Welcome back!

Welcome to the final marking period of the year!  I trust that everyone had a very restful Spring Break, and I’m excited to have everyone back in school as we begin our sprint toward the end of the year.  Time will be flying as these next few weeks go by, and it’s important that everyone keep their academic focus as the days get longer, the weather warms, and it becomes more tempting to put school work aside for other activities.

Our kids never fail to impress me at Henley, and these past couple of months have been no exception.  We’ve seen tremendous success from our robotics team and our academic bowl team with both having opportunities to move to high levels of state and national competitions.  Our students had great showings at the annual science fair and National History Day competitions with some moving on to the next level in a few weeks. 

We’ve got a lot of things going on a Henley during these final couple of months of school.  In April we have our last full-school dance of the year, our annual Track and Field Day, a model UN field trip to Washington DC, and visits from our rising sixth grade students.  In May comes SOL testing, the Wallops Island trip, the eighth grade dinner dance, and our annual spring plays.  We’ll wrap things up in June with some end of year field trips and our eighth grade awards assembly which will take place on the last day of school at 10:00 in the Henley gym.

There’s lots to be proud of at Henley this year, and many great activities and events to come.  I look forward sharing all of these with our Henley students, and know that we are going to finish the year in a great way.  Go Hornets!

The Golden Apple

I am very happy to announce that this year’s Golden Apple award winner for excellence in education is Diana Pace.  There are so many reasons that I can think of which make Diana a deserving recipient of this award, and I’ll try to name a few of them here.   What immediately comes to mind is her selfless dedication to so many of the neediest children that pass through our doors.  She is always thinking of ways that she can reach them better, giving up her personal time to meet with them or their parents, or advocating for them in IEP meetings.  The list of the ways she devotes her time to kids could go on or a long time.  Above and beyond that, however, are the relationships Diana builds with her students—she really loves each and every one of them, even though some days they make it harder than others.  Diana is also continually looking for ways in which she can get better as a teacher.   She is willing to try new things with instruction, technology and classroom management.  She’s been at Henley for quite some time, and her love of and dedication to the school is always evident.  Whenever we need volunteers to talk about issues that impact the school and to come up with ideas to solve a problem we are facing, we will usually find Diana volunteering for that group.  Staff members often look to her for guidance and support as well, and she is always willing to listen and make suggestions that can help them along the way.  I’m so glad that Diana’s hard work and dedication are being recognized this year.   Congratulations to an outstanding teacher.

Loved Lessons

Here's one from Eric Betthauser's Guitar class:

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It was several weeks ago that I saw this lesson, but I wanted to make sure I got a chance to write about some of the work that Eric Betthauser’s guitar students did this year.  I stopped by his classroom and students were paired up both in the room and out in the hallway to write their own blues songs.  They were learning some blues riffs on their guitars and were working together to develop lyrics and music to perform for their peers.  The kids I saw working together were having a great time and learning an incredible amount.  They were critiquing their own and their partners work, revising and improving their lyrics when something didn’t seem quite right, and writing music that was incredibly meaningful and personal to them.  This was one of those great lessons in which the teacher in the classroom really is just a facilitator of learning.  Eric had given the kids all of the tools they would need to create this music, and then he let them go.  If they hit a wall or didn’t understand how to do something, he was there to help, but for the most part they were on their own creating, analyzing, revising and performing their original works.  They were highly engaged in a lesson and were learning a skill that will stay with them forever.  Great lesson, Eric!

They really work!

At Henley, we’ve invested a lot of time over the past several years in developing and implementing
programs that are designed to focus on improving our kids’ social and emotional well being.
We’ve put in place things like second step, morning meetings, common sense media
studies and we’re hoping to have some good strategies about building growth mindsets
going in the next year. These programs take a lot of time for our staff, and I appreciate all of the hard work that each of them has put into implementing them with our students.

A study recently published by a group of researchers at Columbia University’s Teachers
College shows us that these programs really do have a great value to our students and to
society as a whole. This study focused specifically on the return on investment schools
and society see from implementing strong social-emotional programs. It found that for
every dollar a school system invests in these programs, there is an average return of eleven
dollars worth of benefits. Now, I’m no economist, and things get a little fuzzy for me
when they are explained in terms of dollars, so I’ll steal a quote from an edweek article to
help explain what this means.

“[A] successful bullying intervention may reduce missed school days that can cause
students to struggle and need extra academic supports, and it may reduce the amount of
costly personnel time that staff spend addressing student complaints. And programs that
lead to improved academic results may lead to higher income for students later in life, the
report says.”

The report specifically cited two programs we use or have used in Henley--Second Step
and Responsive Classroom (the ideas of which we are building our morning meeting
program around). This was really affirming to me that we are on the right course with the
programs we are putting in place, and that they will have long-term benefits for our kids.
If you’re interested in reading the article, you can find it here.

Loved Lesson

Here's a great lesson Mr. Leclere recently saw:

Fridays in Pat Harder and Danica Alter’s 6th grade language arts class are all about
TED. I’m sure you are familiar with TED Talks – fifteen minutes or so of someone
speaking on something both fascinating and of particular interest to them. Personally, I
find the passion with which most TED presenters speak to suck me into topics I would
never have considered listening to a fifteen minute presentation on. Listening to the discussion
the class was engaged in about magic and magicians, secondary to a TED Talk
made me think this was true for some of our 6th graders as well.

More than just listening to and appreciating the Talk, students in the class were making
observations about the topic and generating open-ended questions whose purpose is to
discover ways to take a deeper and deeper dive into a subject. And it is a good thing that
the students are learning and practicing this skill. While they are learning from various
TED Talks, they are also preparing their own. Equipped with a template for researching
and learning more and more about their own passion, these students are learning to
immerse themselves in a topic of their choice. I am certainly looking forward to hearing
them share!

Summer School

Some of you may have heard that I was not the most focused of students during many of
my middle and high school years. In fact, for several of those years, there was often the
looming threat of summer school that came from both my parents and my teachers. The
threat actually was a pretty good motivator for me, since I could think of nothing worse
than trudging back to Jack Jouett or AHS during the glorious days of a pre-teen and teenager
on summer break. I had friends who had to go, and the stories of misery they told
were downright frightening.

But times have changed, and summer school has changed right along with it. For the past
several years, our summer program has been less focused on remediating reading, writing
and math deficiencies and much more on developing a school experience for kids that
will be a positive one and make them excited about coming to school. We’ve done things
like focusing on Carl Hiasen’s children’s books as a driver of the curriculum, we integrated
field trips all over the county and have had guest speakers come in to talk with our
students. Our summer experience has changed from one of drudgery many decades ago,
to one that kids enjoy.

We’re hoping to take our program even further this summer, and really turn it in to an
experience that kids want to take part in. It was great to see about a dozen teachers get
together last week to brainstorm some ideas about how we can make this happen. We’ve
got a lot of planning to do, but the drive and the talent is certainly there to develop a model
program of enrichment for our kids. I’ll keep you posted on where things land, and
can’t wait to see what our staff comes up with.

Second Semester

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Just a short time ago we were all kissing 2014 goodbye and ringing in 2015 with family and friends.  It’s hard to believe, but we’re already getting the wheels turning for another new year--our 2015-2016 school year.  We met with sixth and seventh grade teachers recently to talk about how to make course recommendations for next year, school counselors are preparing to meet with our students to talk about elective classes for next year, and we have travelled to all of our feeder elementary schools to meet with our rising sixth grade students and their parents. 

For me, this is always a really exciting time of the year.  I love going to the elementary schools and meeting with the fifth grade kids.  Many of them have been attending school in the same building for the past six years, and they are excited about trying something new.  They have a lot of the typical middle school worries--will I be able to open my locker, do we really have to change clothes for PE, will the older kids be mean to me, will I be able to get to my classes on time?  But for the most part, they are excited and can’t wait to become Henley Hornets. 

But we’ve still got a lot of time left in this school year, and lost of activities taking place at Henley.  Our robotics team—the Nerd Herd—recently placed second in the regional FTC robotics competition and will be moving on the state level competition in February.  We’re getting ready to celebrate spirit week next month which always culminates with hard fought student/faculty basketball and volleyball games.  The second semester will brsaing National History Day, the science fair, our National Junior Honor Society Induction, and much more.  We never go too long without some type of fun event happening for our kids, and I know that they all enjoy them.

The second semester is going to be a great one at Henley!  It’s a pleasure to come here each day and work with such a great group of students and teachers.  I’m looking forward to what the second half of the year brings!