Student Led Conferences

The student led conferences were again successful this year. We are going to encourage teachers to call parents directly in the Spring since that seemed to be more effective.

How did we do in regards to parent participation?
Middle School:
The night of conferences: 83%
At the end of the conference window: 95%

High School:
The night of conferences: 80%
At the end of the conference window: 92%

These are great results, so thank you teachers, parents and students for making our student led conferences successful and meaningful.

Thursday Notes

Thursday Notes
Jason Sargent –Principal
____________________________________________________________________
Enrollment HS: 158 MS: 116 Totals: 274 _______________________________________________________________________
Calendar:
Nov. 29-Dec. 3: Children Theatre
Dec. 6: FB and VB Awards Banquet 6:30
Dec. 6-Dec. 17: Secret Santa-Sign Up with Brenda –You don’t have to do something everyday you can do something once, twice or whatever. This will be fun. Brenda can help deliver and execute secrets. 
Dec. 15: HS/MS Holiday Concert 7pm
Dec. 20: Elementary Concert 7 pm
Dec. 17: Christmas Party 6 pm- Sign Up on Survey Monkey
Dec. 21: Board Meeting
Dec. 22: Early Out 2:15

_______________________________________________________________
Zero-Policy: We need to review and talk about this policy in the middle and high school during the second quarter. We will officially start this second semester. I want to spend time teaching what we expect with this policy. Spend time talking to kids about future expectations and feel free to assign students who are habitual offenders to the after school tutoring.
Zero-Policy
At St. Ignatius Middle and High School we all agree that turning work in is an important key to a successful educational experience. The expectation for our school is to responsibly turn work in on time with the entire assignment complete. Our students strive for excellence and will achieve higher academic success if all students diligently hand in work on a consistent basis. Students who do not hand in the required assignments will be assigned to after school tutoring by the teacher until the missing assignments are turned in. Students will be given a detention notice that will be assigned for the following day after school so that arrangements can be made by the student and parents for pick up. If a student chooses not to attend after school tutoring, the administrator will then call guardians for a plan to make work up, assign ISS until work is made up, or OSS until a parent comes in with student and the work is made up. Teachers will check for missing assignments weekly or bi-weekly. Our goal is have all assignments turned in by all students on time. Teachers late-work policies will remain in place and dependent upon each teachers own rules for late work.
.
S.W.I.S: Sense of Belonging; Safe and Welcoming School Initiative Looks Great!!!!
Middle School:
90% of our students 0 or 1 Referrals (GREAT!!)
8% of our students 2-5 Referrals
2% of our students 6+ Referrals
Higher number of referrals in Aug/Sept and leveled in Oct compared to last year.
65% in Classroom 15% in Hallway
We have had 55 referrals with 50% defiance/disrespect/Insubordination/non-compliance
21% Physical Aggression
High School:
97% of our students 0 or 1 Referrals (GREAT!!)
3% of our students 2-5 Referrals
0% of our students 6+ Referrals
Lower referrals in Oct compared to last year and higher in Sept.
72% in Classroom 22% in Hallway
We have had 22 referrals with 54% defiance/disrespect/Insubordination/non-compliance
30% Physical Aggression, Disruption, Vandalism
This data shows improvement thus far from last year. GREAT JOB STAFF!!!!!

Calendar and Schedule: I didn’t receive any input from staff on changing what we do and how we do it. We still need 3 teacher volunteers from both the middle and high school for this committee.

Calendar Committee:
-Jason Sargent
-Richard Martin
-Lynette Mikkelsen
-Marlene Lodge
We need at least one more in middle school and at least one more in the high school. Don’t complain later for decisions that you could be involved in today.

I still need strategic planning input. Anything that you want to be fixed with facilities or school goals let me know.
District and School Goals:
Goals for the 2010-2011 school year:
o Maintain safety, support and belonging for all students.
o Increase the percentage of students scoring proficient or higher on the Mont
CAS in READING by 10% from 78% to 88% (proficient or above district-wide).
o Increase the percentage of students scoring proficient or higher on the Mont
CAS in MATH by 10% from 59% to 69% (proficient or above district-wide).



Our Mission
Respect
Responsibility
Integrity
Excellence

GO DOGS!!!

Principal News

Enrollment:
HS: 157
MS: 117
Total: 264
_______________________________________________________________________
Calendar:
Nov. 10: Veterans Day Assembly 11:30-12:00
Nov. 10: IEC Meeting 5:30
Nov. 11: Student-Led Conferences –THURDAY NIGHT
Nov. 15-Winter Sports Meeting 7pm
Nov. 16: Board Meeting
Nov. 17: Career Day
Nov. 17: MS Awards Assembly
Nov. 18: Open House 6pm-7pm
Nov. 23: Science Meeting 8:00 am

SuccessMaker: This is available Monday-Thursday after school in the elementary lab. Middle and High school students who would like to improve their math or reading competency are welcome to spend time on this interactive program that is fun and educational for students.

New Policy: Zero-Policy
At St. Ignatius Middle and High School we all agree that turning work in is an important key to a successful educational experience. The expectation for our school is to responsibly turn work in on time with the entire assignment complete. Our students strive for excellence and will achieve higher academic success if all students diligently hand in work on a consistent basis. Students who do not hand in the required assignments will be assigned to after school tutoring by the teacher until the missing assignments are turned in. Students will be given a detention notice that will be assigned for the following day after school so that arrangements can be made by the student and parents for pick up. If a student chooses not to attend after school tutoring, the administrator will then call guardians for a plan to make work up, assign ISS until work is made up, or OSS until a parent comes in with student and the work is made up. Teachers will check for missing assignments weekly or bi-weekly. Our goal is have all assignments turned in by all students on time. Teachers late-work policies will remain in place and dependent upon each teachers own rules for late work.

After School Tutor: We have after school tutors available every night except Fridays. Tutoring is available in Mrs. Krantz’s room for middle school students and in Mrs. Keast’s room for high school students.

Calendar Committee: We are looking for 3 parent volunteers to sit on the calendar committee. These meetings will be in the evenings, so we can gather parent input on next year’s calendar. We are looking at many options for next year including longer hours and fewer school days. We have many options to consider in order to best serve our students. We would really like parent input on some of these decisions.


Bell Award Presentation: John Fleming was presented the Montana History Teacher of the Year Award on Monday in Helena. The Governor and Lt. Governor along with Superintendent of Schools Denise Juneau were in attendance. This was a great day and a well deserved honor for Mr. Fleming. Mr. Fleming was given checks for $1,250.00 which he donated to the school for the expenses for this trip.

Wellness: If you are interested in wellness information register to have it sent to you through an email. We are also thinking about starting and exercise group with Aspen from like 3:30-4:15? Would anyone be interested in that?
-Aspen Incashola
Wellness Coordinator

Staff site: www.bulldogwellness.blogspot.com
Public site: www.fsquaredfitness.blogspot.com
District and School Goals:

Goals for the 2010-2011 school year:
o Maintain safety, support and belonging for all students.
o Increase the percentage of students scoring proficient or higher on the Mont
CAS in READING by 10% from 78% to 88% (proficient or above district-wide).
o Increase the percentage of students scoring proficient or higher on the Mont
CAS in MATH by 10% from 59% to 69% (proficient or above district-wide).




Our Mission
Respect
Responsibility
Integrity
Excellence

GO DOGS!!!


When Kids Lie


Dear Jason,

There are few things that leave parents angrier, or more worried, than when their kids act "truthfulness-challenged." The good news about lying is that kids do it. What I mean is that all youngsters experiment with bending the truth, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll end up becoming con men, criminals or politicians. That is, as long as we can help them see that honesty really is the best policy.

One way of achieving this goal is to apply the following steps:
1. Use "I feel like you lied to me" rather than "You lied to me."
If your kid replies with "No, I didn't!" this allows you to say, "I know…but I feel like you did."
2. Help the child see lying as an index of maturity.
Achieve this by saying, "When I feel lied to, it makes me wonder whether you are mature enough to handle some of the privileges you enjoy around here, like television, your video games, and things like that."
3. In an empathetic way, let the child know that privileges will return when maturity goes up.
"The good news is that when you can prove to me that you are more mature, I'll know that it's time for you to have these privileges again."
4. Remember that parenting isn't like a jury trial: There's no need to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Far too many parents get snowed by their manipulative kids and begin to wonder whether they are jumping to conclusions. I recommend trusting your heart and saying, "All I know is that I feel lied to, and I know that your life will be a lot happier if you learn how to avoid leaving people feeling that way."
For more tips on responding to lying, listen to Dr. Foster Cline's CD, Childhood Lying, Stealing and Cheating.
Thanks for reading! Our goal is to help as many families as possible. If this is a benefit, forward it to a friend.

Dr. Charles Fay

Waiting for Superman-

NASSP Executive Director Comments on Release of Waiting for Superman

Media Advisory
October 4, 2010

Contact
Bob Farrace, NASSP
(703) 860-7257
farraceb@principals.org

NASSP EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR COMMENTS ON RELEASE OF
WAITING FOR SUPERMAN

Reston, VA — Following are the reflections of NASSP Executive Director Gerald N. Tirozzi on the release of the film Waiting for Superman.

Is Superman the Conversation We Need?

It’s hard to look away from the small, vulnerable faces of the children whose educational odysseys are highlighted in the movie Waiting for Superman. It’s hard not to sympathize with the fiercely protective, yet politically powerless parents who struggle mightily just to get their children a high-quality education. It’s hard to not want to join the parade of mad-as-hell viewers as they stream out of theaters, grab their torches en route to their local teachers union headquarters, and sprinkle rose petals on the doorsteps of every charter school they pass along the way.

Ok, perhaps the movie’s social action agenda is a bit more nuanced than that. But certainly, director Davis Guggenheim can forgive a little overstatement in order to make a point. He’s the one who claims, after all, that education spending has doubled since 1971 while performance flatlined, without considering the advent of special education laws and an increase in ELL populations and expectations for achievement. The movie longs for the good old days when U.S. education was the best in the world, without considering how content U.S. communities were with low expectations and low achievement for low-SES populations. The movie points to the 2,000 schools that Bob Balfanz called "dropout factories" to depict a “nationwide crisis in education” without mentioning that all but a few of those schools are in impoverished urban and deep rural areas where students’ challenges go well beyond academic—and well beyond the reach of schools to resolve. But we’ll cut him some slack. He’s making a Hollywood film, and in racing from Oprah to Good Morning America to NPR, who has time for nuance?

The truth is we agree with many of the points the film makes. We agree, for instance, that a small subset of persistently bad teachers indeed denigrates the whole profession. No one knows this better than the nation’s principals who often feel hogtied by policies that make it onerous, though not impossible, to dismiss ineffective teachers. And perhaps it is time to revisit tenure policies to temper a burden of proof with a burden of performance. Of course, it’s also true that the effectiveness of a single teacher is extremely difficult to isolate and measure—presuming we can even agree on the outcomes—so hammerlike methods, such as those of the film’s heroine D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, probably merit a more critical look than they receive.

Most perplexing is the treatment of charter schools as the "Promised Land" of education. Not so, protests Guggenheim, who revealed in a New Yorker interview his intention of the charter lottery as “metaphor” and his fear that the film would be perceived as pro-charter. Yet, every school the film vilifies is a mainstream public school, from which the only hope of escape is a charter school. Contrary to the movie’s depiction, there are lots of high-performing public schools out there—in fact, we honor 10 new ones every year in our MetLife Foundation-NASSP Breakthrough Schools program (www.principals.org/breakthrough). These are high-poverty, high-performing middle and high schools—mostly comprehensive, neighborhood schools—that have found a formula for high achievement. Yet these schools become lost in an agenda-laden narrative of public schools as educational pits of despair from which charter schools are the only lifeline. At the moment, it seems that this narrative has everything going for it—except the data. Recent research out of Stanford University reveals that only 17% of charter students perform better than they would have in their local public schools—and 37% perform worse.

To be clear, charter schools do not offend us—far from it. In fact, you’ll find charters among the Breakthrough Schools mentioned above. They allow for small-scale experimentation in attacking public education’s biggest challenges with the hope of identifying practices that can be replicated throughout a district. Many are staffed with committed, forward-thinking educators who need restrictions lifted in order to fulfill a particular vision for education. And when they succeed, we all succeed in discovering new, effective practices.

At least that’s how they started. Somewhere along the way, however, the charter school movement—buoyed by a few high-profile foundations and corporate leaders—strayed from living laboratories of practice for the benefit of public education to private schools at public expense. They suddenly became competitive “schools of choice” aiming to supplant public schools rather than support them. Conveniently, they retained the ability to dodge public school restrictions, primarily the pesky requirement to educate all students, by virtue of transfer provisions and an application process that requires, at the least, an attitude at home that reinforces the importance of education. What of the students who don’t have that advantage? They don’t appear in the film. They don’t appear in charter schools. But they do appear in the nation’s public schools. And public school educators are accountable to move the needle on their achievement each day.

A 2009 study of Boston charter schools, for instance, revealed that less than 50% of students who begin as freshmen go on to graduate from that school four years later. Those students typically transfer to and graduate from their local public school. Remove that safety net, however, and Boston charter schools meet the criteria of “dropout factories.” I’m sure great things are happening with the performance of the students who remain, but so high an attrition rate does not elicit a Eureka!

I suppose we should be grateful that Waiting for Superman is broadening the conversation about public schools throughout the nation. We need an honest, productive conversation about the standards and expectations for student performance. We need an honest, productive conversation about how schools should be organized and resourced to drive the achievement we expect. But such conversations require a more genuine set of inputs than Superman provides. And with public education having to shout over a divisive charter agenda supported by unprecedented media, money, and policy, you have to wonder if the conversation will be as balanced as we need it to be to see any real large-scale educational improvement.





Darrell Rud

Executive Director

School Administrators of Montana

900 N. Montana

Suite A-4

Helena, MT 59601

Phone: 406-442-2510 Fax: 406-442-2518

www.sammt.org

Love and Logic Ideas for Parents and Educators

Four Tips for Soothing Sibling Rivalry

Dear St. Ignatius,

Why is sibling rivalry such a perplexing issue for so many parents? Simply because we can't make our kids love each other. That's completely out of our control.

Listed below are just a few of the many things we can control:

1. Whether we do extra things for kids who are battling with each other.


It's perfectly reasonable for a parent to say, "This is such a bummer. I'm tired-out from listening to you arguing with each other. I don't have the energy to drive you to your friends' houses."

2. Whether we allow certain items to remain in our homes.


A friend of ours said to her kids, "This is so sad. Every time you guys play with that game you get in a fight. I gave it away so it wouldn't be a problem anymore."

3. Whether we allow their fighting to interrupt our responsibilities and time.


Have you ever noticed how kids tend to argue and bicker with each other when you are trying to do something that requires your complete attention such as trying to talk on the phone? If you feel secure that your kids won’t harm each other, it's probably best to say, "This is really draining my energy. You guys need to work this out or go your separate ways."

4. Whether we give them "bonding opportunities."


When your kids start to battle with each other, experiment with saying, "Sounds like you guys need some bonding time." Then assign them some chores to give them an opportunity to feel the love.

In my CD, Sibling Rivalry, I give a variety of additional tips for upping the odds that your home will remain a peaceful place.

Thanks for reading! Our goal is to help as many families as possible. If this is a benefit, forward it to a friend.

Dr. Charles Fay

Love and Logic

Dear Jason,

Why is sibling rivalry such a perplexing issue for so many parents? Simply because we can't make our kids love each other. That's completely out of our control.

Listed below are just a few of the many things we can control:

1. Whether we do extra things for kids who are battling with each other.


It's perfectly reasonable for a parent to say, "This is such a bummer. I'm tired-out from listening to you arguing with each other. I don't have the energy to drive you to your friends' houses."

2. Whether we allow certain items to remain in our homes.


A friend of ours said to her kids, "This is so sad. Every time you guys play with that game you get in a fight. I gave it away so it wouldn't be a problem anymore."

3. Whether we allow their fighting to interrupt our responsibilities and time.


Have you ever noticed how kids tend to argue and bicker with each other when you are trying to do something that requires your complete attention such as trying to talk on the phone? If you feel secure that your kids won’t harm each other, it's probably best to say, "This is really draining my energy. You guys need to work this out or go your separate ways."

4. Whether we give them "bonding opportunities."


When your kids start to battle with each other, experiment with saying, "Sounds like you guys need some bonding time." Then assign them some chores to give them an opportunity to feel the love.

In my CD, Sibling Rivalry, I give a variety of additional tips for upping the odds that your home will remain a peaceful place.

Thanks for reading! Our goal is to help as many families as possible. If this is a benefit, forward it to a friend.

Dr. Charles Fay

News

Notes

Jason Sargent –Principal

____________________________________________________________________

                     Enrollment   HS: 157      MS:     121    Totals:  278

_______________________________________________________________________

Calendar:

Sept. 30: Staff Meeting 8:00 am Mission Forward Academy Room 

Oct. 1: MontCas Honors Trip

Oct. 14: Flu Shots

Oct. 11-12: M.B.I. Team Training ( I would like Myself, Cali, Leah, Tim B, Jen C, and Lyle to sit on this committee)   

________________________________________________________________

Mrs. Krantz Humor of the Week:  “Mr. Sargent is doing ASBESTOS he can!!” 

SuccessMaker: We will start SuccessMaker no later than Oct. 18 and hopefully the week of Oct. 11 depending on where we are at with MAP testing and available labs.    

Schedule and Location

6^th Period:

A days

-(1) 8^th Grade will be in MS Library

-(2) 6^th grade groups will go to Elementary Lab-Math

B days

-(1) 8^th Grade will be in MS Library

-(1) 6^th Grade Group in Elementary Lab –Math

7^th Period:

A days

-(1) 7^th grade will be in Elementary Lab

-(1) 6^th grade reading in MS lab-Reading

B days

-(1) 7^th grade will be in Elementary Lab

-(1) 6^th grade reading in MS lab-Reading

Advisory: Back on Track Tomorrow- Our school is a model for advisory and our program is in the forefront of this initiative.  Our presentation on senior projects, advisory and student led conferences was well received and schools were impressed with our efforts in these areas. 

Homecoming:  This is going really well so far- Great Effort and I appreciate the Spirit! What a Week!!!!  Thank you Staff and Community for the great effort and great week!!!!!!!!   

MBI Expectations: 

 Common Language:

u     Be Respectful

u     Be Responsible

u     Have Integrity

u     Strive for Excellence

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GO DOGS