Week of March 28-April 1, 2016

Welcome back from our Spring break! Next year we will have two weeks....check out the calendar for 2016-17 as a reminder.

Up coming events supporting our school:

PTSA Color Run is Sunday, April 3. Anyone can still register to run!

WHHS FOUNDATION Annual Golf Tournament: April 16: Check out more information here. All proceeds this year will go towards refurbishing our Weight Room. You can play with friends, donate towards a gift basket (time or talents) or simply encourage GOLFERS you know to PLAY! Great value for the donation and great day of golf! 

West Hills has about 46% of our students on the Federal Free or Reduced Lunch program, with a total of 68% of our students eligible to receive free or reduced lunch. This is a significant growth over the last 5-7 years and allows us to pursue special Federal Title I funds. At out last Department Chair & Leadership meeting, we spent a significant amount of time talking about becoming a Title I school. It will mean a large amount of funding for our site based on a per-pupil formula--about $115,000 dollars! There are many strings and requirements that come with this funding, including specific funds being set aside for professional development and Supplemental Educational Services (SES) for students outside the bell schedule day. This can include a variety of services such as tutoring and "Saturday Academy" or other supplemental educational and social-emotional supports for students with additional accountability. In this case, accountability for professional development means "required" with sign-in sheets and student pre-and post evaluation of effectiveness of the SES and PD work implemented. We are on a tight timeline to accept this status for next school year and to make careful plans via our Department Chair and Leadership team. Please talk with Admin or your Department Chair for more information. This will also be addressed in our April 4th All Staff and Faculty meeting--7:45 in S-8. 

Continuous School Improvement conversation continues regarding grading and grading practices and the use of data to inform instructional decisions...

Focusing on increasing the “A-B-C” rate: Assessment for Learning: Doug Reeves and a short video on why “zeroes” do nothing for student learning. Just moving from 100 point scale to the GPA scale of A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1, F=0 provides a mathematically equal scale and allows a student to have accurate feedback that does not exaggerate the zero. These Six tips for Growth Mindset can help with increasing student achievement as well. 

Advanced Placement...kudos to giving students rigorous preparation and not “watering down the curriculum” by opening access! Dr. Nat Malkus writes “Between 2000 and 2009, AP participation jumped 35 percent, but participants’ test scores did not show the declines critics predicted.” His description of his findings, which conclude that AP teachers, alongside AP Coordinators and administrators, have achieved "the rarest kind of success in public education," i.e., "expanding at scale without sacrificing rigor." In fact, Dr. Malkus finds that what you are achieving, day by day, week by week, and year by year, might be "the single happiest education story of the century." Read Dr. Malkus’ article  here on hist research regarding Advanced Placement courses.

Congratulations to the January GUHSD Health Career Pathways student of the month, Mariah Cook! Mariah is both a standout in the Health Pathway at West Hills High School and a standout among over 2000 Health Pathways students across the district . A dedicated pathway student, she is concurrently enrolled in Honors Medical Biology and Honors Anatomy & Physiology at WHHS and works hard in both of these classes. She is also taking advantage of many out-of-class opportunities being offered to Health Career Pathway students this year. She was offered an interview last week for the High School Exploration Program (Scripps' summer hospital internship program) and represented WHHS at the Vet Meet-and-Greet at the Health Occupations Center earlier this semester. She was also chosen to represent West Hills as a student leader and representative of her Health Pathway at Camp LEAD last semester. From there, she was asked to return to Camp LEAD in order to present an anti-tobacco project that she created with a fellow pathway student from a different school. As a kind-hearted leader, Mariah is passionate about empowering and supporting those around her. Both in and out of the classroom, Mariah is a hard worker and is an encouraging, motivating peer to all of her classmates. She always has a positive attitude and treats everyone with respect as she leads through example!  She has all the compassion she need to make an outstanding future healthcare worker. Congrats, Mariah!

Congratulations to our winter sports students! Check out the list as the Union Tribune honors 3,995 student-athletes

For a complete listing of all activities for the week, please visit our website.http://wolfpack.guhsd.net/

Go Wolf Pack!

Week of March 14-18, 2016

Reminders of the schedule for this week:

Monday, March 14 - Regular Day

Tuesday, March 15 - Minimum Day: EL Reclassification Testing facilitated

Wednesday March 16  - Regular Day

Thursday, March 17 - Regular Day

Friday, March 18 - Minimum Day

Monday through Friday, March 21 to 25 - Spring Recess

Great learning by teacher Corrie Biggerstaff and our terrific Health Pathways students at SDSU on Saturday! Students got a taste of college life and the Science world in the university track!

PTSA Supply Day: Giving thanks

Several of you have asked me how to thank the PTSA for Supply Day. The wonderful volunteer coordinator is terrific parent EV Trivoli and her email is evathome@cox.net. We are lucky to have the PTSA that we do! It is never too late to join our Parent-TEACHER-Student Association. Membership forms are in the Admin building lobby. Many of you are members and PTSA is very grateful to you!

Thanks to retiree Anne Foster for taking the lead to write our Charger’s Grant and Jimmie Johnson Grant for a much needed equipment upgrade to our weight room. Using terrific work from Jamie Gwyn, Anne is graciously volunteering her considerable expertise and time to our submission. Although we won’t hear back on the grants until December 2016, we are very hopeful to be able to replace the aged and ill suited equipment to current ENS and team sport needs.

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In our 29th year of collecting funds, we are looking for donations to our own Faculty and Staff Scholarship Fund. Years ago, some of us (many of us??) might remember the good times "paying" to wear jeans on Friday--$1.00 a Friday! This went to our very own students in the form of scholarships. This amounted to about $40 per year per staff member who participated. When we had over 100 teaching faculty plus about 35 classified staff, we were able to donate about $4000 to deserving Seniors who applied every year! Students could be attending two year, four year, or vocational schools and there is an application and a selection committee to review and select the awardees. Our own GUIDANCE DEPARTMENT heads up this effort.

What we need: more donations and your ideas on raising funds. Would you support "auctioning" parking spaces for Faculty and Staff, allowing you to "reserve" (with painted signs) your parking spot? Please let your Department Chair or Admin know what you think this week.

Speaking of Department Chair and Leadership meetings...

Department Chair Agenda with important links for all to read and discuss: Please talk with your Chair and as a department on the items linked. We have some excellent opportunities at on-site Professional Development and crafting an individualized site plan for our own needs. Please give feedback to your Chair so I might craft a plan with our District PD folks in all areas. We meet this Thursday, March 17 so your feedback is critical. 

DATA: If you have an interest in supporting our staff with understanding and facilitating crucial data pieces, we are creating a the Site Data Team. This will be hourly compensated work to help us move our site forward in making data informed decisions. Check out the data we have to date that we have linked in the Department Chair Agenda. This includes the First Semester final grades by course, our Healthy Kids Survey data and the need to look at much more. Here is a Great article on Student Led Conferences that informs our discussion around grades and assessment to assist us in our Data discussions.



Growth Mind Set: Take a read through this powerful and short article on the latest research about student learning and motivation. WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE! Our point of view drives what our students do! Please read and discuss in with colleagues as we look towards Professional Development, whole-school plans for next year and our own individual perspectives. We have been asked if we want to buy the longer book and have a whole school book reading group to facilitate our own learning and growth. Please let me know if you are interested in this via your Department Chair.

As always, please visit our website for a full calendar of events and links. 

Go Wolf Pack!