8/25/23 Principal Newsletter
Dear Parent and Student,
It was a wonderful 1st week of school! Thank you for choosing to attend Glenwood High School. We are so grateful you are part of our RAM community! I wanted to share with you an update from this week and some important reminders:
Quotes to think about this week:
“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits, and their habits decide their futures.”
–Matthias Alexander; “Practice what you want to be everyday” –Michelle Obama
Students learned about our school wide expectations and important high school expectations:
Class Meeting Slides; 23-24 Student & Family Handbook.
Here are some expectations that we would like you to visit about at home with your student:
Updated Reteach/Reassess Policy: (*Note –practice work is essential and must be completed to reassess. We will be noting “collected” or “missing” in Powerschool. While “homework” or practice work is not calculated towards the grade, it certainly counts, and it matters! Ensure that your student is completing their practice work. Just like on the court or field, in the classroom if you want to be successful and in life, you have to “Practice what you want to be everyday” – a successful student. Habits matter! We used to have a 20 day reassessment window once students received feedback. This is now shortened to 10 days. Why? The 20 days was too long and did not benefit students or teachers, because they were moving into new outcome learning, trying to balance learning something new while still improving prior learning.
Encourage your student to have good learning habits everyday. When you take care of your habits, success takes care of itself. Teachers will be posting on reassessment deadlines, updating Powerschool with feedback, and talking to students about their plan to reassess and improve their performance after every outcome. The first outcome is still a few weeks away. However, right now, begin to pay attention to Powerschool items that are “missing” and ask your student about how they are doing in their classes. A great way to do that is to ask to see their Proficiency Scale and ask them what they are learning about, how they are doing and how they could improve. Students should be able to give examples of what they know related to items on the proficiency scale and be able to explain where their class is in this progression of learning.
*For more information about our updates to SRG at GHS, see our Revised Guidebook.
Cell Phone/Technology Use: We are protecting instructional time.
Note: Students are not to have a phone when on E-Hall Pass, only during bell passing periods. This is because we have found students text, meet up with other students, skip class, and make poor choices etc… When on E-hall pass, we want students to return in a timely manner.
Dress Code
Here are some pictures from this week’s highlight reel:
GHS held its first Freshman / New Student Staggered Start Day. Below is a picture of the Class of 2027 and new students to GHS with teachers. The morning transition provided students with the opportunity to learn about being a high school student and practice expectations and routines and learn their way around the building and become familiar with high school prior to older students arriving. Thank you to our community and parents and teachers for making this possible. It was such a calm way to start the school year! AM school expectation lessons were followed by a PM regular scheduled classes with content information, as older students came into the building.
This Friday, we had our first Pep Rally to celebrate our summer successes and to introduce our fall activities.
Below are some pictures from the assembly and students of the week.
Schedules
This week, we have had some scheduling changes. This is somewhat typical as we get it just right at the high school level with student learning paths and choices and distributing class sizes. However, we did experience some back to school growing pains with our schedule. We unexpectedly lost a Spanish teacher, needed to open up some more elective offerings for students, and had to add another math section to make class sizes smaller and best serve student learning. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we get schedules just right.
Our teachers,administrators, and students are amazing! They have stepped up to help others in many ways… helping other students to find their classes, providing grace and flexibility with attendance as students find their classes, and understanding that we are getting back into the groove of school and back into our routines.
Looking ahead…
Next week, I will work on getting out some communication to parents/guardians and students about recent legislative changes in the State of Iowa and how that relates to rights and responsibilities. Stay tuned for communication.
Have a great weekend RAM Nation! Reach out if you have questions. We are here to help and welcome your feedback.
Every day is a great day to be a RAM,
Lorraine Duitsman
GHS Interim Principal