The mission of West Hills High School is to graduate critical thinkers and problem-solvers who contribute positively to society as productive, responsible citizens.
Activities for the week:
Monday: Collab Day schedule: All Faculty and Staff PLC in S-8 at 7:45 a.m.
Please see email sent Friday for more details
Tuesday: Regular Day
Wednesday: Regular Day
Thursday: Regular Day
Monday, October 23: All Faculty and Staff PLC--meet in S-8 (start of meeting room change from last week) 7:45 a.m. Digital devices are optional for this meeting.
Friday, October 27: Lunch on the Lawn--once again,
here is the link to request a song. We are adding to the list so if you already requested a song from last month it is still there--feel free to add another! Everyone is welcome!
Monday, Oct. 30: Halloween Breakfast in the Staff Lounge beginning at 7:00 a.m. (no costumes unless you want to two days in a row ) with "candy to go" for the 31st....
Friday, November 3 (Minimum Day) : 12 week Progress grades due
Sunday, March 18-21, 2018: WASC Visiting Team on Campus
Update: Department Chairs and Leadership reviewed our work to date and wanted to share with you our Focus Group work in identifying our "Areas of Strength" and "Areas of Growth" from each area. From these areas, we started drafting our 3 areas of focus as a school. Please take a look at these and talk amongst ourselves to see if this resonates. At our November 6 All Faculty and Staff PLC meeting, we will talk as a whole staff and discuss if these are agreed upon. Please give feedback to any in Admin, your Department Chair or Randy Cambou prior to the November 6 meeting. Thank you all for your honesty and efforts with our WASC work. We feel good about where we are and the integrity we have in this process.
A message from Shayla Green and the I.I. Department
October is Augmentative & Alternative Communication (AAC) Awareness month and my students, staff and I have been talking a LOT about AAC and working on spreading the word around campus!
We have 13 students here at West Hills that use AAC devices. Currently all of our students using AAC use iPads as their AAC device with either the Prolquo-2-Go or Go Talk Now app on it to help them communicate.
So...if you see a student with an iPad--say Hello! They want to communicate with you too.
Check out
this powerful literacy tool for ALL TEACHERS.
Actively Learn is a flexible reading platform that allows teachers to embed questions, notes, and multimedia into texts so students are interacting with the reading material on a more meaningful level. It can be used in any content area!
With Actively Learn, teachers can choose from a wide-range of ready-made assignments across the content areas, or they can custom design their own.
Actively Learn integrates with Google Drive, Docs, and Classroom.
Check out AchievetheCore.org and the click on the top "Professional Learning" for practical information for any teacher. Lesson plans, planning tools and Common Core professional development is all available free on this website.
Our own GUHSDtech
website has many resources, tools and PD opportunities for teachers. We are happy to support any and all teachers in your own learning needs. Let your Department Chair know and we are happy to help schedule PD on our campus, bringing the folks here to support YOU during your prep, a department PLC time or a pull out day. Here are just two examples of how departments are working with PD time:
On 10/23 Grades 9/10
English teachers are meeting after PLC time in E-8
On 10/24 the
Math Department is working on how they want to continue to use student data to improve their student learning outcomes
Did you know that each teacher gets one professional growth day a year? This is a "use it or lose it" support for your own Professional Growth. You may not use it for "double dipping"--you can't leave our work day to get paid presenting at a conference or getting paid as a consultant for example--but you
can use it in a variety of ways with Principal permission to support your own learning. Fill out a blue form with Ginny to access this day and have your sub paid.
Suzanne shared this on the WHHS Library Twitter account....
When new students first learn their @
guhsd.net email addresses, it can be challenging for them to remember the GUHSD acronym, and so we will explain how it stands for the name of our Grossmont Union High School District.
In addition to belonging to West Hills, it is special belonging to GUHSD, because this means that teachers and students may benefit from district programs such as FutureForward, which allows students to have access to 1:1 Chromebooks for learning.
Being a GUHSD teacher is also why Ms. Sannwald got to spend today collaborating with teachers from across the district as part of Google Ninja 2.0 (
http://tech.guhsd.net/google/ninja).
The day started off with a discussion about the difference between "School" vs. "Learning" (see
https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/4974 for more information), which serendipitously echoed many ideas that a student happened to bring up in conversation in the library just yesterday.
How fortunate we are to have students who are having these types of conversations and to be part of a district that is inspiring and empowering teachers to transform our schools, designing and facilitating more authentic learning experiences for our students who want, expect, and need them.
NOTE: The "School vs. Learning in the Library" image is Ms. Sannwald's brainstorm from today. Does any of it surprise you? What would you add?
Corrie Biggerstaff took students to the Scripps Institute on Saturday.
Did you know this can "count" as Saturday Scholars and help WHHS with attendance make up? With every student who attends on a Saturday, if they have any absences that are not truancies, we can recoup one day of attendance funding from the state.
Why do we care? Because this is how we fund our everyday operations in addition to students completing classwork and homework, working on college and career exploration (like Jamie Bean and Rodd Moses helped students to do on Saturday as well in L-1) and offers an opportunity to AP and other teachers to enrich and support student learning.
THANK YOU to all teachers and faculty who support our SATURDAYS! Noelle Johnson and Jeannette Orahood were also here on Saturday with students. WE NEED YOU and WELCOME any and all who would like to staff our Saturday Scholar programs. Contact April Baker if you are interested in staffing our Saturday Scholars or if you have an idea or Saturday opportunity you would like to count for us.
Need some laughs? Please join us for a great night of comedy sponsored by our own WHHS Foundation!
All proceeds benefit WHHS!
As always, our website has a wealth of information and links wolfpack.guhsd.net
