The Chatfield Connection

Summer Professional Development

It has been quite a full schedule over the past two weeks! Great educators are also lifelong learners. Our staff has been committed to the continuous improvement of their skills. A few highlights:

We held our annual "Tech Boot Camp" last week. More than 40 staff members attended at least one of the sessions during the week. Our staff was involved in learning about Web 2.0 applications, our new email system, our new student information system, digital imaging, web site development, digital music/podcast creation and utilization, SMART Boards, and several Microsoft Office products.

The part I am the most proud is the fact we had nine staff members lead the sessions during the week. When we first offered Tech Boot Camp in 2003 we had just two instructors. Our staff have embraced the transformative power of technology - their attendance and leadership of Tech Boot Camp is clear evidence of that commitment.

Math Curriculum Alignment: We met for two days this week with our K-12 math curriculum team, working to align our math instruction with the latest version of Minnesota's standards. This set of standards, adopted in 2007, replaced standards mandated in 2003. I was pleased with the depth of the discussion which took place among our math team. Our K-7 textbooks have been aligned with the new standards using a great template developed by Oak Crest Elementary teacher Carol Lagergren. Our 8th-11th grade alignment will be completed in the coming weeks. There are more than 70 standards at the high school level along with the challenge of the difficult 11th Grade MCA-II exam. The math team did an excellent job and I feel very good about the direction we moved.

I attended the Minnesota Assessment Conference today at Northwester College in Roseveille. Nearly 1,000 educators from across Minnesota and Wisconsin attended the conference. Our keynote speaker was Dr. Susan Rigney from the US Department of Education. I attended several sessions including:

• Gearing up for the GRAD (two sessions)
• Acceleration of Gifted Students
• Three Levels of Reading: Using Close Reading to Discover Layered Meanings in Text

This was an excellent conference and an opportunity to network with many colleagues I respect.

Next week we have several more Chatfield Elementary teachers attending Responsive Classroom training. We have had others attend the Fairmont Reading Acceleration Program, the Minnesota Learning Resource Center's SMART training, and Orton-Gillingham reading intervention workshops. Our teachers are always learning - just another reason why I am extremely proud to serve them!

Summer Learning

Summer is a time for recharging and reconnecting. Kids are involved in a lot of different learning experiences. I have watched, with joy, the steady stream of folks to fields behind our school for T-Ball, Squirt Ball, and Little League games. A tremendous amount of social and kinesthetic learning is taking place on those fields! Our community education team is offering many cool opportunities such as gardening and cooking for kids. The Belle Plaine Public Library has an awesome summer reading program and has facilitated several book clubs. Our local librarian Georgine Gansen is one of the reasons I love Belle Plaine! She is so positive and makes the library a place kids love to be.

My own family has been busy with learning opportunities - chess tournaments, little league baseball, community ed courses, inventor's camp, bicycle rides with stops by ponds to look at the tadpoles, and book clubs are just a few of the activities that have taken place to this point. My daughter and I got to take care of a friend's dog while they were on a trip. This was such a special opportunity for she and I to walk together twice a day and just chat without our two boys around. She loves animals and taking care of the dog was a great opportunity for her to learn about the responsibility associated with pets. My wife is involved in a Bible study one day a week and our three kids go along to play with a dozen or so other kids whose moms are involved in the study. It is a great unstructured learning opportunity as I am always hearing about the creative game the kids devised together that day. (Kudos and thanks to my amazing wife for transporting our kids to all these wonderful opportunities!)

These - and many other summer opportunities, both structured and unstrucured - are extremely valuable for kids. The family camping trip, learning to fish, spending time with relatives are just some of the wonderful things kids get to do in the summer. Kids are always learning in or out of school. They learn by watching what we do and what we don't do.

Scott McLeod, a professor at Iowa State University, posted this interesting list of activities for kids to engage in during the summer that involve active learning and technology. The power of the social web allowed others throughout the world to add to this list - I encourage you to check it out!

I'll end this post with what I have continually advocated - read with your kids! Remember a wide body of research has demonstrated that kids who read for at least 20 minutes per day have a higher rate of academic success. Reading doesn't have to be novels - it can be magazines, well written children's literature, or picture books. Please take whatever opportunity you can to engage your child in some sort of reading each day.

Keep enjoying this great summer learning! It is irreplaceable!

Image Credit: Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2523322166/

Leadership Day 2008

Dr. Scott McLeod at Iowa State University has asked educational leaders to celebrate Independence Day by blogging about school technology leadership. Dr. McLeod is responsible for my beginning this blog and as a school technology advocate, I couldn't resist to join the effort! Dr. McLeod provided a few prompts to consider writing about. I am going to focus on the question "What do effective K-12 technology leaders do? What actions and behaviors can you point to that make them effective leaders in the area of technology?"

I believe K-12 technology leaders focus on how to help meet the learning needs of their organizations. This can take many forms. It can mean:

• Ensuring access to 21st century learning tools for students, teachers, staff, and community.
• Make sure there is a strong support structure in place to help "scaffold" the organization's technology learning. Members of the organization need to have confidence there is "human help" as new tools are introduced or old tools are used in new and imaginative ways. Support can be technical in nature, curricular, and pedagogical. If the stuff doesn't work, people won't spend the time to consistently use it, and thus it cannot be transformative in our classrooms.
• Effective leaders demonstrate restraint in terms of using technology for technology's sake. They use the right tool for the job. Sometimes the right tool is a SMART Board, sometimes it is an overhead projector. Effective leaders know when to use which tool.
• Effective leaders prioritize the resources they have available to procure technology that can make the most difference in student learning. We were allocated some district equipment dollars this past year. While I would have loved to use that money for SMART Boards, I knew the better purchase in our building was voice amplification systems for teachers. The district then applied for and received grant money from the Mdewakanton Sioux to purchase several SMART Boards. Again, SMART Boards are very useful but we had clear priorities and made choices based on a hierarchy of needs associated with our beliefs about student learning.
• Effective leaders make sure their community gets a chance to access school technology through community education courses. These are critical because they expand the community's technological skill set, create awareness of digital learning tools, and demonstrate the investment of a district's taxes.
• Effective leaders help transform the organization's processes through technology. They are consistently looking for ways to support the organization's mission whether it is in the classroom, building management, food service, community education, etc.
• Effective leaders ensure technology serves the people of the organization, not the other way around.

School technology leadership is different than technology leadership in other organizations. I have perceived enterprise technology leadership provides the minimal level of access a person needs to complete their task. School technology leaders should aspire to provide a level of access that allows our students to learn in a way that aligns with their individual learning style and maximizes their ability to be creative problem solvers.

Thanks to Dr. McLeod for asking us to ponder these important questions in celebration of one of the most inspiring events in human history! Happy Independence Day!

Thanks, Mrs. Mollenhauer!

I want to take some of this post to highlight one of our outstanding educators, Mrs. Lynn Mollenhauer. Mrs. Mollenhauer teaches Computer Education courses a couple of days per week at our school. She is consistently looking for ways she can complement our curriculum through technology. She is also always trying to help kids develop their higher order thinking skills. A couple of examples:

• Mrs. Mollenhauer sees new software and immediately determines how it can enhance our curriculum. She was so excited a few months ago when she found an inexpensive piece of software called Bookworm. The software is a similar to an electronic word search with a tiled board full of letters. Players must create their own words out of tiles that touch one another. She piloted the software this Spring. It was such a hit and she observed such excitement among our primary students about making words that we are buying enough software for the computer lab this summer.

• My third grade son loves a good challenge. Chess, a hard video game, a difficult logic puzzle, or a quality book all are high on his list. Mrs. Mollenhauer introduced his class to Sratch - a computer programming primer for kids. This software is all about logic but it allows kids to create basic games or short animated clips. Oh and did I mention it was free? And developed by folks at M.I.T. We had to download it on our home computers this summer. After Mrs. Mollenhauer introduced us to the software, we found out there is a companion web site that allows users to upload and share their projects. My son and a friend have been exchanging Scratch projects during the summer. The site allows collaboration and the opportunity to improve each other's work. It also provided a great opportunity for our family to discuss online rules and how one must act in that environment. It all started because Mrs. Mollenhauer saw these kids were ready for this kind of challenge and gave them the opportunity to explore it.

I have enjoyed working with Mrs. Mollenhauer for the past five years and I look forward to many more. She is a dynamic, creative teacher who truly cares about our students' growth.

Kindergarten Letters/Staffing Changes

This week has been quiet but busy! Our office is tying up year-end details, preparing orders for next school year, participating in Infinite Campus training, and finalizing summer school details. Our unbelievably efficient secretary, Patti Edberg, works her last day (until August) tomorrow. There will still be a lot to do and I am not even in the same ballpark as Mrs. Edberg when it comes to efficiency but I'll do my best!

We mailed letters to parents of next fall's Kindergarten students today. This letter included their child's teacher assignment and other information. Contact our office immediately at (952) 873-2401 If you don't receive a letter and are planning to have your child attend Kindergarten this fall.

Summer is also a time of change. We say goodbye to some faculty and greet others. I want to thank 1st Grade teachers Joel Timmerman and Erin Stueber for their work this year and wish them luck in their future endeavors. Becky Perkins, who had been performing media specialist duties in all three of our district's buildings, will be solely assigned to Oak Crest Elementary next year. Mrs. Perkins worked extremely hard this year to try to make all of our media centers a positive and inviting place. We are thrilled to restore the cut to our media department that took place in 2007, but I will miss Mrs. Perkins in our building.

I'd like to welcome the following new staff. I will be providing profiles of these folks in blogs over the summer:

• Kindergarten: Christa Ranweiler (Christa is being added to our world class Kindergarten team due to a large incoming class.)
• 1st Grade: Abby Clancy (she's getting married next week and will be Mrs. Volek this fall)
• 1st Grade: Shawn Carlson
• Media Center: Deb Skophammer (will be shared with Belle Plaine Jr-Sr High School)
• Special Education: Beth Satterlund (will be starting our new "Students with Unique Needs" or SUN program.)

We are excited to welcome these highly skilled individuals to our awesome Chatfield family!

End of year notes

It is amazing that we are already at the end of another school year! The 2007-08 school year has been excellent and I'd like to thank you, our parents, for your continued support.

Our 1st and 2nd Grade students braved cool and overcast weather today during their Activity Day. Students participated in a series of activities such as jump rope, long jump, and sack races. We had numerous parent volunteers helping to make this a successful event, regardless of the weather. Congratulations to Mr. Anderson for another successful Activity Day!

Students will be informed of their teacher for the 2008-09 school year on Thursday, June 5th. Students in Grade 2 will visit Oak Crest Elementary in the afternoon. Thanks to our PTO for providing the funds to secure buses for this trip! Students in 1st Grade will meet with their 2nd Grade teachers in the afternoon and our 1st Grade teachers will visit Kindergarten classrooms to introduce themselves.

It is a busy, but exciting time of the school year. I will continue to blog about school topics over the summer on a weekly basis. I am also planning to begin a monthly podcast this summer - this is a project I have wanted to begin for a while and am excited to get it started this summer!

Kindergarten Activity Day/Oak Crest Talent Show

As we continue toward the end of the formal school year, we are fortunate to have the opportunity to be involved in several special events.

Kindergarten held their annual Activity Day today. Our physical education teacher, Doug Anderson, organizes and facilitates this event. As usual, Mr. Anderson had a great plan and "ordered" some outstanding weather for the event. Kindergarten students participated in a variety of races, including a race where they needed to balance a bean bag on their head and a good old-fashioned sack race. I observed students who were really enjoying themselves!

We were able to take our students to Oak Crest Elementary this afternoon for a preview of the 35th edition of the 5th/6th Grade Talent Show. This event includes a wide variety of acts - including musical performances, skits, comedy, and others. This event is also held in the evening and is a fund raiser designed to reduce the cost of the annual 6th Grade Wolf Ridge trip.

This was a two-hour event. I admit I was nervous. Could our primary students could focus for that long? I was very proud of our students as they did very well! It is important we begin to expose students to activities that last longer than their current attention span. While it may be challenging in the short term, it is an invaluable learning experience to help them develop these skills at a longer public performance. Kudos to our faculty for their efforts to prepare students for this event!

"Tiger Pals" program

Our "Tiger Pals" mentoring program held their annual picnic last week to celebrate another successful year. I asked our school counselor, Mrs. Lisa Treml, to share some information about this valuable program with me. She shared the following:

Our district’s mentoring program, Tiger Pals, had another successful and fun-filled year. This program is one in which interested juniors and seniors are paired with a student from Chatfield.  The purposes of this program are to provide some academic help, but perhaps more importantly to help provide connection and friendship for students who need a bit of support their lives.

High school students volunteered their time to meet weekly for 30 minutes during the school day. They worked on academics with students by catching them up with homework, reviewed skills, read together and so much more.  In addition to academic work, students developed wonderful friendships during some games and play time.

The “big” pals were extremely dedicated and extraordinarily responsible.  They knew that their time meant the world to their little pals.  The “little” pals provided their “big” pals with an opportunity to give service to the school district and have a bit of fun as well. 

The year culminated with the end-of-the-year pizza picnic in the park.  We took our huge group picture that is proudly displayed in Mrs. Treml’s office.

This program has been a part of our school district since 1998, and I am so proud of all of the students who have made it so successful and meaningful.

Many thanks to Mrs. Treml and all our high school student volunteers who have made this program successful!

May is "Better Speech and Hearing Month"

May has been designated as "Better Speech and Hearing" month. We have an outstanding Speech and Language team at Chatfield Elementary! My personal thanks to Gwen Keller and Martha Speckel for their outstanding work with our students and families. I asked Mrs. Keller to provide me a short synopsis of our program for this post and this is what she shared:

May is Better Hearing and Speech Month.  Belle Plaine Schools currently has three speech-language pathologists (SLPs)-Mrs. Gwen Keller, Mrs. Martha Speckel and Ms. Becky Haas.  SLPs work with children who have a diagnosed communication disorder, including (but not limited to):

•    articulation (the sounds a student says),
•    language (understanding and using words in sentences),
•    fluency (repeating a sound/word multiple times),
•    voice (harsh or nasal voice quality), or
•    social skills (teaching non-verbal communication and conversation skills).

More information regarding speech/language and hearing disorders can be found at:

http://www.asha.org/public/

I know many families have benefited from our Speech and Language services. This is an outstanding program and one where early intervention makes a huge difference in a student's life. We have many, many reasons to be proud of our school system and this program is right up there!

Image Credit: http://www.montaukschool.org

DIBELS/MAP Weeks

Students across Minnesota have been participating in state-wide examinations over the past several weeks. The MCA-II exams are the core of Minnesota's effort to satisfy the assessment requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. In general, students in Grades 3-11 take one or more MCA-II tests each year. These "high stakes" tests are the items that will make headlines in Minnesota media in August. While I believe the Department of Education has made an admirable effort in making these exams more useful to school systems for the purposes of programatic review, there is still room for improvement. I'll leave that until another day. This post is about the K-2 assessments we have been involved in recently.

We use the DIBELS assessment in Grades K-2 and the NWEA MAP in Grade 2. These, like any standardized assessment, aren't perfect but they do several positive things for us. They are relatively easy to administer, they provide us information about students' abilities that can be analyzed and used immediately, and they are generally student-friendly.

We administer both of these assessments three times per year. This allows us to chart student progress, make modifications during the year, and see how students respond to those modifications.

Whenever I talk about assessments like this, I also talk about balance. These assessments, by themselves, are not the "magic potion" that solve all of education's ills. However, it becomes invaluable when they are used by creative, professional educators who are able to interpret it and understand when to use what they have learned to help a student make a connection. These are the people in our classrooms. They are individuals who try to use the "science" of teaching while making learning fun and engaging. We still have a distance to go when it comes to being good users of data in our school, but we have worked hard and have come a long way. I am incredibly proud of the practical, balanced approach we use at Chatfield Elementary. We are people who always keep the individual child's needs in the forefront and use the tools we have to assist in that endeavor.