Communtiy members and Friends
of SAS-Pudong!
I
guess this message marks the next step in the transformation of communication
for our school. This is the newly
established Pudong Express Principal’s blog for Elementary and Middle School.
Below you will find some updated news for both the elementary and middle school
with some personal notes and articles from me (Andy Torris).
Why
the change?
Many
of you who know me, know that I find great joy in the use of computers,
technology and the possibilities that the new “edu-blog-sphere” provides for
school leaders, educators and students. I also believe that it is my job to model the use of technology and to
encourage its use by demonstrating the flexibility and beauty of this new
medium of communication. What this blog
will do for you, that Edline cannot is provide you with a variety of hot links
to other parts of the education world. For instance, many of you want to be able to access the weekly
ParentTalk online. As you notice, the
word ParentTalk is a blue, highlighted link. If you take your browser pointer
and click on the word ParentTalk, you will be wisked away to another page where
the new ParentTalk will be available for you to read. This allows ME to communicate better with you
and to do so without having to Cut and Paste, or copy and type…. Yes, folks
this is working smarter, not harder!
Additionally,
I want to use this medium to do some education of my own. There are some
amazing parenting resources on the web. The amount of information about current
trends in education is staggering, and this will give me a chance for you to
share with me, the teachers and administrators the very same information that
we are using to make decisions about our school. Much of what we do on a daily basis is
grounded in what we refer to “best practices” in schools. This will give me chance to share with you
our interest and thoughts on these best practices and to —in time – give me
feedback about your thoughts on these ideas.
Finally,
I would hope that you will use this blog as a “subscription”. Part of my plan for the use of this medium is
to help you as parents learn the latest tools available to you in the new Web
2.0 world. Things like RSS feeds
and aggregators
(I use netvibes and bloglines) will hopefully become tools you
can use to organize the news that you want. You can use your Yahoo mail or
Gmail to do this for you as well! I am
hoping that you will subscribe to this blog, our podcasts from teachers and
administrators and podcasts from
students for students. If the
subscriptions work, then you will have the news delivered to your computer when
you need it and where you need it! More on this next week!
To get
you started on some learning of your own, I will encourage to you to check out one of Mr. Utecht’s blog called U-Tech’s Tips. This week he and some of his technology
talented colleagues here at SAS created a great lesson on avoiding SPAM (not
the kind you eat!). You really need to
check this out! We have some amazingly
talented people working with us at our school!
Current
News from the Elementary--
Mrs.
Power’s class did a great job with the elementary new podcast this week. You you may have
noticed, I have removed poor Ms. McVean and myself from the front of the
microphone and handed over to the folks who really count—the kids! Nice work!
A few
things I want to draw your attention to this week in the elementary though…
Thursday
is a big day for us at Pudong Elementary. I need to make sure I get plenty of
sleep the night before as we are starting the day with one of our now famous
elementary assemblies. This month our
counseling theme has been “coping skills” and Ms. McMullin has created and
directed a wonderful program that highlights to work of Ms. Daneah Galloway,
Dr. Jan Cantrill and our classroom teachers who have been focusing on this
important life skill. Following the
event the we will adjourn to the new library lecture hall where we will conduct
our first PTSA co-sponsored Principal’s coffee. Don’t worry, you won’t have to
listen to me for an hour just rambling on. Instead we will have guest speakers
from our academic support and classroom programs to talk to you about our
literacy program at SAS-Pudong. It will be great!
I also
want to point out to you that Thursday is American Thanksgiving and I hear that
our friends at Eurest are planning a holiday themed lunch that day with Turke and all the trimmings. I think your kids would consider it a great
treat to have you stay for lunch.
Friday
we have the Shanghai Jazz orchestra visit the school! The challenge for us is that this is a half
day and thus we will be using a modified and shortened schedule. Thank you to the PTSA for co-sponsoring the
orchestra visit. This will be a great opportunity to have our kids see a
collection of “the best musicians” in Shanghai! Friday, is a half day of
school as scheduled. Dismissal time will
be 11:30 AM, and if you are like me, you will be running home to
prepare the holiday feast on Friday afternoon and evening.
Middle School News…
As
with the elementary, the kids have also taken the podcast microphone out of Dr. Rosen’s
and my hands! Check out their great work
here!
It
looks like our CISSA soccer event was almost rained out on Saturday but luckily we made it though. The Friday
night lounge night run by Mr. Pantoja’s marketing elective class was also a sucess. The lounge
nights, are by nature, unstructured time for kids just to “chill out” and have
some fun in a supervised atmosphere. We
had a great talent show, some laughter and fun together and the afternoon ended
at a reasonable hour for most folks to get home in a timely fashion. I noted that many of our students decided to
stay for the HS play that evening. More
lounge nights will come up through the year. A special note of thanks to the
many teachers who stayed to help supervise the event on a Friday afternoon and
a round of applause to Andrew Dorn and Marina Yoshimura for the great song they
sang to end the day’s events! Bravo!
Wednesday
marks the second PTSA middle school parent coffee. This event will take place at the Pudong
Oriental Arts Center starting at 10:00. I will address the group on a few topics and
Mr. Munnerlyn will then capably take over the stage to share some thoughts
issues related to Middle School programs. As always, we will both be supported and assisted by Dr. Rosen. According to Debbie MacDonald, this morning’s
activities will last a couple of hours and will finish with a luncheon at the
OAC.
Friday
we have the Shanghai Jazz orchestra visit the school! Yes… same as elementary. The challenge for us
is that this is a half day and thus we will be using a modified and shortened
schedule. Thank you to the PTSA for
co-sponsoring the orchestra visit. This will be a great opportunity to have our
kids see a collection of “the best musicians” in
Shanghai
!
Speaking
of shows, Ms. Meunch and her capable crew are in the midst of planning the
first ever dedicated Middle School Musical. This year we are going to do a
musical review and auditions are on tap. See below!
Middle School Show Auditions!
When: Monday and Tuesday, November 27th
and 28th
Where: Library Auditorium
What DO I have to do?
Sign up with Ms. Muench
(Room 206)
Get the music and audition part
off of the S Drive: Students: Middle school show
REMEMBER…..Dismissal
time will be 11:30 AM Friday!
Here is the REALLY important stuff!
GREAT Parent Meeting on Thursday!
