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District Digest - Volume 4, Issue 3
March 3, 2015 |
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Dear Sunnyvale School District Family,
I hope you enjoyed your holiday in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the values he embodied: courage, equality, compassion, dignity, nonviolence, service, and unconditional love.
As you get back to your busy schedules, I wanted to remind you about our new Programs of Choice:
- Fairwood Explorer Parent Participation Program: Fairwood’s curriculum is organized in a way that integrates parent involvement and puts parents in direct contact with students. Students enjoy more small-group instruction and personal attention, and benefit from the diverse skills and contributions of Fairwood’s parent community.
- San Miguel Juntos Spanish-English Dual Immersion Program (launching in the fall for incoming Kindergarteners). In Juntos, students will learn Spanish and English at the same time, achieving bilingualism and biliteracy. Regardless of what language you speak at home, this program will develop your child’s ability to speak and read academic Spanish and English, as well as strengthening all academic areas. For more information on Juntos, please see the recent article in the San Jose Mercury News http://www.mercurynews.com/sunnyvale/ci_27277575/san-miguel-elementary-launch-spanish-immersion-program
- Vargas Elementary School Success Through Science: At Vargas, learning is inquiry-based, and even language arts and social studies are taught in a way that incorporates science. All field trips and assemblies have science themes, and students in all grades regularly utilize the school’s new science lab.
- Columbia Middle School’s University Partnership Program (UPP): students in UPP get curriculum and techniques that have been vetted and recommended by Stanford’s School of Education, and are taught by Stanford teacher candidates alongside Sunnyvale School District teachers right at Columbia. Students generally enjoy smaller student-to-teacher ratios, greater technology integration, and a focus on inquiry-based learning.
Information sessions or tours for each of the programs are held throughout the year; visit http://www.sesd.org/programsofchoice for dates and times!
Please note that the open enrollment period was February 2-13 (to participate in UPP or a Program of Choice OUTSIDE your neighborhood school).
Until next time, I leave you with this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character — that is the goal of true education.”
Warmly,
Benjamin H. Picard, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Below is the 15th issue of The District Digest, an online newsletter produced by the Sunnyvale School District. Articles are published online at http://sesd-district-digest.org/; in general, stories from the past three months are collected for each emailed "digest".
In the 2014-2015 school year, we will publish the District Digest in September, December, March and June (on the first school day on or after the first of the month); article submissions are welcome, please submit at least 10 days before each publishing date (info@sesd-district-digest.org).
Your comments and feedback are especially welcome!
In this Issue
- Partnership with Stanford University at Columbia Middle School
- Mobile Onsite Dental Clinic at San Miguel Elementary School
- Science Programs at Columbia Middle School Inspire Budding Scientists
- Community Health Awareness Council (CHAC) Parenting Classes
- Innovative Collaborative Learning at Columbia Middle School
- Vargas Elementary School Announces Science Magnet Program
- Our Nurse’s Corner: It’s Still Flu Season!
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Partnership with Stanford University at Columbia Middle School
Columbia Middle School staff has developed the University Partnership Program (UPP) with Stanford University. The goal of this program is to create innovative learning communities where students explore, inquire, and investigate with the support of Stanford’s world-renowned Stanford Teacher Education Program (STEP). This program fosters 21st century knowledge and skills using research-based strategies focused on social-emotional growth, inquiry-based instruction, and technology integration. CMS teachers collaborate with Stanford researchers, clinical associates, and Stanford teacher candidates to create a classroom community that is rigorous and engaging. [Read more] |
Mobile Onsite Dental Clinic at San Miguel Elementary School
SkoolCare, a California non-profit corporation, opened it’s doors on January 12, 2015. The mobile onsite dental clinic is located on the San Miguel Elementary School campus (777 San Miguel Ave., Sunnyvale). SkoolCare has partnered with local dentists to provide free or affordable dental care for students in the Sunnyvale School District. SkoolCare provides services to all participants on an equal basis, regardless of a student’s insurance coverage. Oral health difficulties are a chronic childhood problem, the consequences of which can include pain, distraction from learning, difficulty eating and speaking, absenteeism, embarrassment about physical appearance, or poor school performance.[Read more] |
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Science Programs at Columbia Middle School Inspire Budding Scientists
In addition to the Stanford University Partnership Program at Columbia Middle School, department chairs and teachers at CMS have been hard at work, creating new programs and classes, applying for and receiving grants to supplement and strengthen existing curriculum across the school.
Eighth Grade Science teacher John Hardell received a Silicon Valley Education Foundation (SVEF) Innovation Grant to help provide materials for the San Jose Technology Museum’s Seismic Challenge. This grant made it possible for Mr. Hardell’s students to work in groups and learn in a new competitive environment where they collaborate, plan, and design a structure that will withstand a series of simulated earthquakes. [Read more]
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Community Health Awareness Council (CHAC) Parenting Classes
Would you like to improve your relationship with your child? Do you get caught in power struggles? Do you struggle to motivate your teen? You are not alone.
Being a teenager in 2015 is no easy task but parenting a teenager in 2015 might sometimes seem impossible. Teens face a fast-paced world full of social media issues, bullying, and easy access to drugs all while trying to become an individual in the world. As teens gain independence, parents sometimes feel that they are watching a train wreck. Many parents attempt to help but struggle, often making the situation worse. This can lead to parental helplessness, hopelessness, frustration and even anger. This is not necessarily a losing battle. There is a way to challenge and support your teen. With Positive Discipline Parenting classes you can learn to be the parent that you want to be. [Read more]
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Innovative Collaborative Learning at Columbia Middle School
One of the most challenging aspects of teaching in the classroom, as most teachers will agree, is to meet the learning needs of each student. This is especially true when there is only one teacher and more than 30 students in a class, learning at different paces and grasping concepts in different ways! Columbia Middle School teachers have used a combination of material and presentation methods that engage every student in class and technology-assisted differentiation in order to meet each of their students’ needs.
Robotics and Math teacher Alexi Badaoui has received an Innovation Grant from Silicon Valley Education Foundation. Mr. Badaoui has been offering a unique learning experience to CMS students through project-based robotics since 2008, originally as an after-school club activity, now as a trimester elective open to all CMS students. [Read more]
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Vargas Elementary School Announces Science Magnet Program
Vargas Elementary School’s Student Success through Science is the latest Program of Choice to be offered by the Sunnyvale School District. Vargas Elementary students enjoy a rich, well-rounded curriculum of language arts, mathematics, social studies and the arts, viewed through a scientific lens. Hands-on science every day, for every grade, in a new fully equipped science lab. To read the entire article that was published in the San Jose Mercury News, on February 2, 2015 by Alia Wilson, please use the following link: http://www.mercurynews.com/my-town/ci_27443462/sunnyvale-vargas-elementary-announces-science-magnet-program
For more information regarding any of the District’s Programs of Choice, please visit: www.sesd.org/programsofchoice or call 408.522.8200 ext. 1016.
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Our Nurse’s Corner: It’s Still Flu Season!
We are in the midst of flu season and aside from getting the flu vaccine, which is the single best way to protect against the flu, there are some very basic preventative measures everyone should take in order to help prevent the flu from spreading:
*Try to avoid close contact with sick people.
*If you do get sick, limit your contact with others as much as possible to keep from infecting them. If you, or your child, get sick with flu-like illness, staying home for at least 24 hours after the fever is gone, without the use of a fever-reducing medicine, is important to help prevent spreading the flu to others. [Read more]
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