Changes All Around

Capital Project Updates

We have a lot of exciting changes coming to West Genesee Middle School as part of the current Capital Project. Some of the items on the list are things that people won’t necessarily see including plumbing, electrical, and HVAC work. All of that is essential to keep the building running efficiently and effectively, but may not necessarily have you saying “wow!” In addition to those items we do have some very visible changes that students and parents will start noticing in the very near future.

Our gym will have brand new bleachers that will be installed over April Break. By the time students come back to school in the Fall both of our boy’s and girls’ locker rooms will be getting complete makeovers with new lockers and bathrooms. Students will also be happy to hear that the entire building is getting new, larger lockers in the hallways which will be ready for your backpacks on opening day in September.

Anyone who drives their child to school in the morning at WGMS knows that between 7:20 a.m. and 7:35 a.m. our traffic pattern, which involves buses, parents and our staff, rivals downtown Atlanta during rush-hour. For all of you that do drop your children off, thank you for your patience, alertness and safe driving. In an effort to make our traffic pattern even safer and more efficient for everyone, we are redesigning our front circle to create some separation between the three groups all vying for access to the building. The redesign will allow all of our buses to park at WGMS on the front circle rather than being split between the middle school and Stonehedge Elementary School. Our staff will continue to use the back parking lot and parents will continue to loop around the parent circle at Stonehedge and drop their student(s) off along the driveway just as they do now. The new design will add a sidewalk that parallels the driveway at Stonehedge to connect to the middle school sidewalk so students will be able to more safely make their way to our front doors. Parents will then be able to 'drop and go' without having to wait for three groups of buses to work their way to the Middle School. The new design will also likely eliminate the need for me to play rodeo-clown in a neon vest each morning. It's actually an exciting start to the day!

In order to accommodate all of the buses on our front circle, the width of the current circle will double in size and we will need to remove a few trees from the existing circle. That work will begin over February Break so when students return the front of the building will undoubtedly have a different look to it with fewer trees.

I will continue to provide you with Capital Project updates specific to WGMS through this blog, our PTA meetings and Twitter as the work progresses. 

New York State Testing

You may have read or heard that there will be some positive changes to grades 3 through 8 testing in ELA and Mathematics Assessments that will be administered this April. For starters the tests will now be untimed. This means that any student who is working productively to complete any portion of the test may have as much time as they need to finish. There will also be fewer questions and reading passages for students to work through. Those changes are a good start! These assessments are part of the ‘circle of life’ in a school. Each year different events and activities come and go and we work through them. The assessments are no different. We don’t do anything special in preparation for them and we have no need for ’test prep’. The daily instruction that takes place is outstanding and the planning of our different units of study are all aligned to the standards. As a result our students are well prepared to sit and take these assessments. Please note the administration dates:

Grades 3-8 ELA                                 April 5-6-7

Grades 3-8 Mathematics                     April 13-14-15

As always, thank you for your continued support of our students and staff.

Continued Success,

Steve Dunham

sdunham@westgenesee.org

Twitter: @Sdunhamwgms

The Power of Reading in the New Year

With the warmth and sunshine of December behind us we have finally seemed to jump into winter with the arrival of the New Year. Perhaps all of us can work together to convince our middle school students that when the temperature dips into the single digits it is “cool” to wear a hat and gloves! They may not listen, but we can keep preaching!

The New Year brings with it our continued focus to make reading a priority at the middle level both within and outside of school. We know that books are the fundamental engines of advancement, illumination, and wonder.  We need to get books in more of our children’s hands much more often than we are. And by ‘we’, I am referring to school and home. We can’t do it all at school between 7:45 AM and 2:15 PM. Making reading a part of who our children are is essential for their lifelong success regardless of what their interests are or what they decide to pursue after high school.

In school we talk about literacy in broad terms, across all grades and disciplines. People are more cognizant of providing daily opportunities for our students to read and write with a purpose; to teach content through reading, writing, and inquiry. Reading is the magic bullet for maximizing student achievement and growth. It’s not just about reading books, but newspapers, magazines, blogs, journals, web posts, directions, word problems, lyrics, recipes, music, etc. Getting those in the hands of our students is essential. We continually reflect on our instructional practices: how much time are we spending each period, each day, each week, each unit, reading and writing? What are the tasks associated with the various texts that students engage with? Reading and writing should be an essential component which everything else that we do is built around. We must ensure that we are giving our students what they need for their future, not simply walking them through a bunch of content in order to pass tests. The ability to read and write well are gifts. As we prepare our students for their future there is nothing more valuable that they can take with them.

Frank Bruni wrote a wonderful OP-ED for the New York Times in which he eloquently captures the importance and power of reading: “Reading fuels the fires of intelligence and imagination, and if they don’t blaze well before elementary school, a child’s education — a child’s life — may be an endless game of catch-up.” I encourage you to read the entire article here.

One way that you can help promote reading at home is to encourage your children to get involved with our 2^nd Annual ‘Battle of the Books’. The Battle is about to get underway with competition between teams beginning in March. Last year was our inaugural Battle, with 68 students competing on 17 teams, answering questions about 8 books which were focused on a theme of "Journeys." Students had a great time using electronic buzzers, answering questions, and wagering points to defeat their competitors. They had fun reading and discussing great books!

This year's competition promises to be even better with a visual Jeopardy-style electronic gameboard, and book titles that have won several awards for quality writing and content in middle-school fiction. The titles for this year can be found here.

The ‘Battle of the Books’ is a great opportunity for your child to be on a team, in a school-sponsored activity, developing their skills of teamwork, cooperation, communication, all in a very fun environment! Competition will take place during IT and there are still openings for teams and for individuals who would like to be placed on a team. Please have your child see Mrs. Chemotti in the library for more information.

Let’s continue to support and encourage our students to read as we enter the New Year. Wishing all of you a happy and healthy 2016!

Continued Success,

Stephen R. Dunham

sdunham@westgenesee.org

Follow me on Twitter: @Sdunhamwgms

Grades Don't Tell the Whole Story

On Friday Report Cards for the first quarter of the school year were released. Parents and students alike logged into SchoolTool, locked their eyes onto the grades for each class and made a personal judgment of whether those numbers were ‘good’, ‘bad’ or somewhere in-between. The unfortunate thing about grades is that it is very difficult to give an accurate reflection of an individual student as a learner with just a number. Yet, we get so focused on the number we don’t often stop to think about the learning taking place.

Take these two scenarios: Mike has a 97 in Science class. He does all of his homework and he does well on tests and labs. He’s engaged in classroom conversations, but he came into the school year with a great deal of background knowledge on the subject matter. As a result, he doesn’t need to put in a great deal of time or effort into the class because it comes so easy for him. The 97 is a nice number, but there may not be a great deal of learning taking place. Steve has a 68 in English class. He works very hard, completes all of his homework, but really struggles with writing. Over the course of the first quarter his hard work is starting to pay off. His writing and reading comprehension are improving and a significant amount of learning and growth is taking place. These are two very different grades telling two very different stories. If you focus just on the number you don’t see the entire picture and you can lose sight of the individual as a learner.

I’m not proposing that we throw grades out at this point, but looking at them differently is a must. As educators we are changing how we look at grades and how we ultimately give grades to students. We are moving away from the days of “getting stuff done” and compliance as the measuring stick for student performance. Our assessments are more authentic in nature, students are engaged in much more rigorous and relevant learning opportunities across all content areas, we are giving on-going, specific feedback to students in order to promote growth, and the focus is much more about essential skills than it is short term memory and regurgitating. It’s about the process of learning and all of the experiences tied to it.

We need to start talking about the learning and focus less on the numbers. High grades do not necessarily equate to more learning just as lower grades do not necessarily equate to less learning and it is very difficult to give an accurate reflection of an individual student as a learner with a single number. Most of us would agree that our students are more than just the number they receive from State Assessments, so we also need to embrace the idea that our students are more than the grades on their report cards.

Build 'em & Bust 'em

Our students take part in a wide variety of activities that can’t be quantified with a number. How do you put a number on the incredible experiences our students have as part of our athletic teams or as part of our performing groups or the musical or our many clubs or an Olweus Classroom Meeting? Just this past weekend we had students participating in the ‘Build ‘em and Bust ‘em’ Bridge Building/Engineering competition at the MOST, another group of students participating in a First LEGO League competition in Mexico (the school district, not the country) and starting Thursday evening 120 of our students will kick-off three performances of the musical, The Happy Elf.

LEGO Competition

These are just three examples of the many amazing experiences our students are involved with as an extension of the classroom experience. I would argue that the learning that took place in preparation for these events and during these events might be greater than experiences that are reflected in their report cards. It really is about perspective. As adults we need to look at the whole picture, look at each student individually as a learner, and not get so hung up on the numbers.

The current system has us trying to communicate growth and learning in numbers. It isn’t easy and it isn’t perfect, but we continue to work on it. As parents we need to continue to talk to our children about school and their learning, not just about grades. 

Continued Success,

Steve Dunham

@Sdunhamwgms

sdunham@westgenesee.org