Referendum Update

I wanted to take a moment to let you know that last night the school board unanimously approved the recommendations made by the Facility Advisory Committee regarding a potential referendum. The board approved going to referendum in April, and asking the community to vote on two questions. An outline of the two questions is below.

QUESTION #1

School Building and Improvement Program | Project Cost Not to Exceed $20,420,000

• Additions to and remodeling of Jackson Elementary School, West Side Elementary School, Tibbets Elementary School and the High School
• Technical education improvements at the High School and Middle School
• Safety and security and maintenance work at District schools and facilities

QUESTION #2

High School Training Facilities and multi-use space

• Project Cost Not to Exceed $4,730,000
• Addition of a fitness/training center and multi-use space

These recommendations came forward after analyzing the community survey results and prioritizing a list of $43,000,000+ identified needs. The total cost of the two projects falls well within the price range the community indicated they are willing to support. In addition, the minimal tax impact is only projected to be a slight increase for the first two years, at which time taxes will reduce as the district pays off the debt from the high school project.

A successful referendum will require an informed community. The district is planning a Referendum Information Night on Thursday, March 26th starting at 6:00 p.m. in the High School Cafeteria. Please consider attending this event to learn more about the referendum. Representatives from the school district, CG Schmidt Construction, Eppstein Uhen Architects, and Robert W. Baird will be at this event to answer your questions. We will continue to update you throughout the process and provide you with more information as it becomes available. Be sure to visit our referendum web page: http://www.elkhorn.k12.wi.us/District/Referendum2015. We will continue to update it throughout the next three months. If at any time you have a question regarding the referendum, please do not hesitate to contact Mr. Bill Trewyn, or myself, or complete the submit a question form on the website. We are happy to answer any questions.

Sincerely,

Jason Tadlock

Interest = Ability, Ability = Interest

I am writing to you from Indianapolis. In a few hours Chris Trottier and I will be presenting at the Project Lead the Way (PLTW) National Conference. We are also joined by Deanna Brunlinger and Jerry Iserloth, two high school PLTW teachers. The conference has been exceptional to this point, and it has provided us with excellent networking opportunities and learning experiences. The opening night of the conference I had the good fortune of listening to Dr. William Bennett, the former Secretary of Education, share why he is an advocate of PLTW. His speech was apolitical, relevant, and it resonated with my experience and involvement in PLTW. He stated very eloquently that his support of PLTW is directly related to its ability to engage and interest students.

Dr. Bennett went on to explain that a reciprocal relationships exists between interest and ability. When we create a interest for young children, it results in them having ability in that area. This makes sense and aligns with much of Malcolm Gladwell’s research related to the need for for someone to spend 10,000 hours working on something to truly master it. If someone has interest in a concept, topic, subject area, then they are likely to have the motivation necessary to put the time into developing the ability. As we grow and develop, this reciprocal relationship can become very strong and convert to what we have an ability in, we are interested in. For example, you may have heard a student say, “I like math because I am good at it.” At this point ability and capacity are now influencing interest. Knowing this reciprocal relationship exists, we can consciously impact a student's ability by controlling the interest level. Take a moment to think about how do you interest your students?

This leads me to why I have been a strong supporter of PLTW since first introduced to it eight years ago. It isn’t just about the need for us to provide a strong STEM background for our students, which we do, but it is also because I have seen how the PLTW curriculum ignites student interest and excitement in STEM. This high interest level leads to students taking a greater interest in subject areas that many tend to struggle with over time, in particular science and math. This interest then leads to time on task, which in return develops their ability. When the curriculum is introduced at the earlier ages, I have also seen it have a tremendous positive impact on our girls and children of lower socioeconomics, as their interest in the math and sciences are ignited. This interest eventually demonstrates the reciprocal relationship of Ability=Interest.

By the end of this school year we will become one of two districts in the country to offer at least one Project lead the way unit to each one of our students in grades K-8, and have all three areas of study available at the high school level (engineering, biomedical science, and computer science). We have made a big commitment to integrating this curriculum, and I know that it has and will require a significant time commitment from many of you. However, I know that this commitment of time and resources will lead to increased interest for all our students, resulting in greater ability. I want to thank you for the commitment that many of you are making, and let you know that I appreciate it, both as an educational leader, but even more so as a parent. Together we will have a significant impact on the lives of our students. Thank you for all you do! If you ever have any questions related to PLTW, do not hesitate to ask, I would be happy to discuss it with you.

How to Get Our Students to Not Give Up

As an educator I have always strived to help students believe in their potential and to cultivate an understanding that hard work will equate to increased knowledge and achievement. For this reason I ask that we focus on growth, rather than achievement. This is not to imply that achievement is not important, to the contrary, having all students reach the highest level of achievement they possibly can is our ultimate goal. I just don’t feel that focusing on where a student is already at is the secret to success, but rather focusing on the direction and speed they are headed, will yield the end result we desire.  While this focus on growth is at the heart of what I do as an educator, I recently read an article, “Why Some Kids Try Harder and Some Kids Give Up” - Tracy Cutchlow,  that made me reflect on my actions as a parent and an educator. I also believe the article has powerful insights regarding student resilience, and how we can help develop a growth mentality. Please be sure to take a moment to read the entire article.

Students come to us with two basic mindsets, these are referred to as a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Tracy describes the fixed mindset children in the following manner:

“Kids with a fixed mindset believe that you are stuck with however much intelligence you're born with. They would agree with this statement: "If you have to work hard, you don't have ability. If you have ability, things come naturally to you." When they fail, these kids feel trapped. They start thinking they must not be as talented or smart as everyone's been telling them. They avoid challenges, fearful that they won't look smart.”

Those with a growth mindset are described as follows:

“Kids with a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be cultivated: the more learning you do, the smarter you become. These kids understand that even geniuses must work hard. When they suffer a setback, they believe they can improve by putting in more time and effort. They value learning over looking smart. They persevere through difficult tasks.What creates these beliefs in our kids? The type of praise we give them -- even starting at age 1.”

The ahah moment for me was the fact that students are coming to us with one of these two mindsets. We obviously want to assure that our students have a growth mindset. This means that for many of our students we need to help them overcome their pre-established, “fixed mindset” notions and help focus them on developing characteristics of a growth mindset. The key to this is how we phrase our praise.

“Kids praised for their effort tended to take the challenging task, knowing they could learn more. They were more likely to continue feeling motivated to learn and to retain their confidence as problems got harder.

Kids praised for their intelligence requested the easier task, knowing there was a higher chance of success. They lost their confidence as problems got harder, and they were much more likely to inflate their test scores when recounting them.”

We need to reflect on how we praise students, and focus our praise on their efforts, rather than what I am often guilty of as a parent, “Wow, you’re so smart!” As a parent of a couple of fixed mindset students I know I have some work to do.

As a side note the Author’s in-laws live right here in Elkhorn, small world!

Personalized Learning for Student Success: A Regional Approach

I am very excited about our progress toward a personalized learning model. If you would like to learn more about what that means and why we need to change our approach in schools, this video is a great start.

March Herd Post

WOW! It is already mid-March! Spring break is just around the corner and the end of the school year is rapidly approaching. I don’t know why that struck me this morning as I sat down to write March’s Herd Message. Perhaps it is because of the snow outside and cool temperatures that are keeping me from believing that spring is just around the corner.

I wanted to take a moment to again thank all of the presenters that shared of their time and talents at this past month’s inservice. I received numerous emails sharing how much staff members enjoyed learning from each other, how much they enjoyed having the flexibility to choose sectionals relevant to their interests or needs, and how they would love to have similar inservices in the future. I enjoyed seeing people take risks and sharing their talents with staff, as well as seeing the high engagement levels of staff as we learned about new tools, methods, and approaches. I am looking forward to future inservices of this nature, and would like to encourage others to think about what you skills of the trade you would like to share with staff the next time we have a call for proposals. There is a lot of talent right here in our own backyard, I want to make sure we continue to share it.

On a different note, I wanted to let everyone know how pleased I was to review our mid-year growth rates, as measured by the MAP assessment.  We have made significant progress toward our goal of being in the top ten percent. Everyone should be proud of your cummulative efforts to maximize growth for each and every student.  Below is a chart of our K-8th grade district-wide average growth rates.

2012-2013, 2013-2014 National Percentile Rank: Students that Met or Exceeded Their Growth Targets Grades K-8

Subject	2012-2013 Fall-Spring Results	2013-2014 Fall-Winter Results	Net Improvement
Reading	38th	75th	38
Math	50th	80th	30
Language	26th	60th	35

January 2014

We are closing in upon the end of the first half of the school year. This is an excellent time for reflection and new beginnings. Many of the high school teachers have new courses beginning, and those at the K-8 level have mid year testing, whose data can be used to help guide and steer their efforts in the second half of the school year.  I am keeping the message short this month with the request that you take a moment when you get a chance to view this Sir Ken Robinson’s Ted Talk regarding a need for a revolution in education, and the need for us to have passion for what we do in life.  I always find his work to be very inspiring. Also take a moment to read this NWEA article regarding individual Goal Setting. Both topics are relevant to our district’s direction and increased focus on individualized learning.

Those of you at the K-8 level, please be sure to make time over the next few weeks to conference with your students, and re-evaluate the individual goals that you have set with them. The following is the link to the goal setting presentation: Goal Setting Presentation in case you would like to review what this conference might look like.

Thanks for all you do! It is an honor to work with such a fine group of educators!

Herd Article 12-18-2013

The holiday season is such an exciting time for so many people. Regardless of one’s faith it is a time of year that brings people together to share happy thoughts, gifts, cards, and in many cases to share of one’s substance to one another. It has been a pleasure to visit each of the building’s concerts and see the pride of the parents and students as our excellently prepared kids performed. I never imagined I would have the opportunity to see so many holiday programs in one year. I want to take a moment and thank each of you for your efforts in assisting or supporting those individuals who have worked to help our students be ready for their performances. To those that planned, prepared, and pulled some hair out getting ready for the performances, kudos to each of you…. Job well done!

The board recently approved the 2014-2015 school year calendar. You can review the summary page the details of the calendar are on the next page. Taking general input from the staff surveys and from administration there have been some adjustments to the calendar. Below is a summary of the changes along with the rationale:

1. Prior to the start of school there will now be just two required days for all instructional staff. One Inservice day Monday August 25th and one work day on August 26th.  You are always more than welcome to get into your classes sooner or later than those dates. This will allow us to have an additional inservice/workday during the school year, and avoid conflicts with the county fair.
2. Wednesday August 27th will be an inservice for staff on scheduled to be evaluated in 2014-2015 (approximately ⅓ of you). With the new evaluation system (Teacher Effectiveness Model) starting, we want to make sure that  everyone slated for the first group, gets an adequate orientation and training. I do not see this requiring a full day, but no promises at this time. We plan to hold this training each year for those in the evaluation cycle.
3. Note that on the calendar listing, days in italics indicate that the training may not require all staff. Such is the case with the new teacher orientation and teacher evaluation training. Compensation for days such as this is to be determined (TBD). I wish I could give you more details as it relates to compensation, but we’ll need to address that at a later date. Unfortunately, the calendar was due before those details have been solidified.
4. You’ll notice an inservice day on October 3rd. There are several additional days built into the year, non-italicized days are for all instructional staff. Italicized days, as detailed above are TBD.  We want time built in for ongoing training, collaboration and data analysis. We did not select ½ days or early release days for the training model because they reduce instructional time, are inefficient from a staffing/operation standpoint, and it is hard to focus on a training when you have just spent ½ the day with kids, or you are about to spend ½ the day with kids. I invision most of these days being ½ inservice ½ work/collaboration time.
5. October 24th we added a fall break. Feedback received was that it was too long of a stretch to go from the first of September until Thanksgiving without a break.
6. Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a scheduled ½ day staff inservice. We wanted the ongoing inservice time as well as provide parents and staff the opportunity to start their potential Thanksgiving travels sooner.
7. Winter break is a full two weeks.
8. Spring break starts march 30th and encompasses Good Friday. We did not want to take a week off, come back and then take another day off the following week. Most of our conference districts are following this same spring break schedule.
9. Last day with students is June 12th. This is a week later than in previous years. Due to the additional inservice days during the year, the October break, and two full weeks in December.
10. June 15th Last day for staff. We felt it was important to have a day to debrief the year, and finalize plans for the coming year.

There were many additional ideas and suggestions that were not incorporated. If yours was one of those. I am sorry. Know that your input was not ignored, and future calendars very well may reflect some of those ideas.

Happy Holidays to All!