This and That And Good News in our District
Tomorrow, Sunday, April 1, Seattle Children's Hospital will be giving away bike helmets on a first-com, first-serve basis. They have 400 helmets to give away and your child must be present to be fitted properly. This is happening at the Ballard Commons Park from 10 am to 1 p.m.
Salmon Bay's Leo Pfeifer won first place in C-Span's documentary video contest. He won $3,000 and his video will be aired on C-Span on April 25th. This is the second year in a row Leo has placed in the top tier of this competition. Students in grades 6-12 created videos with the theme, "The Constitution and You." They had to select any provision of the Constitution to work on. Over 1200 videos were submitted.
Congrats to Leo, his parents and his teachers at Salmon Bay.
In the Global Reading Challenge competition, two Seattle teams have advanced to the next round: Alki Elementary and Adams Elementary. Those two teams will compete against a Canadian team in video conference competition on April 13th.
Adams was the city winner with Alki also qualifying. The competition is between teams made up of 4th and 5th graders.
Good luck to both teams!
Also out Ballard way, news that the Robotics Club at Ballard High won first place last weekend at the Seattle Olympic Regional FIRST Robotics competition. They won with a basketball-shooting robot that competed against other robots in a basketball game. Ballard now goes on to nationals in St. Louis.
Two Hamilton International students, Jessie Ma and Tiffany Shen, designed a state flag for the Youth Art Month flag contest and their entry was selected as the winner. Both traveled to Washington, D.C. last week with their art teacher to see their flag displayed at the Flags Flying High Celebration.
Roosevelt High teacher Tom Nolet has been named a finalist for Civic Educator of the Year by the state legislature. Mr. Nolet was co-founder of RHS's Hand for a Bridge program more than a decade ago which sponsors exchanges between RHS students and student in South Africa and Northern Ireland.
I know Mr Nolet and his work and he is one the best teachers we have in our district.
Principal Appointments
Chanda Oatis at Alki Elementary - She has been serving as interim principal this year and had previously been at Denny as an assistant principal. She won the Washington State Assistant Principal of the Year for 2012.
Neil Gerrans at Lawton - Dr. Gerrans has been serving as interim principal at Lawton this year. Before coming to Lawton, Dr. Gerrans taught in the Renton School District. Interesting fact: his PhD is in computational electromagnetics. (Get this guy a STEM school.)
Chris Kinsey at Chief Sealth High School - Mr. Kinsey has also been serving as an interim principal this year. He has taught at Meany and worked administratively at Hale, Eckstein and Cleveland.
Kristina Bellamy-McClain at Emerson Elementary - Principal Bellamy-McClain has been serving as interim principal and previously was an administrator at Denny.
Nutrition
The district wants you to know that they use NONE of the ammonia-treated beef (better known as "pink slime") that has been in the news lately.
Salmon Bay's Leo Pfeifer won first place in C-Span's documentary video contest. He won $3,000 and his video will be aired on C-Span on April 25th. This is the second year in a row Leo has placed in the top tier of this competition. Students in grades 6-12 created videos with the theme, "The Constitution and You." They had to select any provision of the Constitution to work on. Over 1200 videos were submitted.
Congrats to Leo, his parents and his teachers at Salmon Bay.
In the Global Reading Challenge competition, two Seattle teams have advanced to the next round: Alki Elementary and Adams Elementary. Those two teams will compete against a Canadian team in video conference competition on April 13th.
Adams was the city winner with Alki also qualifying. The competition is between teams made up of 4th and 5th graders.
Good luck to both teams!
Also out Ballard way, news that the Robotics Club at Ballard High won first place last weekend at the Seattle Olympic Regional FIRST Robotics competition. They won with a basketball-shooting robot that competed against other robots in a basketball game. Ballard now goes on to nationals in St. Louis.
Two Hamilton International students, Jessie Ma and Tiffany Shen, designed a state flag for the Youth Art Month flag contest and their entry was selected as the winner. Both traveled to Washington, D.C. last week with their art teacher to see their flag displayed at the Flags Flying High Celebration.
Roosevelt High teacher Tom Nolet has been named a finalist for Civic Educator of the Year by the state legislature. Mr. Nolet was co-founder of RHS's Hand for a Bridge program more than a decade ago which sponsors exchanges between RHS students and student in South Africa and Northern Ireland.
I know Mr Nolet and his work and he is one the best teachers we have in our district.
Principal Appointments
Chanda Oatis at Alki Elementary - She has been serving as interim principal this year and had previously been at Denny as an assistant principal. She won the Washington State Assistant Principal of the Year for 2012.
Neil Gerrans at Lawton - Dr. Gerrans has been serving as interim principal at Lawton this year. Before coming to Lawton, Dr. Gerrans taught in the Renton School District. Interesting fact: his PhD is in computational electromagnetics. (Get this guy a STEM school.)
Chris Kinsey at Chief Sealth High School - Mr. Kinsey has also been serving as an interim principal this year. He has taught at Meany and worked administratively at Hale, Eckstein and Cleveland.
Kristina Bellamy-McClain at Emerson Elementary - Principal Bellamy-McClain has been serving as interim principal and previously was an administrator at Denny.
Nutrition
The district wants you to know that they use NONE of the ammonia-treated beef (better known as "pink slime") that has been in the news lately.
Comments
Starbucks, and partners in the local jazz community, yearly support musuc programs by offering this evening of some of the best live jazz to be heard in the city.
The incredibly talented jass bands represented last night were
GARFIELD | EDMONDS-WOODWAY | MOUNTLAKE TERRACE | ROOSEVELT | BALLARD
along with two middle school bands (during seating and at intermission): Eckstein and, I regret I don't know the other one, we were a tetch late...
Best of all, this money is given to the schools so staff on-site can determine the best use of it to advance their programs. Starbucks isn't telling them how to make music, it's just demonstrating its citizenship by supporting schools, not telling them what to do.
I wish we could spread more music programs around the city, music of all sorts is such an inspiration to students.
But, even with Starbucks (and others) help we have to speak up to make this happen. I remember when the Cleveland HS BLT had to make the difficult choice to cut its music program: One of the "regular" (non-music) teachers stepped in to volunteer and created a large drum ensemble. Great, wonderful music that the students really focused on and made sublime, but also the pride of,and the example for, the other students.
It was wonderful that that teacher could pull it together, but why was the music unfunded in the first place? It certainly wasn't the fault of the school's budget committee or BLT; it was a lack of FTE to support these things.
Why the lack of FTE? I have no idea/ Maybe we think music and other arts just don't matter. Maybe we think the other tasks of schools are just so expensive (read the comments in the paper about how schools apparently just waste money); maybe these days it's all about data and a musical note, sounded perfectly, isn't measurable by anything but the soul...
We need more music. We need to support all sorts of activities in schools that aren't riectly related to measurable "achievment" but instead merely fill the soul.
Who's with me?
(That's a joke, son....)
Okay, sounds like too much coffee : )
It's just that I know at least one of those new permanent principals is a teaching lightweight.
@mirmac - I did read the original post, and your comment is NOT, as I suspected, about the "usual suspects",,,but it could have been!
There's no such thing as "too much coffee"!
--an eagle
1998 or so was the time when Cleveland's BLT had to cut music, and a drum line was formed independently. Perhaps they've since been able to add it back in.
1998 or so was the time when Cleveland's BLT had to cut music, and a drum line was formed independently. Perhaps they've since been able to add it back in.
-skeptical