February Update

Happy Valentine’s Day! It is wonderful to see such a considerable amount of red and pink being worn today by staff and students in the spirit of the day.  In addition to Valentine’s Day, there is a lot of energy in the building this week with Twin Day on Friday and our Winter Recess next week. It’s a great week to be a Wildcat!

Parent Resources

I always try to share any information that I think will be beneficial to parents and community members. Throughout the year I have written about the new Common Core Learning Standards, assessments and some of the other initiatives that we are in the midst of. Remember, I like to use the word improvement rather than change as change sometimes brings with it a negative connotation. A resource that I think will be helpful for parents as we work through this improvement process is the Common Core Toolkit for Parents and Families. It is a collection of materials and resources that will help parents and families understand the New York State education reform initiatives and how the changes will help your child graduate from high school ready for college and careers. Check it out and please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns. It truly is a terrific resource!

http://engageny.org/parent-and-family-resources



 Student Success

Congratulations to our very own eighth grader Brennan Costello who finished as runner-up in the Post Standard Central New York Spelling Bee. She lasted 19 rounds and went head-to-head with the eventual winner who moves on to Washington D.C. for the National Spelling Bee.  Brennan is now proofreading all correspondence that leaves my office.

Library Traffic

Since the beginning of the school year our library has loaned out over 4,800 book and magazines! In addition, the library has a continual flow of students and classes coming in for a variety of research projects throughout the day, every day. With the new CCLS and a focus on the six Shifts in ELA/Literacy, our library is at the heart of supporting our students and staff with those efforts.

PE students getting some outdoor exercise

I am hoping that all of our students and staff have a wonderful and relaxing break from school next week. Whether we have a winter warm-up or a blast of arctic air this week, get outside and stay active. Grab a good book or some magazines that interest you and keep your mind engaged as well. As always, thank you for your ongoing involvement and support of our students and staff.

Continued Success,

Steve Dunham

Where did the month go?

In the blink of an eye the month of January is gone. It has been a fast moving and very productive month at West Genesee Middle School for our students and our staff. All of our students in grades 6, 7 and 8 took part in a universal AIMSweb screening for both Mathematics and Reading. If you have read my previous posts you know that this allows us to get another piece of data on students to make instructional decisions to better meet their needs. Many of our students also took interim assessments in some of their core courses to provide teachers with a snapshot of where students are. Teachers will now use that data to help shape instructional decisions as we head into the second semester. That is sound instructional practice.

Along with improving our assessment system, we are changing our instructional practices. Infused into the new Common Core Learning Standards is the need to provide students with instructional opportunities to develop and utilize 21st Century Skills. Twenty-first Century Skills are all about having students communicate, collaborate, thinking critically and being creative and innovative. In classrooms in all grade levels and in all content areas our students are getting these opportunities. These real world, real life skills are essential for students to be ready for college and beyond. The days of memorizing and regurgitating lists and lists of facts and basic information are being replaced with the need for students to apply, analyze, evaluate and create using that information. These higher level thinking situations can and should be challenging for students. We are pushing our students beyond simply meeting minimun requirements and working towards mastery. That push can bring with it some struggle, but getting out of one's comfort zone and struggling at times is where growth occurs.  For all of our students, helping them grow and improve is our focus.



Powerful Collaboration: Teachers teaching teachers

Professional workshops days are a key component of the improvement process we are entrenched in. This past Monday our teachers had an opportunity to collaborate with their colleagues from both middle schools. Lots of terrific work tied to aligning curriculum, developing common interim assessments and sharing best practices took place. I can't say enough about the effort and commitment our staff continually puts into their work. I am inspired on a daily basis by what I see in our classrooms!


Top Spellers Advance to CNY Finals


I am also inspired by the incredible talents of our students. Our athletic and fine arts programs continue to flourish through the winter season. In addition to that, three of our eighth grade students have advanced to the Post-Standard CNY Spelling Bee Finals this Saturday, February 2nd at 2 PM. The event will be televised on WCNY and we wish all three of them, Nicholas Cantello, Brennan Costello, and Russell Graziano the best of luck as they compete against the best spellers in the area.

Some of the activities on the calendar the next few weeks include WGMS Movie Night, our building level Optimist Speech Contest, the next Olweus Classroom Meeting, and a number of club and intramural activities. As always, please check the 'Announcements' section of our web site for specific dates and times. Thank you for your continued support of our students and staff at WGMS.

Continued Success,
Steve Dunham

Improving with Change

Anyone who is in education or anyone that has children in school today understands that there is a wide range of changes occurring right now. If you look back over the last five months alone it is mind-boggling to think about all of the changes that we in education have had and are still in the midst of implementing: new standards, a new evaluation system for teachers and principals, the development and implementation of a balanced assessment system, RtI Plans, and the list goes on and on. The good news is that most of this change is fraught with good intentions: to maximize student achievement and learning and continue to get better; to improve educating our children. Let’s start thinking of the word ‘change’ as being synonymous with ‘improvement’. Any change we look to make should be with improvement as the goal.

What is exciting about being in education today is that more than ever, if you really look at what is happening, it is clear that more of our dots are connecting as things improve. What happens is one content area is impacting another and vice versa. People are no longer alone on their own islands doing their own thing. Collaboration is at an all-time high. I see that collaboration every day in action at WGMS and it is very inspiring. We are improving as we go.

Yet, we continue to reflect on our practices to see what else we can do to evolve. At the middle school level we have started to discuss building in an ‘interaction time’ into our day similar to the high school. Interaction time would allow our teachers more time to connect with students who need that time. Many of our students have very full schedules and struggle at finding time to make up science labs, get extra help, take advantage of intervention services, etc. Interaction time would also allow time for teachers to collaborate with one another in an effort to effectively do some of the things I mentioned above. The potential benefits of interaction time on student achievement and learning are tremendous.

So why wouldn’t we just do it and make interaction time happen?  Well, as I mentioned, there is a lot of change, or improvement, in the air. How much change is too much? The upside of interaction time is obvious, but it would also bring with it a slight change in our start time and the need to have some of our West Genesee Middle School students ride to school with high school students. Most districts already have shared busing between different building levels, but for us that would be new and one more change. We are also on the verge of redistricting which is another change, or improvement, going on. Like other recent changes (improvements) in education, interaction time is an idea with the best interests of our students in mind. I think that if we can make it happen it will have a tremendous impact on maximizing student achievement and learning. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for continued involvement and support of our students and staff.

Continued Success,

Steve Dunham

sdunham@westgenesee.org