The Stinger Newsletter

 

Hello Stinger Families!

I want to sincerely thank you all for a positive first semester, for all you do to support STMS and mostly thank you for entrusting us with the education of your children.  To close out the semester I thought I would just provide a list of (to me) interesting facts about random stuff but with a holiday flavor mixed in.  I love trivia  But I don’t think of it as trivia.  I think all the little weird facts are what make knowing stuff fun interesting and tie all the other stuff together.

Did you Know?:

The word “orange” was not used until it was applied to the fruit?  Makes me wonder what they called all the orange things before the fruit came about.

‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ the movie was a box office flop when it came out in theaters.  It wasn’t until it was put on tv in 1974 and people could see it for free that it became a ‘classic’.  

Speaking of 'It's a wonderful life', The muppets Bert and Ernie were named after the police officer and the cab driver in that movie.

When people say something is “the best thing since sliced bread” they are only saying that it's the best thing since 1928 which is when bread first came pre-sliced.

A Pineapple is actually not a fruit but a cluster of berries fused together.  The scaly things that make up the skin are the flowers.

As a symbol for the miracle oil that burned for eight nights straight, most of the dishes served during Hanukkah are fried. 

“Xmas” isn’t a recent term.  It actually dates back to the mid 1500s and gets its roots from the Greek letter “X” which is the first letter in the Greek word for Christ.

While not technically the "original" Edison light bulb, a light bulb installed in 1901 at a fire station in Livermore, California, is still burning today.  It’s called the ‘Centennial bulb’. 

The seven principles of Kwanzaa include Unity, Self Determination, Collective Work and Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, Purpose, Creativity and Faith.

“Jingle Bells” was the first song played in space.  In 1965 the song was broadcast during NASA’s Gemini 6a space flight.

The image we all have of Santa Claus comes from the famous cartoonist Thomas Nast in 1863.  He also put Santa’s home and headquarters at the North Pole.

Candy canes date back to 1670 when the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany gave the red and white sugar sticks to young singers to keep them quiet during the services.  He gave them a hook shape to resemble a shepherd’s staff. 

The largest snowflake ever recorded was a whopping 15 inches in 1887!  It was reported to have fallen near Missoula, Montana.

The largest snowman ever built was 124.8 feet tall in Austria in 2020.

The Yule Log came about to celebrate the Winter Solstice in anticipation of the return of the sun.

A Menorah has nine branches even though the holiday lasts eight days.  The center candle  is used to light the others.

The largest Menorah ever built was 32 feet tall and 28 feet wide and weighed 4000 pounds.  It was unveiled in New York in 2005.

Reindeer are the only deer where the male and the female both grow antlers.

The first Christmas cards came out from Hallmark in 1915.

95% of pet owners buy their pets Christmas Presents.  Yikes.  I gotta get to the store!  Our cats got nothing under the tree.  Heck, a tree IS their present.  For a full month they get a whole thing to knock stuff off of and tip completely over!  That should be enough.

And there you have it, families.  Some trivia to ponder while you enjoy some time with your family.  We at Sonoran Trails thank you all for the love and support we get from our families on a daily basis.  Happy Holidays to everyone!

 

Dave

Hello everyone!

For years and years I had never seen the holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”.  And by that I mean I had seen it at least three times, but never in one sitting.  I saw bits and pieces as I passed through a room at a family gathering, or sat and looked at it for a few minutes before I wandered off to do something else.  So I saw it in the way I have seen the scenery up the 17 on the way to Flag:  As discrete glimpses when my eyes aren’t locked on the convoy of trucks that seem determined to shuttle me over the edge of the cliff  and off of this mortal coil.That is to say I have a pretty good idea of what the film and the drive are all about, but my image is build from discrete clips of reality.

These are pretty good analogies to the observation/evaluation process that I want to talk about this week.  It is observation/evaluation time and that means the Mrs. Reyes and I are spending whole periods in each and every classroom to get the best picture we can of what day to day teaching and learning looks like.  But while this is a good and lengthy snapshot, it is still a snapshot so we fill in the gaps with all of the other classroom visits and formal walkthroughs that we do.  Today I’d like to share with you some of what we look for and in so doing highlight some of the elements of good teaching.

The first thing I look (or feel) for when entering a classroom can best be described as a ‘vibe’.  There isn’t a place on the evaluation sheet for ‘vibe’ but a lot of things go into the way a class feels.  It speaks directly to the relationship between the teacher and the students.  It speaks to the way students engage with the class; are they happy to be there?.  It is amorphous, but it is the first thing I notice when I go in.

While all of the elements of good instruction are important, the most important one is student engagement.  Importantly, student on task is not the same as student engagement.  Engagement speaks to a deeper level of intellectual involvement with the material or task at hand.  A good way for me to define it in my head is if the teacher stepped out of the room for a moment to talk to a student or someone else, would the students inside keep going?  (Not that the teachers step out, this is more of an intellectual exercise).  

I look for intentionality.  That is, is there a clear purpose, direction and outcome for the day’s activities?  Are the activities clearly aligned with the learning target of the day/week?  The day may seem long but the amount of time balanced against what we want to accomplish any given day is very short and everything should have a purpose.  That doesn’t at all mean that it is 55 minutes of grind.  In fact, this is NOT productive and does not take into account student needs.  They need movement.  They need a change of activities.  They need time to process new information in a way that makes learning long term.  

I look for a positive relationship between the teacher and the students.  Folks, I can’t possibly overstate the importance of relationships to the educational process.  Good teaching is a science and an art, and the relationships are the art part.  Are there genuine connections between the teacher and the students?  Are the kids comfortable to be themselves?  To ask for assistance?  To share part of themselves?  In the decades I have been doing this (Yikes.  Decades!), I honestly don’t think I have ever recommended for hire a teacher who did NOT mention the importance of relationships with students in the interview process.

There are a couple of dozen other, corollary things that I look for but most if not all of them fit under the umbrella of the above things.  If there is a good, professional relationship with the students, purposeful teaching and intentionality in all practices and engaging instruction and activities there is likely a highly successful classroom.  

As always, I appreciate your time and attention.  I enjoyed sharing some of the elements of good teaching.  In the future I would like to come back around and close the circle and talk about the elements of good studenting.  Because good teachers can do a lot and we have some truly gifted ones here at STMS, but they do better when part of a parent/student/teacher partnership.

Take care everyone!

Dave Boggs 

Moving Forward Together!

Hello to all!

As we approach what is a joyful but potentially stressful time of year I think alot about parent/school communication and cooperation.  It can be stressful because the semester is winding down, grades are becoming a focus, there are a lot of activities in and out of school and people just have a lot going on. I’m not talking about whole school to whole community communication. We have newsletters, emails, messenger etc. for that.  I mean school to parent and parent to school as individual situations arise.  For the most part, due to the professionalism on both sides, these go smoothly and issues are quickly and happily resolved.  

Good is good, but I believe as a school community we can do better.  I believe that if we go into each meeting with a shared belief of three things, we can accomplish more, do so more quickly, and make any of our interactions positive ones.  After all, we are so much stronger when we are together.

Belief #1:  Positive presupposition.  This means that we assume that everyone at the table has the best of intentions and comes to their job of teaching or parenting from a good place.  Every parent is doing their absolute best when it is harder to be a parent now than it ever has been.  Teachers are doing their best for their students under similarly challenging if slightly different circumstances.  We need to recognize that it is super hard to be a good parent or good teacher but everyone at the table is trying and has only good intentions.  

Belief #2:  Run of the mill student misbehavior is not a crisis nor is it anyone’s fault.  It is not “bad parenting” and it is not “poor class management”.  It is natural for some students to struggle with appropriate behaviors and it should be just as natural for us to help the student understand why the behavior is not OK and help them correct it. Young human beings are going to make mistakes as they experiment with their place in the world.  Our job as parents and teachers is to guide, inform, educate and help them navigate their way through these tween times.  

Belief #3:  None of it is personal.  Just as a parent would never dream of pulling their child aside in the morning and saying “Today, I want you to go in there and absolutely disrupt and destroy math class”, a teacher would never walk on campus, survey the scene, and decide that today is the day they target a specific student with the intention of ruining their day.  When put like that I hope we can all agree that this is an easy understanding to agree on because to believe otherwise is simply not reality.

We work for an amazing community of people and the community enjoys the work of gifted and dedicated instructional experts.  We share a set of pretty fabulous middle school kids who, despite being super cool, are still normal middle schoolers who occasionally need some feedback.  

Take this hypothetical situation as an example.  Imagine a student not going to sixth period because there is a sub on campus and their friend is in that class that hour.  The student thinks they can fool the sub somehow and hang with their friend.  Of course, when attendance shows them not in class and they have been here all day, Ms. Kathy is on it immediately and it takes us about three minutes flat to locate the student and get them where they should be.  Is this bad parenting?  Of course not, the child knew where they needed to be.  Is it poor student management?  Nope, It happened between classes.  It is just a tween/teen not thinking more than one hour into the future and trying to hang with a friend.  Talk to them about why every class every day is important, get an hour of education back from them via detention or whatever, call the folks, and move on.

When we have to meet or email to discuss students who are struggling, we can and should act together for the best interest of the student and their future.  We just have to remember that we are all in this for the right reasons with pure motives, no one is at fault, and none of it is personal.  It is just people working together to solve little problems so they don’t become big problems.

Thank you all for your time.  I know how valuable that time is. 

Dave Boggs 

Moving Forward Together

 

Hello everyone,

Let’s take a small break from the hard core teaching/learning stuff and talk about middle school, or rather middle schoolers.  If for no other reason than they make us laugh, scratch our heads, confuse, confound, and delight us.

Those of us who teach in middle school hear it all the time:  “Oh bless your heart” they say or “I can’t imagine doing that with that age group!”.  I can’t speak for everyone, but every time I hear that I feel like I’ve got a secret that I don’t want to share:  This age group is WHERE IT IS AT!  This is where it’s fun, impactful and NEVER EVER boring.  This group is fun because of the challenges, not in spite of them.  And every time I find myself thinking how hard this is for us, I remind myself to try and remember how hard it is for them.  You think living with a new person each week as a parent or teacher of a middle schooler is challenging, imagine being a new person each week as a middle schooler.  

The truth is that middle schoolers are just a super fun group to be around even with all of the quirks.  I tell people all the time with a smile that they keep me young and make me old at exactly the same rate.  That’s a bold faced lie of course.  They keep all of us young a lot more than they make us old.  Here are just a few examples of the type of things we see from our students on a regular basis:

*The young lady who holds the door open for her classmates after lunch going into the 500 building on a daily basis.

*No less than four times this year students have brought to us money that they found on the ground that they easily could have kept but chose to do the honest thing.

*The three fellas I was walking behind who were actively discussing whether the cannon they use for the human cannonball was a real cannon.  That cracked me up.

*The girl today who, when I noted she has green eyes and her sisters are brown, walked me through the punnett square dominant/recessive traits to explain why and how.  

*The fact that when I have the opportunity to cover a class, the students have at their disposal a TON more “common knowledge” than any other population of students I have ever been around.  They know a LOT of stuff for a bunch of 12-14 year olds!

*How they all dance to three or four of the same songs at dances that I danced to when I was their age.  (Don’t stop believin’, YMCA, Thriller, Bohemian Rhapsody).  They are very open minded when it comes to music and so willing to share their favorites as well.

*How the same group of seventh grade ladies get such a kick out of trying to get me to do some silly dance.  (I dance EXACTLY how you imagine I would but it cracks them up.)

*The fact that it takes less than two days for a new student to be asked to join a lunch group so they have lunch friends.

*The number of silly jokes the kids send to me to read on the announcements.

*The fact that our list of students with multiple “A” grades far, far exceeds the number of students with multiple failing grades.

*The speed and ease with which they learned to sign in and sign out on KidAccount when leaving the classroom.  Super responsible in this instance.

*The serious study sessions we see on a daily basis around the lunch tables.  

* And a thousand other things, but I think my favorite is greeting them in the morning and getting that initial lift from their (for the most part) happy attitudes about being here!

Thank you all for the trust and support you extend to us.  Have a great weekend and a great couple of weeks!

Dave Boggs

 

Hello everyone!

As I sit here on the morning of our fabulous Fall Festival (Thank you STUCO!)  I am torn between whether to write about some of the truly great things that are happening on campus or continue our discussion on some academic changes we are implementing.  Because we have Facebook for some of the celebrations (thank you Ms. Reyes for maintaining that!) and because I have some things I feel like I need to close the loop on academically I am going to ask for your continued patience to talk about our first order of business which is education.

Before I share our school wide grading policy and my own professional goals for the year I want to put them into some context if I may ask for your patience to do so.

I’m sure you have heard the expression “good to great”.  While I would never categorize this school as merely “good”, the expression encapsulates the spirit of a challenge we need to undertake together, school and community.  There is no reason that this school cannot be a model for other schools.  In fact, there are a lot of reasons why we should be that model.  We have a highly intelligent, dedicated, loyal and talented staff.  We have a community of parents who value education and grades  and support us academically.  We have a student body that by and large also values education and grades. So the big picture, the context of our current and future discussion is this:  Moving from very good to truly great.

The good news is that I honestly feel like we are very close to being able to make this leap.  The things we need to address are more than 'tweaks' but short of wholesale changes. The thing is these “tweaks” if you will are along fault lines where small movement can have seismic effects.  But they are also in sensitive areas that require some philosophical alignment on the part of all staff, parents and stakeholders.

 Let me use mushroom soup as an example (sorry for the non-cooks out there but at least it’s not a sports metaphor right?)  If you like mushroom soup, the traditional way of making it is good, even very good.  BUT, if you use a variety of mushrooms instead of just one kind, clarified butter (ghee) instead of butter, and ground mushrooms rather than flour as a thickening agent, you still get mushroom soup but one that is profoundly better in every way.  Variety, quality and creativity have profound effects.

To bring it back to school , Variety of instructional strategies, quality instruction (rigor and high expectations) and creativity in the classroom is, I believe, the recipe we need to follow to take that next, hardest step on the path from very good to truly great.

To this end, one of Jenn and my professional goals is to introduce and encourage the use of alternative and creative teaching strategies to our staff that require no more work on the part of the teacher but increased student engagement.  Different work, but not more work.  This will increase engagement and therefore the feeling of collective teacher efficacy which is a Neil Armstrong sized step toward greatness.

And because we simply cannot do this without an active partnership with our parents, we have already collectively taken action on one key component that we know will reduce some confusion and increase the transparency of what we do here at Sonoran Trails.  

After serious discussion that was both rich and professional, the staff has adopted a school wide grading policy that will be implemented at the latest on Jan 5.  These discussions were profound, philosophical and practical but certainly not without passion and a little contention.  These dedicated teachers, these professionals, steadfastly kept student learning as their primary focus and came up with the following.  Students who do not hand in work (which is BY FAR the single largest reason for poor grades) will receive no credit in the gradebook with the caveat that ALL late work can be handed in for full credit, up to a reasonable point near the end of the quarter/semester.  The zeroes are there to remind the students and parents that the work is missing and the late work policy is to ensure that students never feel they are too far behind to catch up.  We feel that this is both fair and reasonable.

I will leave you now with my sincere thanks for your trust, support and for joining us on this journey to greatness.  We cannot do it without you and your active support. 

Together

Dave Boggs.
 

Hello everyone,

I think that the ability to read minds is absolutely the stuff of nightmares.  I mean, sure you would be unstoppable at poker and boy would politics be different, but I’m not sure I’m emotionally equipped to deal with that level of honesty.  

If I could read minds, I’m sure I would be getting from you “what the heck does this have to do with school?”  Well, let me tell you.   I want to delve just a little into the practice and philosophy of grading.   And while it would be Matrix Level Cool if we could just read the minds of students to know what they know and what they have yet to learn.  Unfortunately we rely on a variety of tests/assessments to determine what a student knows and that is reflected in the grade.  Sounds simple right?

It isn’t.  At first glance it should be.  Grades and grade cards and progress reports etc. are part of the very fabric of our shared existence in American education.  It really is one of the things nearly all of us have common experience with.  However, lurking just below the placid surface of this seemingly simple practice are a handful of philosophical questions that are complicated.  Allow me to give a couple of examples of these.  Beware though, they are the kinds of issues where multiple perspectives have LEGITIMATE merit to their argument.

Let’s look at zeros for example.  If a student does not hand in an assignment, should it be a zero in the book or should it be given half credit?  Seems simple.  Nothing for nothing–a zero it is.  Makes perfect sense, especially in a “how the real world works” kind of argument.  However, the other perspective points out that  A:  This is not the real world, it is a school with adolescents who are just learning about the “real world” and shouldn’t they be given some grace while learning?  And B:  If  a student for one of a multitude of legitimate reasons goes through a period when school is not their top focus (Family issues for example), they are in such a hole in the grade book that it actively DISCOURAGES them to dig back in because the hill is too steep to climb.  See?  Both are legit arguments.   We need to teach them to be responsible and we also need to teach them that it is never too late to succeed.  

Accepting late work and how much credit for late work is another good and related example.   On one hand, we don’t want to teach them that being late with stuff is okee dokee or that the progress of the entire curriculum should rely on student convenience.  Again, not the way the “real world” works.    On the other hand, if you take as top priority WHAT our students know, WHEN they prove they know it is less important.  And our students have VERY active lives outside of the classroom and those activities are important to the development of the whole child.  It’s a pickle.

These are the kinds of questions that our leadership team, myself, and each teacher wrestle with in the pursuit of teaching (our first responsibility) and fairness (what we strive for and model for our students).  

I think, and this is just me in this moment, that an approach to both would be that, until something is handed in, it goes in as a zero to remind everyone that it is out there, but once it is handed in, it can get full credit up until the end of the grading period where grades literally MUST be put into the system.  That adheres to the “nothing for nothing” real world approach as well as allowing adolescents some grace to grow and mature while they learn the executive function skills to meet this “real world” head on.

As always, thank you for your time and consideration and have a great week!

Dave

Dear parents and guardians,

Hi.  Today let’s talk about brains and memory and stuff like that.

I wonder things.  For example, I wonder why I can remember that the last words of John Adams were “Jefferson survives” while at the same time I often can’t remember why I went into the kitchen or the name of the person I met 15 seconds ago and am still talking to.

The brain is a funny thing, especially when it comes to memory.  Memory comes in two flavors, short term and long term.  Short term memory is like a person getting a napkin in a fast food place.  It grabs a bit of information (napkin)  until it is used and then gets rid of it totally.  Long term memory is like a good librarian.  It gathers, prioritizes and stores information so we can make decisions, think things through and generally live our lives.  We have a word for putting things into long term memory:  Learning.

Awkwardly segue with me now to today's subject of how to help our shared students effectively and efficiently put stuff into long term memory;  how to learn.

When I talk to parents and students about the amount of time they report spending on homework I am troubled.  It should NOT be hours a night.  I mean it’s middle school.  They aren’t boning up for the BAR exam right?  I would like to share some thoughts about how to more efficiently and effectively study (which is the process of learning).  Notice how many of these can apply to a high functioning classroom as well.

First, they shouldn’t study in a sustained way for longer than ten to fifteen minutes.  Then they should stop onboarding information and just let what they are learning roll around in their mind looking for a place to land.  New information will move into long term memory best when it is attached to memory that already exists.  It takes some time and casual thinking for this to happen.  They should actively ask things like “how does this information make me feel?” “How can I use this information?” or “How does this relate to what I learned yesterday or what I think I’m going to learn tomorrow?”.  The questions can be a multitude of things but should find a way to attach the new information to existing knowledge.

Second, and you will get push back on this, they should NOT listen to music with words while they learn.  People will say that they learn best when listening to music and many adults swear that they do.  Here is the thing.  The part of the brain that processes language is the part of the brain that processes language.  That crazy sentence simply means that it can’t process lyrics and printed words at the same time.  So what the brain does is flip back and forth, back and forth between what it is hearing and what it is reading.  When we do this, we are actually TRAINING our brain to develop attention deficit!  Music is good.  Music with lyrics is bad.

Third, dedicate a few minutes of discussion to the material an hour or more after the studying is done.  During the time between learning and discussing their brain has been busy looking for places to put the new stuff.  Talking about it helps the brain with this and it helps the student summarize the learning in a coherent way.  It takes the puzzle pieces of information and puts them together into a picture that makes sense.

I think that is a good place to start this discussion, and anyway, your study time is up :-)  

As always, it has been nice talking with you.

Dave 

Hello Stingers!

As always, it is a pleasure to get to address all of you all at one time and share with you how Sonoran Trails is doing and more importantly what Sonoran Trails is doing.  As we go forward together, I like to include you in some of the educational topics that we prioritize.  Because Ms. Sarraino was such a strong Principal I am fortunate to have inherited a high functioning school.  Because she and the staff developed effective systems, we are able to take the next step and focus our attention on topics more specifically focused on teaching and learning.

Also, because our community is sophisticated and highly focused on high achievement I feel both able and obligated to include our families in these discussions.  I deeply appreciate the ability to do so.  We have a lot to celebrate at STMS, and celebrate we do, but since I have this time and these column inches to talk meaningfully and transparently about education and I want to seize that opportunity.

So let's talk adulting.   If you are like me, you remember being in middle school but don’t remember it very coherently or chronologically if that makes sense.  I mean, I have individual memories and impressions and feelings but it is not a wholly coherent chunk of time.  This is because my brain, like yours and like your children's, was developing and forming new connections at a high rate.  In essence, we were learning how to be adults, how to be responsible and how to make sense of the larger world.  The skills we developed are the executive function skills of the brain and they are essentially adulting skills.  

And just like our calendars and notes exist to help us stay on track with all we need to do, our students have tools they can use.  The caveat is that they need to learn how to use them and that means more than just “put it in your planner”.  They need to be explicitly taught how and why to minimally organize their lives.   Their brains are SO BUSY right now that all information swirling around in there has the same level of importance.  Organization is how we train our brains to group, synchronize and prioritize.  A planner is a great way to do this in the world of school.  

Our staff just talked as a group about the importance of using their planner and  about how we can teach them on our end.  Parents can support this effort by making a planner check a daily occurrence with the student and always talking them through the way to and reasons why a basic level of organization will make their lives easier, tasks more manageable and actually create rather than reduce the amount of time for other activities.

As always, thank you for your time and attention and thank you so much for your continued partnership in our shared task of inspiring excellence in all students and staff.

Dave Boggs

Hello Stinger Community!

The expression “Knock on wood”  to ensure the continuance of good luck dates back to pagan cultures where rapping on a tree was thought to awaken the good sprites or fairies living in those trees.  With that in mind I would like to metaphorically knock on wood before I tell you how positive and encouraging this year continues to be.  

We are getting into the swing of things here and that means teaching and learning!  

I would like to invite you into the teaching and learning process by beginning a discussion about our Professional Learning Communities (PLC).  I say “begin” because a lot of things we are going to explore are part of this process including assessments, teaching strategies, intervention, acceleration and data driven decision making.

In essence, The PLC process revolves around four questions:  1. What do we want our students to know or be able to do? 2. How are we going to know if they know it or can do it? 3. What are we going to do if they do not know it? 4. What are we going to do if they already know it or can do it?   These four seemingly simple questions are the fodder and fuel of myriad richer discussions that get to the very heart of the art and science of teaching.  These are the discussions our dedicated professionals are having on Wednesdays after the students are dismissed.

The basic idea is to constantly evolve our teaching practice to reinforce successful strategies and modify or eliminate unsuccessful strategies.  The common formative assessments and common summative assessments provide the data teachers use to answer question one.  We have to know what they know so we can meet them where they are and move them forward.  This simple logic is an easy peasy slam dunk as a place to start any discussion of teaching!

To move forward and be truly great the relationship between school and home simply HAS to be a partnership.  On our end of this PLC process we will have rich discussions and critically examine our own practices.  Parents can partner with us in this effort by reinforcing with your children how important it is to try on the formative assessments.  After all, our decisions are only as good as the data we have to inform those decisions!

When next we “speak” I would like to bring you into the discussion of intervention, which directly addresses question 2 “what will we do when they don’t know something?”

Thank you for joining me in these educational discussions and please feel free to reach out to us with any questions!

Fascinating fact:  Tigers not only have striped fur, they have striped skin as well!

Together

Dave Boggs

 

 

Hello Stingers

Since this is our first newsletter of the school year, I originally intended to reintroduce myself and tell a little about my goals for working with families.

However, after the amazing first week we have had I feel compelled to thank you parents, students and staff for showing up week one and getting us off on such a positive note!  

THANK YOU!!!!!!! 

Now for a little business.  I want you all to know that I take all of our communication, including the communication in this newsletter very seriously.  I fully intend to forge a true partnership with parents and caregivers, focusing on academics for the most part, but we will certainly celebrate our many shared successes along the way.  I will be engaging you in full discussions regarding topics such as Professional Learning Communities (PLC), Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS), Grades and grading practices, State testing, teaching strategies, and any education or child development subject that is relevant to our shared mission.   Please join us in working toward our shared mission which is  to “Inspire Excellence in All Students and Staff”.  This statement is as beautiful in its simplicity as it is complex in its scope.  

The education and guided development of this age group is exceptionally important but it is also tremendously fun!  Let’s face it, Kids this age are just a lot of fun to be around. (I was tempted to say they are a “hoot” but that would be too much of my Kansan roots creeping in)   They are creative, they are quirky and they are evolving on a daily basis.  

Granted, kids this age can seem a little strange in thought and deed, but that is because their brains are growing and developing the capacity to make sense of the larger world that exists outside of the protected walls of childhood.  Adolescence is the time when young adults learn to make sense of the world and find their place in it as grown adults.  

To guide them through this successfully, we simply have to work together with open communication, the assumption of positive intentions and a transparency in our practices.  Without reservation and with sincere excitement I look forward to our partnership.

Together

Dave Boggs

PS  I like to end with a fascinating fact because all knowledge is good knowledge!  The fact this week is one I shared with your kids today:   The average cumulus cloud weighs in excess of a million pounds!

 

Happy Friday Stinger Community!

What an amazing first week of school! For being a newcomer to the school, I have felt so welcomed by our amazing students. This is a direct result of the outstanding culture and climate built in our community. Thank you!

I want to give a huge shout out to our teachers and staff. They worked so diligently preparing for the opening of school and they have done an excellent job. The students have been outstanding learning the expectations this first week and they are already in a routine that will provide a year of exceptional student achievement. 

Our sensational students’ adherence to the new telecommunications policy is already showing amazing results. Not only have we only had only a couple of students forgetting the policy, our students are interacting with each other more and are building new friendships. Our tardy numbers have also decreased drastically compared to this time last year because students are not being distracted by their technologies. 

We closed out the week with a very successful PBIS Kick-Off Assembly where students learned/reviewed school-wide expectations, asked great questions, and were praised for their excellent first week.

I am looking forward to a great school year and working #Together.

Go Stingers! 

Jennifer Reyes


 

Hello Stinger Community!

I am SO pleased to be in a position to be writing a welcome or welcome back letter to our amazing community as the new Principal at Sonoran Trails.  As many of you know, I have been Assistant Principal for the previous two years before being selected to be Principal.  I truly stand on the shoulders of greats following Ms. Jill Sarraino and before her Mr. Bill Dolezal.  I am committed to continuing our tradition of excellence and working with our amazing staff to continuously improve as a school and educational community.

At Sonoran Trails we are going to work as a learning community in partnership with our Cave Creek community to provide our shared students with every opportunity for success both academically and socially.  As we go about this important work, I want transparency with our parents on our priorities.

First and foremost, we will provide a SAFE and SECURE environment for our students.  Our school and district take safety and security very seriously.  This includes both safety from potential external threats and the safety, security and emotional security on this campus.  

Second, we will provide a challenging but accessible academic setting.  We collectively believe that all students can learn at high levels.  To this end we want our classes to be rigorous and challenging but with a clear path to success for each student.

Third, we will focus on the whole child.  This age group is by definition in transition and it is our shared responsibility to support our students and help them navigate safely through the often choppy waters of adolescence.  

We have, of course, a much broader span of important goals to accomplish as a school with our students, but the above three summarize our top priorities.  Collectively the staff and students will work hard, celebrate our successes and proactively take on any and all challenges that present themselves.  I want to thank you for sending us your children and joining us in this serious, but also incredibly fun adventure!

TOGETHER

Dave Boggs, Principal

Sonoran Trails Middle School