I am amazed at what I have already seen going on in classrooms this year.  Students and teachers hit the ground running on what is going to be the best year ever.  Tell me about what you have already learned this year.  Can’t wait to read your responses!

I am sure that you are all very sad to end the school year and will spend the summer missing everything about HTMS.  :)  I am going to spend the summer getting the school ready for next year, reading, and hopefully finding time to spend with friends and family.  What are your plans for the summer?  Check the blog out this summer as I make posts every week or so.

We are getting ready to host the current 5th graders next week.  As experienced middle schoolers, you know what it means to be a middle school student.  What advice would you give a student new to HTMS?

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.

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!

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!

I want to know your favorite memory from school.  It can be from this year or from another grade.  Tell me about your memory and why it is something that has stuck with you.

We are having parent meetings this week to look at some options we have for schedules for next year 7th and 8th graders.  We want to be responsive to student, family, and teacher needs and want to provide students with more opportunities to learn at high levels; this is one reason for the earlier post about classes students would be interested in.  I would like to hear what you think about the middle school schedule.  What would be changes that you would make if you had the ability?  If you have heard about the possible changes, what do you think?  We have already talked to the staff about some ideas and they are excited about the possibilities!

High quality teachers are very important in your school experience and to HTMS becoming a GREAT school.  By the time you enter middle school, you have had multiple teachers who were all different from each other.  I am already starting to get applications and phone calls from teachers interested in teaching at HTMS.  As I interview teachers for next school year, what qualities do you think I should look for?