In the April newsletter, I mentioned some stories I heard from parents about times when their children got upset when they had to miss school because they were sick or times when kids got into the car after school and couldn’t wait to tell you about their day. 

If you are a student, you can write about a time when you got very excited about something in school.

Yesterday was Stop Cyberbullying Day.  I encourage each student to really think about how they treat each other in cyberspace.  You may think that words written on your computer won’t hurt someone, but they really do.

Here are some hints. 

• When you are angry or hurt, don’t write an email, send an IM, post to MySpace, etc.  Step away from your computer and give yourself some time before responding to something.
• Write as if the person you are talking about, their parents, or your parents are sitting beside you reading what you are writing.  If you don’t think any of these people would like what you are writing, don’t.
• Remember, you can’t take back words that you have written. 
• Don’t write something that you might be sorry for writing in the future.
• Respect!  Always be respectful of others.  This doesn’t mean that you have to like everyone, but you should always be respectful of others.

We live in a time of great access to tools (Internet, blogs, MySpace, etc) that expand our world beyond Trussville.   There is a great deal of positive information and opportunities because of these tools, but we all must learn how to use them appropriately and for good.

As we all leave for break, I want to take the chance to reiterate the wonderful things going on daily at HTMS.  Laura Reddick’s students have entered art work into a contest sponsored by the National Middle School Association.  I helped cover her class earlier in the week so she could co-teach an activity with Niki Lincoln for social studies.  Her students applied mathematical concepts as they drew tessellations.  I was able to listen to Brenda Graffeo’s students share poems as beatniks in a coffee house.  I sat in on a discussion in Darrell Stovall’s class.  Students read the article from Time and participated in a discussion about it.  Over the past few weeks, all of the 6th graders went to Birmingham Southern to participate in a variety of ecological activities.  Kids came back very excited about what they learned.  Jamey Curlee is kicking off his body systems unit using the movie Supersize Me.  Erin McGuyer’s students taught me some new tricks in PowerPoint as I walked around her classroom.  Sandy Hoffman’s students rotated through different stations during class.  They had choice in working with a partner or alone and to solve a variety of problems. Check the stairwells going upstairs to see great examples of Jan Sterling’s students illustrating solutions to a problem using different strategies.  Go up the stairs in front of the counselors’ offices.  Emily Walsh had students brainstorm using different strategies (drawing a picture, creating a web, using other graphic organizers, or free write.)  Haley Nichols allowed her students to select from a variety of high interest articles.  Students with the same article formed groups and wrote persuasive essays based on their articles.  Anita Dobb’s students celebrated Pi Day (3/14) by doing a variety of math activities that required students to utilize Pi in their solving of problems.  Joy Young’s students used Excel to recreate and fill in their tournament brackets.  They then utilized the program to calculate the winning percentages based on their brackets.  Very high interest way of teaching students the Excel. Ann House’s students created board games to demonstrate their learning.  Tracy Gulledge’s students dissected hearts; I never was able to dissect anything beyond a frog.  Larry Jones’ students had rocket launches to test different principles in physics.  Did you see the article in the Birmingham News the other morning about the cafeteria’s 100 score on the latest health rating? 

Every day I look over the attendance report.  Usually, I am pretty pleased with what I see.  We average a daily attendance of somewhere between 94 and 96%.  This past Thursday, I was absolutely amazed at our attendance.  There were 18 students absent Thursday.  That converts to 99% attendance, and there were no special programs, pep rallies, big games, etc.  This is a great indication of the positive things going on at HTMS.  I appreciate the hard work teachers put into designing lessons for students.  Their efforts are paying off!

Earlier this week, I was privileged to attend the Greater Birmingham Math Partnership Community Math Night.  The leader of the session stressed the importance of math skills and lead the more than 200 people in a variety of exercises that provided practice of multiplication facts without the pain of drill that many of us experienced.  It made me wish that I had such experiences as a student. 

My memory of learning multiplication aren’t all that nice.  I don’t remember why father and I were in the car so much during my third grade year, but I remember him calling out problem after problem until I cried because I had had enough.  What are your memories of learning your multiplication facts?

I want to thank the staff and students for their flexibility yesterday during the bad weather.  We had to change our schedule very quickly so we could feed all of the students before sending them home for the day.  Awesome job!