt this letter grade system because some said that they changed the standard so much from the original law that it was outside of the original intent of the legislation.
• There may be legislation introduced to force the state Board of Education to revise PL-221 now. 
• We need to “broaden the conversation about what constitutes a quality school”

Other Notes: 

• Use neighborhood locations other than the school to have parent meetings
• Tear down the barriers to parent involvement
• This group is formed specifically for Title I schools by why limit involvement to only Title I schools?
• Participation at the meeting was weak - each individual school needs to take more accountability in ensuring that someone from their school attends.
• Glenda Ritz platform for accountability includes no single letter grade, statistic measuring the percent of students mastering standards and statistic measuring the percent of students making growth
• We were asked to review the Parent Involvement Policy and make comments at the May session.

Staff Attending American Montessori Society Conference

Earlier in the year we became aware that Title I funds were not going to be available to use for Montessori-specific staff development (I think this has to do with very specific Title I regulations and the Federal Gov't not officially recognizing Montessori methodology), and other professional development funds for the year were already allocated.

Principal Carlson asked PTO to help fund the registration fees for 3 staff to attend the American Montessori Society annual conference - she indicated that this was the best chance of the year for staff to connect with other Montessorians working in the public arena.

This was a significant expenditure for the PTO so I (James) consulted both the PTO board and a small group of parents before bringing the topic up for discussion at a PTO meeting.  The response from parents was overwhelmingly in support of using PTO funds to support staff professional development and we proceeded to pay for the registration fees for Mrs. Carlson, Mrs. Cyrier (Montessori Facilitator) and Mrs. Streeter to attend.  They are responsible for their own airfare and hotel fees.

The conference is taking place now (Thursday March 14 - Sunday March 17) and Mrs. Carlson sent me a couple pictures from her agenda (see below).

Full conference schedule is available here:
https://www.amshq.org/Events/AMS%20Annual%20Conference/2013%20Annual%20Conference/Conference%20Schedule.aspx

Marquette mentioned in South Bend Tribune (ISTEP)

http://www.southbendtribune.com/news/opinion/sbt-good-leadership-pays-dividends-20130315,0,5715283.story

Students in Indiana embarked on ISTEP testing recently and unique approaches were taken to prepare students not just academically, but emotionally, for the total of 16 days of testing.

At Marquette Montessori, students taking ISTEP participated in a "Rock the Test" assembly and "Tunnel of Success" through our hallways with younger students cheering and offering high-fives along the way. This process leads to our first- and second-graders looking forward to taking ISTEP.

Fellow parent Elena Mangione pointed out to me that this schoolwide engagement is important for everyone, "Celebrating each other makes them part of everyone's success and others part of theirs."

The hard work done by students, parents and staff will have the largest impact on students' ISTEP performance, but the staff of South Bend schools should be commended for balancing the need to work hard to make improvements in student achievement on standardized tests against the pressure 8-year-olds feel to perform on a big, mean, state test. I applaud our educators for finding creative ways to make ISTEP a rite of passage and something to look forward to instead of dread.

James Brogdon
Mishawaka