Here is a summary of the past few weeks of Second Cup:
Mentor Program: We have been discussing ideas for developing a Mentor Program for our middle school students in which each student would have the opportunity to be supported by a mentor in the community. Some of the ideas in development are tying this program to the growth of our College Scholarship Fund and possibly the Harmony Gala as a way of celebrating and support MLC graduates after they leave MLC with such a strong foundation!
Volunteer Program: We have discussed ways to hold parents accountable for volunteering at MLC. Over the summer, the Volunteer Coordinator Laurie Cousins and I will be meeting to develop and launch a program that will go home in the Summer Packets to all MLC families. The concept is to clearly explain and ask for the commitment as well as a schedule for incentives. There is the idea that an option to the 30-hour volunteer commitment will be a donation to the scholarship fund.
New Committee: There is officially a new Challenge Committee called the Green Committee which will be responsible for implementing community projects and educational programming. New develpments include the acquisition of trees and a compost bin. Ideas include a community garden and much more. There will be an opportunity for parents to join the committee in the fall.
Bus: Explorations continue to acquire a bus or public transit for MLC students in certain neighborhoods to assist with transportation/carpooling.
Fundraising: The main fundraisers in the works for next year are Entertainment Book and Sally Foster which will happen simultaneously; Artwork for Education (or possibly another organization) that creates a catalog of greeting cards designed by MLC students for parents to purchase and MLC receives a % of proceeds, as well as some restarant nights and spirit wear sales.
MLC Rallies: An idea emerged at 2nd Cup to have morning rallies at MLC next year - for example a quick morning rally before school starts where parents and students can hear about the exiting things happening at MLC for the month. Today it was discussed that the rallies will coincide with morning Parent Council meetings which are being added to the calendar next year to accomodate parents who cannot attend the evening meetings. (The evening meetings will continue as well).
Advocacy Team - We need to identify a parent volunteer who can be "on call" for quick action when the MLC community needs to respond to events happening in our legislature that impact our school or programming.
In anyone has anything to add that I may have missed - please add to the post with comments!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
New Challenge Committee: Gayle Nadler (staff) and Andrea Milton (parent) will be co-chairing a new Challenge Committee called The Green Committee. Our purpose for the committee is to help make MLC and our community more "green" by focusing on recycling, composting, sustainable eating, reducing waste, energy conservation and much, much more!
Summer Packets (which parents receive in the mail in August) will now include Volunteer information including agreements, incentive plan, and commitment forms to fill out. This will help us start the year off with room parents in place, volunteer lists generated, and parents informed about their commitments to support MLC.
Carpool: We discussed the idea of allocating parking spaces at dismissal for carpooling parents and want to explore options of contracting for a school bus. It is possible that we may need to create a separate challenge committee to handle facilities issues.
Summer School at MLC: MLC staff utilizes the summer months to plan and prepare for the following year and are unable to provide summer school options for our students.
Summer Packets (which parents receive in the mail in August) will now include Volunteer information including agreements, incentive plan, and commitment forms to fill out. This will help us start the year off with room parents in place, volunteer lists generated, and parents informed about their commitments to support MLC.
Carpool: We discussed the idea of allocating parking spaces at dismissal for carpooling parents and want to explore options of contracting for a school bus. It is possible that we may need to create a separate challenge committee to handle facilities issues.
Summer School at MLC: MLC staff utilizes the summer months to plan and prepare for the following year and are unable to provide summer school options for our students.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
April 28 & May 5, 2010
Summary of Topics the past two weeks:
Focus on Health and Fitness: MLC is focusing on healthy living next year and combining a number of projects which may need a committee to coordinate. Here is what is being planned/discussed:
MLC Picnic: PC is considering charging a small fee for tickets and asking each family to bring a cultural dish that feeds 10 people. There will be more "carnival" type activities such as games and face-painting and only 2 bouncers for younger kids. Soccer will be organized by grade level (3 games). There will also be a raffle and the media lab will be open for parents wanting to complete the online parent survey (a link will also be sent home for families with computers/internet at home).
Discipline/Building Community: Toby talked about the following topics which she plans to share out in more detail over time with community starting with assemblies next week:
Focus on Health and Fitness: MLC is focusing on healthy living next year and combining a number of projects which may need a committee to coordinate. Here is what is being planned/discussed:
- Fruit Vending Machines
- Composting
- Quotes for artificial turf and shading
- Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Fundraiser
- Parent/Teacher Farm Experience opportunity (where you actually live and work on a farm for 3 days to learn)
- MLC Garden - including California native plants and vegetables
- PE Grant - to bring consultants/experts/equipment to improve MLC PE program
- Possibility of creating a partnership with Environmental Charter High in Lawndale
MLC Picnic: PC is considering charging a small fee for tickets and asking each family to bring a cultural dish that feeds 10 people. There will be more "carnival" type activities such as games and face-painting and only 2 bouncers for younger kids. Soccer will be organized by grade level (3 games). There will also be a raffle and the media lab will be open for parents wanting to complete the online parent survey (a link will also be sent home for families with computers/internet at home).
Discipline/Building Community: Toby talked about the following topics which she plans to share out in more detail over time with community starting with assemblies next week:
- Encouraging students to use I messages: "I feel....when....because..." which allows kids to express their feelings to one another without telling each other what to do which causes more conflict.
- Encouraging students to tell an adult about a problem or conflict after an I message has been attempted when it puts the community in danger and explaining the difference between "telling" and "tattling."
- The importance of taking action when you witness a wrong-doing in your community even if you are not involved and the fact that you can be considered just as guilty as the culprit when you know about something and don't do anything about it.
- Helping students realize that effort with or without ability will lead to success and that even with ability, if there is no effort, there will not be success.
- Helping students develop self-esteem and self-worth and to refrain from comparing oneself with others.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Here is Toby's post below:
There are several themes to the conversation at 2nd cup this morning that got resolved in one fabulous strategy! It was an amazing blend of concerns and ideas that evolved into a theme and focus for next year.
What was on our collective minds?
MLC is going to focus on healthy eating and fitness next year. A committee will be formed to develop a plan to create, sustain, and maintain a community garden. Another committee has already been working on a plan to involve students, parents, and staff in a regular exercise program. These two strategies will provide opportunities for:
Footnote from Gayle who did not attend 2nd Cup: At Catalina last week with the 8th graders we met the challenge of leaving 0 Food Waste on our plates during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This means we ate everything that we placed on our plates and did not throw away one morsel. We were rewarded with gratification and a poster that will hang in the dining hall. Can we incorporate this here?
There are several themes to the conversation at 2nd cup this morning that got resolved in one fabulous strategy! It was an amazing blend of concerns and ideas that evolved into a theme and focus for next year.
What was on our collective minds?
- How do we motivate more parents to volunteer and fulfill their hours? Some are never seen on campus and run form the active paretns who try to recruit at dismissal!
- How do we keep the sense of community and interaction among parents as active as it is in kinder and first grade? Parents who want to to get to know one another/arrange gatherings and play dates.
- How do we create more opportunities for kids in different classes to work together as a community both academically and socially?
- How do we keep kids from trashing/wasting untouched food at breakfast and lunch? (putting extras in a place for reuse or proper disposal)?
- What can be done during summer months to get the kids to know each other better in anticipation of new groupings in fall classrooms?
- What is the responsibility of the school to see to it that children play with friends from other classes at recess? (it takes a great deal of effort to establish rapport between one class and the campus aide assigned to them to ensure safety and their teacher who is responsible for them. Accountability for 20 minutes twice a day needs to be consistent and have follow-through. Grade levels do it at PE. Academic and social interaction within grades is purposeful and encouraged to meet our goals. Creating opportunities to play with friends is a paternal responsibility.)
MLC is going to focus on healthy eating and fitness next year. A committee will be formed to develop a plan to create, sustain, and maintain a community garden. Another committee has already been working on a plan to involve students, parents, and staff in a regular exercise program. These two strategies will provide opportunities for:
- grade level parents to build community among themselves and their children
- students to participate in gardening and exercise with peers and families
- developing personal relationships through a common purpose
- experiencing the joy of growing and eating healthy fruits and vegetables
- parents to fulfill their volunteer committment
Footnote from Gayle who did not attend 2nd Cup: At Catalina last week with the 8th graders we met the challenge of leaving 0 Food Waste on our plates during breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This means we ate everything that we placed on our plates and did not throw away one morsel. We were rewarded with gratification and a poster that will hang in the dining hall. Can we incorporate this here?
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
This morning we discussed Facebook Causes concept brought in by a parent - it's basically a way of soliciting donations for a cause through your network on Facebook. We decided to take a closer look at it so we can streamline this effort with our other fundraising efforts and investigate more about how it works and what it entails.
There was some dicussion about schoolwide events and the fact that when donations are asked for (such as for food and other items for the Pow Wow or MLC Picnic) not everybody contributes. It led to the discussion of how the same paretns volunteer for everything and that we need to work on our volunteer incentive progarm and strategize about ways to divide the work more evenly and engage more parents. Ultimately we decided that their would be a summer planning meeting with me and the Parent Council to come up a plan for next year and to refine the volutneer incentive/accountability system and how we can utilize room parents more effectively.
One of the kinder parents at the table brought up that there needs to be more in place to help kindergarten parents since they are new to the school and can feel lost in all of the events, activities, and volunteer opportunities. This is something that can also be discussed during the summer - one idea is to give incoming kinder parents a "buddy" from an upper grade to help them navigate through their first year and to establish room parents and other commitments at the Parent Orientation in August.
Have a great Spring Break!
There was some dicussion about schoolwide events and the fact that when donations are asked for (such as for food and other items for the Pow Wow or MLC Picnic) not everybody contributes. It led to the discussion of how the same paretns volunteer for everything and that we need to work on our volunteer incentive progarm and strategize about ways to divide the work more evenly and engage more parents. Ultimately we decided that their would be a summer planning meeting with me and the Parent Council to come up a plan for next year and to refine the volutneer incentive/accountability system and how we can utilize room parents more effectively.
One of the kinder parents at the table brought up that there needs to be more in place to help kindergarten parents since they are new to the school and can feel lost in all of the events, activities, and volunteer opportunities. This is something that can also be discussed during the summer - one idea is to give incoming kinder parents a "buddy" from an upper grade to help them navigate through their first year and to establish room parents and other commitments at the Parent Orientation in August.
Have a great Spring Break!
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Wednesday March 17, 2010
I'm back from my brief "hiatus" during which I skipped attending 2nd Cup and writing my blog in order to write a $1 million grant to support MLC arts program. Keep your fingers crossed!
Today we talked about the following:
Enrollment for 2010 - 2011: A question was asked regarding the fact that we decided to enroll 3 kindergarten classes in 2010 from our lottery on March 5 and how that would impact the facility and current enrollment. The decision to enroll 60 versus 40 new Kinders in the fall was based on our current enrollment numbers and projects for several years out and keeping us under 400 students which is our capacity. We will need to re-design the use of Room 2 in order to enroll the extra kindergarten class and we will likely have a 4/5 split in the upper graders rather than 4 small classes of two 4th's and two 5th's which we have now. Incidentally, we had 92 people participate in the Kinder lottery including 26 staff children/sibling perfences!
Data Collection: At the Town Hall Meeting last week, Toby mentioned the use of a tool called ZOOM for data collection and analysis and a parents asked to know more about it. ZOOM is a tool that allows us to upload all of the data we have on students including thier test scores, reading assessments, periodic assessments given by teachers, etc. to enable us to analyze needs for students, teachers, etc. In addition, we are using Measuring Up - which is are sample tests aligned with standards and similiar to the state tests that we are giving to students in grades 4-8 currently to assess specific skill-based needs that need to be addressed schoolwide, by grade, by class and by student. ZOOM produces reports based on these assessments that can help us see where the gaps are and which questions students or groups of students are missing.
Letters to Support Senate Bill: I (Gayle) passed around letters of support for interested parents to sign in support of a senate bill to include standards-based primary language achievement tests for English Learners in the state accountability system AND to allow English Only students in dual language programs to take the Spanish Standards Test as well! Right now, our EO's take Aprenda - a different test than the English Learners and it doesn't allow us to collect comprehensive data - and none of it is factored into our API or other data viewed and communicated publicly by the state. It's an effort led by a group called Californians Together. This would be HUGE for schools like MLC, as you can imagine where our test scores in English only do not tell a complete picture as to the academic progress of our students.
Gala Debrief: We debriefed many aspects of the gala including fundraising goals, venue, connections made, general outreach and publicity, and improvements/goals for next year. The Committee will be meeting in the future for a full debrief/2011 planning session
Today we talked about the following:
Enrollment for 2010 - 2011: A question was asked regarding the fact that we decided to enroll 3 kindergarten classes in 2010 from our lottery on March 5 and how that would impact the facility and current enrollment. The decision to enroll 60 versus 40 new Kinders in the fall was based on our current enrollment numbers and projects for several years out and keeping us under 400 students which is our capacity. We will need to re-design the use of Room 2 in order to enroll the extra kindergarten class and we will likely have a 4/5 split in the upper graders rather than 4 small classes of two 4th's and two 5th's which we have now. Incidentally, we had 92 people participate in the Kinder lottery including 26 staff children/sibling perfences!
Data Collection: At the Town Hall Meeting last week, Toby mentioned the use of a tool called ZOOM for data collection and analysis and a parents asked to know more about it. ZOOM is a tool that allows us to upload all of the data we have on students including thier test scores, reading assessments, periodic assessments given by teachers, etc. to enable us to analyze needs for students, teachers, etc. In addition, we are using Measuring Up - which is are sample tests aligned with standards and similiar to the state tests that we are giving to students in grades 4-8 currently to assess specific skill-based needs that need to be addressed schoolwide, by grade, by class and by student. ZOOM produces reports based on these assessments that can help us see where the gaps are and which questions students or groups of students are missing.
Letters to Support Senate Bill: I (Gayle) passed around letters of support for interested parents to sign in support of a senate bill to include standards-based primary language achievement tests for English Learners in the state accountability system AND to allow English Only students in dual language programs to take the Spanish Standards Test as well! Right now, our EO's take Aprenda - a different test than the English Learners and it doesn't allow us to collect comprehensive data - and none of it is factored into our API or other data viewed and communicated publicly by the state. It's an effort led by a group called Californians Together. This would be HUGE for schools like MLC, as you can imagine where our test scores in English only do not tell a complete picture as to the academic progress of our students.
Gala Debrief: We debriefed many aspects of the gala including fundraising goals, venue, connections made, general outreach and publicity, and improvements/goals for next year. The Committee will be meeting in the future for a full debrief/2011 planning session
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
We had a large group this morning despite the rain and we had a lot to talk about! Here are the major highlights:
1) What is our policy regarding stolen property in terms of preventing it from happening on campus? We use our five standards (Respect, Responsible, Safe, Caring, Tolerant) in discussions and in connection with curriculum to teach students about being respectful of other people's property. We also teach students about being responsible for their own belongings. If we discover that something has gone missing and we can isolate the time and place, we can have a more direct discussion with students and this often leads to recovery of the missing items. As far as items put in Lost and Found - we do hang them up on the fence periodically and a majority of the missing items have been in the Lost and Found bin - which is accessible to students when they are on the yard - for a long period of time. During the holidays and at the end of the year, we donate unclaimed items to Goodwill.
2) Green Committee at MLC! We discussed the possibility of creating a Green Committee which emerged among talks of having a Compost Bin at MLC to accompany our efforts to recycle and reduce trash. We agreed that prior to having a Compost plan at MLC, we would need to educate the students (and ourselves) on the purpose and effectiveness of composting and the items we dispose of daily that are compostable versus recyclable versus trash. Andrea Milton shared a flyer with opportunities for purchasing compost bins and/or workshops to learn about how to compost at your home or business.
3) Rainy Days - We are learning new procedures this week of managing the campus during extremely hard rains which are rare around here, but very abundant this week! We have developed a plan for delivering lunches to classrooms for indoor eating and playing as well as a "hard rain" dismissal procedure which requires parents to pick up children in their classrooms so they are not standing outside in the rain. ESCAPE students will be picked up by staff members and brought to appropriate classrooms for their ESCAPE classes and snack will be indoors as well. ESCAPE will utilize classrooms such as the Library, Room 18 & 19 for ESCAPE dismissal at 6:00, 6:15 & 6:30pm. We appreciate the cooperation and patience of parents and staff during this time.
4) Gala - Debbie Allen has confirmed that she will be our special guest at the Gala this year and we are thrilled about it! Committees are in motion for 1) creating centerpieces; 2) collecting auction items and creating baskets; 3) event production; 4) invitations and rsvp's, etc. We even have a new dance class in ESCAPE for students who want to perform the night of the Gala! Thank you to all of the parents who are making this happen - you are wonderful! There will be a Gala Meeting following Second Cup next week if you'd like to meet some new people and get involved! If you've been wondering how to get involved at MLC, this is a fun opportunity!
5) MLK Event - If you missed the Martin Luther King Event on Monday and want to know about it or see pictures, check out the Multicultural Learning Center Parents page on Facebook or check out my Multicultural Moments Blog: http://multiculturalmoments.blogspot.com/
1) What is our policy regarding stolen property in terms of preventing it from happening on campus? We use our five standards (Respect, Responsible, Safe, Caring, Tolerant) in discussions and in connection with curriculum to teach students about being respectful of other people's property. We also teach students about being responsible for their own belongings. If we discover that something has gone missing and we can isolate the time and place, we can have a more direct discussion with students and this often leads to recovery of the missing items. As far as items put in Lost and Found - we do hang them up on the fence periodically and a majority of the missing items have been in the Lost and Found bin - which is accessible to students when they are on the yard - for a long period of time. During the holidays and at the end of the year, we donate unclaimed items to Goodwill.
2) Green Committee at MLC! We discussed the possibility of creating a Green Committee which emerged among talks of having a Compost Bin at MLC to accompany our efforts to recycle and reduce trash. We agreed that prior to having a Compost plan at MLC, we would need to educate the students (and ourselves) on the purpose and effectiveness of composting and the items we dispose of daily that are compostable versus recyclable versus trash. Andrea Milton shared a flyer with opportunities for purchasing compost bins and/or workshops to learn about how to compost at your home or business.
3) Rainy Days - We are learning new procedures this week of managing the campus during extremely hard rains which are rare around here, but very abundant this week! We have developed a plan for delivering lunches to classrooms for indoor eating and playing as well as a "hard rain" dismissal procedure which requires parents to pick up children in their classrooms so they are not standing outside in the rain. ESCAPE students will be picked up by staff members and brought to appropriate classrooms for their ESCAPE classes and snack will be indoors as well. ESCAPE will utilize classrooms such as the Library, Room 18 & 19 for ESCAPE dismissal at 6:00, 6:15 & 6:30pm. We appreciate the cooperation and patience of parents and staff during this time.
4) Gala - Debbie Allen has confirmed that she will be our special guest at the Gala this year and we are thrilled about it! Committees are in motion for 1) creating centerpieces; 2) collecting auction items and creating baskets; 3) event production; 4) invitations and rsvp's, etc. We even have a new dance class in ESCAPE for students who want to perform the night of the Gala! Thank you to all of the parents who are making this happen - you are wonderful! There will be a Gala Meeting following Second Cup next week if you'd like to meet some new people and get involved! If you've been wondering how to get involved at MLC, this is a fun opportunity!
5) MLK Event - If you missed the Martin Luther King Event on Monday and want to know about it or see pictures, check out the Multicultural Learning Center Parents page on Facebook or check out my Multicultural Moments Blog: http://multiculturalmoments.blogspot.com/
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