What is the JWP superintendent thankful for?

During this time of year we are called to reflect on the things we are thankful for in life.  On a personal note I am thankful for my wonderful family and the community in which we reside.  Being that this blog is for professional intentions, I will express my thankfulness for the school district in which I am employed and our district's communities.

Lists are always a good way to organize thoughts, therefore, my thankfulness will be expressed below.

1. First and foremost, I am thankful for the students that enter our schoolhouse doors on a daily basis eager to learn and grow.  We have outstanding students that will no doubt contribute to society in a positive way in the very near and distant future.

2. I am thankful for the outstanding staff members (all of them) at JWP that commit themselves to the world's most important job, educating future contributors to our society.  JWP staff members have experienced many changes through that past three years.  Each one of them have found a way to embrace the change and make the best of it.  As this district's superintendent, I can confidently say that you/we are extremely lucky to have such committed personnel positively impacting students on a daily basis. 

3. I am thankful for an outstanding school board.  School board members have a difficult job.  They are elected officials that represent our three communities and put forth 100% effort to ensure the students that enter our schoolhouse gate are provided with a world class education.  These members have set a strategic vision and have committed to ensuring those visions are met.

4. I am thankful for our communities.  The communities of Janesville, Waldorf, and Pemberton have provided us with financial and moral support to accomplish our goal of ensuring all students learn at high levels.  Without the support of these three communities, our recent great accomplishments would not have been realized.

5. I am thankful to those in our school and communities that came before us.  The hard work and sacrifice of those that came before us make us who we are today.  From the settlements of our communities to the development of our current school district, those before us made everything possible today.  You are all greatly appreciated.

I realize that my notations above have not included everyone.  For those I missed, thank you for your contributions to our district and communities.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Legislative Session & Technology

The 2015 legislative session is set to begin on January 6, 2015.  In the education world, this becomes an interesting and important time of the year.  The Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton School District will focus our lobbying efforts on a variety of issues.  In this blog entry I will share with you the items of interest for our district in the upcoming legislative session as well as technology news.

Governor Dayton and our legislatures have been supportive of education over the past two biennium's.  We have seen an increase to the funding formula, full funding of all day everyday kindergarten, expansion of early childhood education, fiscal allocations for the implementation of the new teacher evaluation law and a variety of other efforts.  Although we are thankful for the efforts, we have a long way to go.

Legislative Priorities

Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton's lobbying efforts will be as follows:

1. An increase to the funding formula with indexing for inflation.
2. Increase in alternative facilities authority so we can maintain our facility.
3. Continued equalization so our local taxpayers aren't stuck with the brunt of funding our school district.
4. Funding of unfunded mandates.
5. A variety of other needs.

Should you want to discuss these items at greater length, please feel free to contact me directly.  

Technology

Technology issues continue to be a topic of interest for our district.  Technology changes at a rapid pace.  Many districts throughout the state of Minnesota have implemented 1:1 initiatives in which each student is issued a device.  Our district is in the process of evaluating which device makes the most sense for our students.  Devices being considered are iPads, Chromebooks, MS Surface, Droid Devices, laptops and others.  Should any of you have a particular interest in which device we should implement and have rationale, please feel free to contact me as I would like to discuss this with you.

A Must See YouTube Video

This week Mr. Erler (Elementary Principal), Mrs. Miller (4th Grade), Mrs. Morrow (2nd Grade) and Mrs. Schmitz (Kindergarten) attended the Curriculum Leaders of Minnesota Conference.  On Friday our keynote speaker was Scott McLeod (@mcleod for Twitter followers).  For me, his keynote was one of the most engaging conversations I have experienced.  It was wonderful to share this experience with some of our outstanding JWP staff.

Dr. McLeod challenged us to think about how to take technology from substitution use to higher order uses while educating our students.  This comes directly from the SAMR model of technology instruction.

S - Substitution - Technology acts as a direct tool substitute, with no functional change.  For example, in the past, we may have used a chalkboard to teach and now we use the SMARTboard.

A - Augmentation - Technology acts as a direct tool substitute, with functional improvement.  An example would be the use of "Back Channels" to further discuss a topic or for continued reflection.

M - Modification - Technology allows for significant redesign, which might be concept mapping notes using different pieces of technology linking different learning.

R - Redefinition - Technology allows for creation of new tasks that were previously inconceivable.  An example of this would be that students are asked to make documentary videos of their grandparents or someone else they know in that age range.  They would specifically discuss historical points and cite experience in the documentary.  The documentary would then be shared via Twitter and Google Sites.

*Kathy Schrock (http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html)

Ultimately one can look at the SAMR model as being similar to Bloom's Taxonomy.  Moving from the bottom up in Bloom's Taxonomy allows more authentic learning experiences for students.  Likewise is the experience of moving from substitution to redefinition.


Thank you Scott McLeod for outstanding information and tools for future innovation and district wide development!  Those of you that have made your way through this blog entry, enjoy the following video.

Thesis Statements...Do YOU remember?

I was invited into our sophomore English class yesterday afternoon to observe a lesson regarding thesis statements.  These statements are sentences (typically one) that explains what an essay is about.  Mrs. Oelke and her students put together notebooks that cover the topic and provide a point of reference.

As you can see in the above example, students were provided with four potential thesis statements for each story.  The first example is Harrison Bergeron.  One of the following sentences is a better example of a thesis statement.  Can you identify the best example (I do realize it is highlighted above)?

1. "Harrison Bergeron" is a better example of dystopian literature than Divergent.
2. Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" fits the description of dystopian literature.
3. "Harrison Bergeron" is about a society that doesn't even exist.
4. Vonnegut's story could never happen in real life.

In this case, it is sentence two.  Observing this lesson reminded me of how subjective the evaluation of a thesis statement can be.  Our students deserve great kudos for taking on this difficult challenge and persevering.

To add on to the challenge of this, our students were also asked to identify the genre of each thesis statement.  If you have a child in 10th grade or beyond, give them a quiz.  The answer is: dystopian.  Take it a bit further, what is dystopian?  Before quizing them, google search the definition :-).

Mrs. Oelke facilitated an excellent discussion with her students to strengthen their understanding of this topic.  It was enjoyable observing our students taking risks and sharing their belief whether they were correct or incorrect.

This is what teaching and learning is all about!

School Board Candidates

The 2014 Election brings four open school board seats.  On the final day of filing, the JWP School District had five interested candidates.  Below is a summary of a Q&A held with our prospective school board members.

(Appearing in Alphabetical Order with their responses italicized))

Kelly Eustice (Incumbent)

Hometown/Where you Graduated from High School: Janesville, MN - Janesville High School

Current Occupation/Role: Medical Technologist at Mayo Clinic Health Systems in Waseca

Why have you decided to run for the school board?  Kelly is running for the school board because she wants to stay active and involved in her children's education as well as those of all the families of the JWP District. 

What do you believe is the biggest challenge facing our District?  One of the biggest challenges is open enrollment and funding.

What do you believe is the greatest strength of our District?  The greatest strength of our district are our students!  Community support is also wonderful!

Danell (Dan) Hoehn

Hometown/Where you Graduated from High School: Elysian - Waterville-Elysian High School

Current Occupation/Role: Attorney and Partner at Schmidt Hoehn Law, Ltd.

Why have you decided to run for the school board?  Danelle (Dan) has five children who will be educated in the JWP School District.  Therefore, as a parent and resident of the school district he has vested interest in the quality education of his children as well as all of the children attending school in this district.  He is running with the intent to be a contributing member of the organization which will provide that education.

What do you believe is the biggest challenge facing our District?  In following the issues and challenges facing the school board the past several years, at times there have been an issue or two which loomed large above the rest.  However, he does not believe at this time there is one issue which rises above all others in the school district.  He does believe that some of the key issues which are ongoing include maintaining and enhancing a quality curriculum, student enrollment and funding issues.  If elected, Danelle (Dan) expect he would become more keenly aware and knowledgeable about those issues which are of the most importance.

What do you believe is the greatest strength of our District?  Danelle (Dan) believes the greatest strength of any organization is its people which in this case includes the students, parents, educators, support staff, administration and community as a whole.  He believes the role of the school board is to strive to provide the best environment and tools it can in order to enable people within the organization to excel in their various roles.

Tim Johnson (Incumbent)

Hometown/Where you Graduated from High School: Janesville, MN - Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton High School

Current Occupation/Role: Sr. Industrial Designer at Hearth & Home Technologies

Why have you decided to run for the school board?  Tim enjoys being an active member of the community and this is the best way he can actively support our school district.

What do you believe is the biggest challenge facing our District?  Tim believes the number of people living in our school district that open enroll to other districts is too high and he wants to be a part of helping our school district become peoples number one choice.

What do you believe is the greatest strength of our District?  Our biggest asset to our school is our staff and their dedication to the students education.

Jennifer Miller

Jennifer will appear on the ballot but will be moving out of the school district.  Therefore, she will be unable to fulfill the obligations of being a school board member in the Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton Public School District.

Greg Weedman


Hometown/Where you Graduated from High School: Springfield, MN - Springfield High School

Current Occupation/Role: North Star Stone - Store Manager/Commercial Representative

Why have you decided to run for the school board?  Greg's family has been in the Janesville area for nine years had have enjoyed getting to know the school personnel and the community members.  They have two younger children in the JWP school district, and have a personal interest in maintaining the quality of the school system.

What do you believe is the biggest challenge facing our District?  Technology - Our youth is so advanced that we need to find more creative ways to incorporate technology in the classroom to keep up with the demand.  Also, poverty within the student body.

What do you believe is the greatest strength of our District?  Successful growth in terms of testing/ranks.  The direction of positive re-enforcement in relation to bullying.  Community pride within the school system and throughout the area.

In closing, the Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton School District reminds folks get out and vote on the 4th of November. 

Communication Kudos!

Communication between the school, families and communities is of extreme importance.  As mentioned in an earlier blog post, our staff consistently looks for ways to increase our communication capacity.  Our two first grade teachers, Mrs. Sheeran and Mrs. Leiferman have been consistently blogging about a variety of classroom happenings.  To check out the true power behind blogging, please visit the following websites (blogs):

Mrs. Sheeran's Blog: http://jwpsheeran.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Leiferman's Blog: http://leiferman.blogspot.com/

Thank you teachers for putting in extra time to create strong communication with our families and communities! 

Teacher Made Video Tutorials

During the 2013-2014 school year the Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton School District adopted a new math curriculum for our students in grades K-12.  The elementary adopted Math Expressions published by Houghton Mifflin. 

With every curriculum adoption there are challenges to be met.  Teachers work hard to familiarize themselves with the new curriculum and to develop appropriate pacing.  Our students and families are challenged to adapt to new languages, appearance, pedagogy and procedures.  Math Expressions is a unique curriculum that challenges our students to look at numbers differently to extend their learning. 

As a way to assist families and students in their understanding of these unfamiliar concepts, one of our third grade teachers, Mrs. Roesler, put together video tutorials.  Once these videos are made, Mrs. Roesler can send them out via e-mail and post them to her website.  This is one fine example of how our teachers work diligently to provide our families with effective communication.  To view an example video tutorial, please click on the play button above.