Almost There

A few items as the last day gets closer and closer........

Locker Clean out Day - Thursday, June 13
HR will be extended for fifteen minutes.  While the students are cleaning out their lockers, staff should be monitoring the area outside their room.   

End of Year Failure Form (Form 1)
This form was due yesterday to the Guidance Office.  All staff was to submit the form to Guidance whether they had any failures or not.  Please give the form to Guidance by the end of the day today.
End of Year Packet 
  
2013-2014 Calendar
Events/Concerts/Activities/etc for next year need to be emailed to me by 3pm on Wednesday, June 19.  

**Field Trips 

If you plan on taking any of your classes on field trips next year, please email me:  location of trip, purpose, full day/half day, weekend/night, grade level and when (I am just looking for which month you are planning on). 

Final Grades - Timeline for Posting  

Jackie sent an email out yesterday with all of the details/dates as to when grades are due for 4th MP and Final Exams.  As a side note, this year we did a great job with getting grades and comments in on-time and accurately.  Thank you for that!  Let's keep that going for 4th MP and Final Exams.  

If any other items come up I will be adding them to this post and sending out an updated link.  Hopefully then everything will be in one place.  

Recent Posts from the WHS Principal's Blog

The fun never seems to stop here at WHS even though the school year is almost over.  Below are a few recent blog posts highlighting students achievements. 

May Students of the Month 

Nick Bradly advances to State Tennis Final 

PSA Videos

 The five blog posts below showcase our AP Art students best work from their AP Art portfolios

AP Art Work - Sophie Labell 

AP Art Work - Robyn Wiley 

AP Art Work - Meredith Levine 

AP Art Work - Meg Hahn

AP Art Work - Dawn Cutrofello

June Staff Meeting

A lot to be proud of during the 2012-2013 School Year

• Success Stories
• Personal Accomplishments 
• Student Achievements 
• Saying Goodbye 

End of Year Procedures:

End of Year Packet 
Final Exam Schedule 
Key items:
Deadlines for Grades 
Technology Collection Sheets - Will be handed out to during Exam week
School Supplies posted on Website

Important Dates:

Wednesday, June 12 - Senior Awards Night 7pm
Thursday, June 13 - Locker Clean Out Day
Thursday, June 13 - Senior Ice Cream Social/Yearbook Signing 7- 9pm
Friday, June 14 - All computer carts and MC Computer Lab shut down 
Monday, June 17 - Senior Pool Party/BQ (All staff invited to stop by) 12:30 - 3pm
Friday, June 21 - Graduation 7pm

Summer Learning:

Looking to learn, share, collaborate using the edcamp model  The edcamp model is driven by conversation and is a democratic forum. An edcamp is not a lecture or a meeting, but an engaging forum that expands upon a focused topic. The technology and learning edcamps are voluntary and will focus on technology integration and new and emerging approaches to learning. All are invited to participate, present, and share.

Wednesday, July 24  (9 - 12pm)
Wednesday, August 7 (9 - 12pm)

Next Year:

Reflection - Staff feedback
Goals
Expectations
Accountability

Future Goals and Professional Growth Plan - Kevin Carroll

• Visiting multiple classrooms as often as possible to collect data and conducting helpful, face-to-face feedback to teachers
• Working towards an increase in height effective counseling, mentoring and additional support for our at risk students
• Expanding team meetings with Supervisors, Departments and Guidance
• Increase and support academic rigor throughout all classes 
• Work on areas that "WHS needs to improve on"

Highlights 5/24/13

 I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend!!

• For the Twitter users @WHS - Twitter Adds Two-Factor Authentication

Professional Development 

This post comes from George Couros (@gcouros ) blog The Principal of Change.  George is an amazing educational leader from Canada.  He will be the keynote speaker at next year's Edscape Conference at New Milford High School on October 19, 2013.  

10 Expectations from Students

Highlights 5/17/13

News

Special Weekend for WHS Students - From the Eyes of Twitter 

HSPA results are in and again our students got the job done.  I know the Math and Language Arts teachers were really glad to finally see the results of all their hard work.  If we look at the numbers:

• In 2013, 44 students, 35.8% scored advanced proficient on the Math section.  In 2012 31.7% scored advanced proficient and in 2011 24.8% scored advanced proficient. 
• In 2013, 29 students, 23.6% scored advanced proficient on the Language Arts section.  In 2012 17/9% scored advanced proficient. 
• For the Language Arts section we had 100% of our special needs students pass.  That is special!
• We still have some work to do in Math and Language Arts to insure everyone meets the graduation requirement.  We have nine students that still need to pass the Math section and three for Language Arts.  

Congratulations and Thank You to Mrs. Getlik and Mrs. Montella for putting on a great Spring Concert/Festival of the Arts last Thursday night.  The entire Related Arts Department did an amazing job showcasing all of the creativity and talented work our students have been working on during the year.  Thank You - Ms. Ruch, Ms. Cook, Mrs. Taylor, Mr. Meltzer, Mr. Drechsel and Ms. Sobkowicz for all of your hard work.    

The third annual Waldwick High School Alumni Soccer Game is set for 2 p.m. on June 29 at the Waldwick High School stadium field.  The soccer game aids the scholarship fund in honor of Michael Mayer.  Read more about the game here: Waldwick soccer game aids scholarship fund

Tuesday, May 21 - Minimum Day/Professional Development 
PD will again be devoted to learning the Marshall Rubrics; same groups and locations as the March sessions.

Modified Bell Schedule for Tuesday, May 21 (Biology Competency Exam) 

Period 1 8:15 - 8:59 (44 minutes)
Period 2 9:02 - 9:46 (44 minutes)
Period 3 9:49 - 10:33 (44 minutes)
Period 4 10:36 - 11:00 (24 minutes)
Period 5 or 6 11:03 - 11:30 (27 minutes)
Period 8 11:33 - 12:03 (30 minutes)
Period 9 12:06 - 12:36  (30 minutes)
**Period 6B or 7 will be eliminated for the day. 

Blog Post/Tweets:

April Student's of the Month 

1st Place @ The Thomas Edison Foundation Design Competition

Traffic Safety Challenge - Texting PSA wins first place

Walk-a-thon for a CAUSE

Recent Blog Posts from others in the building:

From the WHS Guidance Office Blog -  Tips on Finding a College

From the Waldwick Media Center Blog - Studies on Reading - Print vs. Electronic

Professional Development 

Google Forms Users - Cool New Feature via Free Technology for Teachers 

Video - How to Insert Images Into Google Forms

Highlights 5/10/13

News:

Modified Bell Schedule for Tuesday, May 21 (Biology Competency Exam) 

Period 1 8:15 - 8:59 (44 minutes)
Period 2 9:02 - 9:46 (44 minutes)
Period 3 9:49 - 10:33 (44 minutes)
Period 4 10:36 - 11:00 (24 minutes)
Period 5 or 6 11:03 - 11:30 (27 minutes)
Period 8 11:33 - 12:03 (30 minutes)
Period 9 12:06 - 12:36  (30 minutes)
**Period 6B or 7 will be eliminated for the day.

The students listed below will be involved with the Boys State Program in June.  Their final exams have been moved up.  The Guidance Department has created a modified exam schedule which was emailed out.

Adam Badalamenti

Ryan Casey

Connor Walsh

Matt Cron

Tyler Diamond

Joe Huban

Steven Deprimo

Questions have been brought up about Professional Development Hours related to the in-district PD Days.  Dr. Raupers gave me the following to share with staff:

My office is in the process now of creating certificates for the members of DEAC and for the WPDA courses.  I will have to check on the hour of HIB training; I don't think we need certificates for that, just a notation on the PD summary sheet.  But I will get back to you on that.  The certificates for the Marshall training will come when the 3 sessions are completed and we check the attendance sheets (that will be in late June for distribution in Sept. when staff returns).  Dr. Raupers 

End of Year Items: 

The June 5th Faculty Meeting will be a full meeting to review End of Year items.  Mark your calendars.    

All pay-orders (checks) and cash transmittal forms (deposits) for all Student Activity Funds need to be in by Tuesday, May 28.  We will be closing out our fiscal year and all checks and deposits need to be cleared out of all the accounts.   If you have a field trip coming up, please turn in all your paperwork as early as possible.   All checks have a two week turnaround time.  Please bear that in mind.  

Link to 12-13 Final Exam Schedule 

On Monday, June 24, part of the Professional Development Day will be devoted to reviewing and explaining the new Student Growth Objectives (SGOs).  Dr. Raupers will be speaking to the entire district on the topic.  At this point, all HS teachers (all subjects) will have to create two SGOs that I have to approve.  The SGOs need to be submitted by November 15 for the 13-14 school year.  All future year's SGOs will be due by October 15. 

Professional Development 

If you have not heard of TED Talks, it's something I would suggest you take a look at.   Their mission: Spreading ideas. 

"We believe passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So we're building here a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other".

I recently discovered the TED-Ed site within TED Talks that focuses on creating lessons worth sharing around YouTube videos.  Below is a short video explaining their site and purpose.  You can follow TED-Ed on Twitter @TED_ED

10 Time-Saving Tech Tips from David Pogue 

Saw this video posted on Free Technology for Teachers 

Highlights 5/3/13

News

Congratulations -Ted Opderbeck for receiving the honor of 2012-2013 Teacher of the Year

Again this year the district is offering staff the opportunity to attend professional development workshops at the  Northern Valley Schools Consortium.   If you are interested, please review the link below to see a list of the workshops that are being offered.   If you want to attend a workshop, please email me with your name and the name of the workshop.  I will handle all requests on a first come, first served basis.  All requests must be submitted to me by Thursday, May 9.

13-14 NV PD Catalog

The Spring Edition of the Focus, the newsletter for the Waldwick Public Schools, is posted on the district website. Spring Edition of the Focus

Turnitin.com will undergo some scheduled maintenance Saturday, May 11. This maintenance may interfere with some assignments as the site/system will be unavailable at that time.  All due dates should be moved up or delayed until the following week to avoid any problems.

School Safety Issues
As a staff, we need to stop leaving exit doors open during the school day.  Recently, I have seen many doors propped open by a stick or rock.  There should be NO doors propped open during the school day.  In addition, the senior wing doors and the custodian entrance/lower lot door keeps being unlocked during the day.  All staff should be entering the building using the Main Entrance or Greenberg Center where you can use the code or be buzzed in.  

Teacher Appreciation Week 
Waldwick HS will celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week during the week of May 27th.  
Wednesday, May 29 - Breakfast/Lunch provided by the parents 
Thursday, May 30 - FREE Neck/Hand massages (Signup info to follow)

NJ Biology Competency Test will be administered on May 21 & 22 
Staff members that are proctoring will be notified early next week.  There will be a testing meeting  setup after school for all proctors.  The date of the testing meeting will be included when you are notified to be a proctor.  Testing will take place in the Cafeteria and in  Rooms 417 & 310.  The rest of the school will move as normal.  

End of Year Items 

All pay-orders (checks) and cash transmittal forms (deposits) for all Student Activity Funds need to be in by Tuesday, May 28.  We will be closing out our fiscal year and all checks and deposits need to be cleared out of all the accounts.   If you have a field trip coming up, please turn in all your paperwork as early as possible.   All checks have a two week turnaround time.  Please bear that in mind.  

Link to 12-13 Final Exam Schedule 

On Monday, June 24, part of the Professional Development Day will be devoted to reviewing and explaining the new Student Growth Objectives (SGOs).  Dr. Raupers will be speaking to the entire district on the topic.  At this point all HS teachers (all subjects) will have to create two SGOs that I have to approve.  The SGOs need to be submitted by November 15 for the 13-14 school year.  All future year's SGOs will be due by October 15. 

Blog Post/Tweets

Congratulations to Sr. Colin Sherman on finishing 2nd overall at the Waldwick 5k Race. He finished 1st overall for Waldwick runners
— Waldwick High School (@WaldwickWHS) May 1, 2013

Professional Development 

This weeks PD piece is related to Waldwick High School.  I created a three question Google Form that I am asking all staff respond to.  Link to form:  What can we do, to be better