Great job by FFA setting up a drive-through for their annual fruit sale!
I stopped by plant science class this week. (My stop was prompted by the fact I thought the lettuce in my school lunch that day was absolutely amazing and I knew it had come from our own Evergreen farms). Anyway - it was neat to see all of the different things being grown in the lab besides the lettuce including spices and even strawberries. Here's a picture of the strawberries below.
Congratulations to Orion Boe on winning the Win Brockmeyer Award this past weekend, an award for the best football player in the Wausau area. News story linked here.
Our DCE Math Team (grades 9-12)competed in the first of three competitions through UWSP and is currently sitting as the Number One Ranked math team in division one. Lucas Allen and Kate Magnuson are rated number 1 and 2 respectively, overall in the advanced category. Nina Allen, Ava Kumar, and Wesley Palmer are ranked number 1 and tied for 2 in the Algebra category and James Dabado is ranked number 1 overall in Geometry. Additionally, Isabelle Waller, Mansi Peters, Grace Jelen, Sara Mlodik, and Anson Jiang are all ranked in the top ten in their respective category. Great showing by our math students!
Announcements/Week Ahead
Food delivery - For all of those who have signed up for food delivery this week a tremendous Thank You! As you did a month ago - please respect social distance by only having one in a vehicle and utilizing contactless delivery.
Schedules - We hope to have schedules close to completed by the first week of January. Counselors are planning on adjusting student conflicts throughout that first week. We will communicate more when we have more information.
Course proposals for 2021 - I believe I have all of the course proposals put forth by departments. If there is something still out there in consideration please reach out before break and let me know.
Important Dates, December:
21-22 Student Council Dress up days, "Ugly Sweater"
Great story about our new class in the tech. ed. department. Great job Steve, Aaron and Department in continuing to expand opportunities and experiences for kids!
Good to see so many staff members getting into the student council dress-up days!
Interesting Information
We have always prided ourselves on our ability to create powerful and meaningful relationships with our students. We do this because we know it is important - and that it works. After I read the below article this week it has become even more imperative to me that we ensure each student has a direct and positive connection with at least one adult in the building. Please keep forming these relationships, reaching out, and doing all you can. It matters!
Positive student-teacher relationships benefit students' long-term health, study finds
Positive peer relationships don't show the same long-term health benefits, according to the research
Date:October 29, 2020
Source:American Psychological Association
Summary: Teens who have good, supportive relationships with their teachers enjoy better health as adults, according to new research. Perhaps surprisingly, although friendships are important to adolescents, the study did not find the same link between good peer relationships and students' health in adulthood.
Teens who have good, supportive relationships with their teachers enjoy better health as adults, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. Perhaps surprisingly, although friendships are important to adolescents, the study did not find the same link between good peer relationships and students' health in adulthood.
"This research suggests that improving students' relationships with teachers could have important, positive and long-lasting effects beyond just academic success," said Jinho Kim, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Korea University and author of the study. It was published in the journal School Psychology. "It could also have important health implications in the long run."
Previous research has suggested that teens' social relationships might be linked to health outcomes in adulthood -- perhaps because poor relationships can lead to chronic stress, which can raise a person's risk of health problems over the lifespan, according to Kim. However, it is not clear whether the link between teen relationships and lifetime health is causal -- it could be that other factors, such as different family backgrounds, might contribute to both relationship problems in adolescence and to poor health in adulthood. Also, most research has focused on teens' relationships with their peers, rather than on their relationships with teachers.
To explore those questions further, Kim analyzed data on nearly 20,000 participants from the Add Health study, a nationally representative longitudinal study in the United States that followed participants for 13 years, from seventh grade into early adulthood. The participant pool included more than 3,400 pairs of siblings. As teens, participants answered questions such as, "How often have you had trouble getting along with other students?" "How much do you agree that friends care about you?" "How often have you had trouble getting along with your teachers?" and "How much do you agree that teachers care about you?" As adults, participants were asked about their physical and mental health. Researchers also took measures of physical health, such as blood pressure and body mass index.
Kim found that, as expected, participants who had reported better relationships with both their peers and teachers in middle school and high school also reported better physical and mental health in their mid-20s. However, when he controlled for family background by looking at pairs of siblings together, only the link between good teacher relationships and adult health remained significant.
This could be because previously reported links between peer relationships and physical health could actually reflect other, underlying factors about students' family background.
The results suggest that teacher relationships are even more important than previously realized and that schools should invest in training teachers on how to build warm and supportive relationships with their students, according to Kim.
"This is not something that most teachers receive much training in," he said, "but it should be."
Announcements/Week Ahead
Snow Day - With the significant loss of face to face instructional time, this year, the district will be expecting schooling to continue for all students in the event of a snow day. In the event of cancellation due to inclement weather the plan for the day is to have the already scheduled remote learning students continue with their normally scheduled learning activities. The cohort that was scheduled to be in the building on the canceled day will log in to their Canvas accounts and complete the scheduled activities and work that will be posted by their classroom teachers. All teachers will upload necessary items by 9 am and will post a 30 minute office hour timeframe where students can log in and ask questions over webex. Student attendance for in-person learning will be taken in relation to completed work. Please ask if you have any questions.
WebEx into class - If a student is on quarantine and asks to webex into class our blanket expectation is that a teacher would allow that to happen, or would record the direct instruction and post it to Canvas. If for some reason that is not possible please let me know so that I can help with the communication. This is a change in expectations from the beginning of the year. The main reason this change is important is that we have had students on multiple quarantines leading to more than a month of missed in-person school. Thank you for continuing to be flexible in these difficutl times.
Parent Canvas Resources - Here is the link to the recorded 6-12 Canvas 101 Parent Meeting last week from Tammy and Felicity: https://youtu.be/7wzDiPnH3LE - The recording is available in Canvas. Here is how the recording can be accessed. From the Canvas Dashboard > Global Navigation to Help ? > DC Everest Canvas YouTube Playlist
Changes to quarantining procedures - In response to new guidelines released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) has updated quarantine guidance for close contacts of someone diagnosed with COVID-19 and/or who were sent home under sibling exclusion. D C Everest adopted the Wisconsin DHS guidelines for quarantine effective 12/7/2020: Anyone being quarantined - for sibling exclusion and/or close contact exposure - will only be quarantined for 10 days and can return on the 11th day if they do not exhibit symptoms. This updated guidance does not apply if symptoms start during the ten-day quarantine. In that case, the person would need to be isolated and get tested. If positive, they need to complete 10 days of isolation from the start of symptoms. If negative, they need to complete their 10 days of quarantine prior to returning to school.
Since 14 days is still the gold standard, students in quarantine must meet the following criteria to return to school on day 11:
Daily symptom monitoring must continue for all individuals in quarantine through Day 14.
Persons report no symptoms during the 10-day quarantine at home.
Persons must be advised that if symptoms develop at any time, they should immediately self-isolate and contact the school to report this change in status.
Persons must continue with consistent mask use, social distancing, and avoiding gatherings for the full 14 days after exposure.
Self-care opportunity from Marshfield Clinic
Self-Care Training
Self-care is any activity that we do deliberately in order to take care of our mental, emotional, and physical health. Although it is a simple concept in theory, it is something we often overlook. In this session, learn simple self-care practices you can build into your daily routine in order to improve your overall wellness.
Key Club has been working hard making blankets for various community organizations! Great Job!
DCE Drumline representing well at the Wausau Reverse Parade!
A couple action shots from the past week's athletic competitions!
Interesting Information
I am always a big fan of end-of-the-year lists - and I look forward to these types of articles every year. Interesting information below.
THE RESEARCH IS IN
The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2020
We reviewed hundreds of educational studies in 2020 and then highlighted 10 of the most significant—covering topics from virtual learning to the reading wars and the decline of standardized tests.
Calling 2020 a turbulent year would be an understatement. As the pandemic disrupted life across the entire globe, teachers scrambled to transform their physical classrooms into virtual—or even hybrid—ones, and researchers slowly began to collect insights into what works, and what doesn’t, in online learning environments around the world.
Meanwhile, neuroscientists made a convincing case for keeping handwriting in schools, and after the closure of several coal-fired power plants in Chicago, researchers reported a drop in pediatric emergency room visits and fewer absences in schools, reminding us that questions of educational equity do not begin and end at the schoolhouse door.
1. TO TEACH VOCABULARY, LET KIDS BE THESPIANS
When students are learning a new language, ask them to act out vocabulary words. It’s fun to unleash a child’s inner thespian, of course, but a 2020 study concluded that it also nearly doubles their ability to remember the words months later.
Researchers asked 8-year-old students to listen to words in another language and then use their hands and bodies to mimic the words—spreading their arms and pretending to fly, for example, when learning the German word flugzeug, which means “airplane.” After two months, these young actors were a remarkable 73 percent more likely to remember the new words than students who had listened without accompanying gestures. Researchers discovered similar, if slightly less dramatic, results when students were asked to look at pictures while listening to the corresponding vocabulary.
It’s a simple reminder that if you want students to remember something, encourage them to learn it in a variety of ways—by drawing it, acting it out, or pairing it with relevant images, for example.
2. NEUROSCIENTISTS DEFEND THE VALUE OF TEACHING HANDWRITING—AGAIN
For most kids, typing just doesn’t cut it. In 2012, brain scans of preliterate children revealed crucial reading circuitry flickering to life when kids hand-printed letters and then tried to read them. The effect largely disappeared when the letters were typed or traced.
More recently, in 2020, a team of researchers studied older children—seventh graders—while they handwrote, drew, and typed words, and concluded that handwriting and drawing produced telltale neural tracings indicative of deeper learning.
“Whenever self-generated movements are included as a learning strategy, more of the brain gets stimulated,” the researchers explain, before echoing the 2012 study: “It also appears that the movements related to keyboard typing do not activate these networks the same way that drawing and handwriting do.”
It would be a mistake to replace typing with handwriting, though. All kids need to develop digital skills, and there’s evidence that technology helps children with dyslexia to overcome obstacles like note taking or illegible handwriting, ultimately freeing them to “use their time for all the things in which they are gifted,” says the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity.
3. THE ACT TEST JUST GOT A NEGATIVE SCORE
A 2020 study found that ACT test scores, which are often a key factor in college admissions, showed a weak—or even negative—relationship when it came to predicting how successful students would be in college. “There is little evidence that students will have more college success if they work to improve their ACT score,” the researchers explain, and students with very high ACT scores—but indifferent high school grades—often flamed out in college, overmatched by the rigors of a university’s academic schedule.
Just last year, the SAT—cousin to the ACT—had a similarly dubious public showing. In a major 2019 study of nearly 50,000 students led by researcher Brian Galla, and including Angela Duckworth, researchers found that high school grades were stronger predictors of four-year-college graduation than SAT scores.
The reason? Four-year high school grades, the researchers asserted, are a better indicator of crucial skills like perseverance, time management, and the ability to avoid distractions. It’s most likely those skills, in the end, that keep kids in college.
4. A RUBRIC REDUCES RACIAL GRADING BIAS
A simple step might help undercut the pernicious effect of grading bias, a new study found: Articulate your standards clearly before you begin grading, and refer to the standards regularly during the assessment process.
In 2020, more than 1,500 teachers were recruited and asked to grade a writing sample from a fictional second-grade student. All of the sample stories were identical—but in one set, the student mentions a family member named Dashawn, while the other set references a sibling named Connor.
Teachers were 13 percent more likely to give the Connor papers a passing grade, revealing the invisible advantages that many students unknowingly benefit from. When grading criteria are vague, implicit stereotypes can insidiously “fill in the blanks,” explains the study’s author. But when teachers have an explicit set of criteria to evaluate the writing—asking whether the student “provides a well-elaborated recount of an event,” for example—the difference in grades is nearly eliminated.
5. WHAT DO COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS HAVE TO DO WITH LEARNING? PLENTY
When three coal-fired plants closed in the Chicago area, student absences in nearby schools dropped by 7 percent, a change largely driven by fewer emergency room visits for asthma-related problems. The stunning finding, published in a 2020 study from Duke and Penn State, underscores the role that often-overlooked environmental factors—like air quality, neighborhood crime, and noise pollution—have in keeping our children healthy and ready to learn.
At scale, the opportunity cost is staggering: About 2.3 million children in the United States still attend a public elementary or middle school located within 10 kilometers of a coal-fired plant.
The study builds on a growing body of research that reminds us that questions of educational equity do not begin and end at the schoolhouse door. What we call an achievement gap is often an equity gap, one that “takes root in the earliest years of children’s lives,” according to a 2017 study. We won’t have equal opportunity in our schools, the researchers admonish, until we are diligent about confronting inequality in our cities, our neighborhoods—and ultimately our own backyards.
6. STUDENTS WHO GENERATE GOOD QUESTIONS ARE BETTER LEARNERS
Some of the most popular study strategies—highlighting passages, rereading notes, and underlining key sentences—are also among the least effective. A 2020 study highlighted a powerful alternative: Get students to generate questions about their learning, and gradually press them to ask more probing questions.
In the study, students who studied a topic and then generated their own questions scored an average of 14 percentage points higher on a test than students who used passive strategies like studying their notes and rereading classroom material. Creating questions, the researchers found, not only encouraged students to think more deeply about the topic but also strengthened their ability to remember what they were studying.
One of the most widely used—and notorious—reading programs was dealt a severe blow when a panel of reading experts concluded that it “would be unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public schoolchildren.”
In the 2020 study, the experts found that the controversial program—called “Units of Study” and developed over the course of four decades by Lucy Calkins at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project—failed to explicitly and systematically teach young readers how to decode and encode written words, and was thus “in direct opposition to an enormous body of settled research.”
The study sounded the death knell for practices that de-emphasize phonics in favor of having children use multiple sources of information—like story events or illustrations—to predict the meaning of unfamiliar words, an approach often associated with “balanced literacy.” In an internal memo obtained by publisher APM, Calkins seemed to concede the point, writing that “aspects of balanced literacy need some ‘rebalancing.’”
8. A SECRET TO HIGH-PERFORMING VIRTUAL CLASSROOMS
In 2020, a team at Georgia State University compiled a report on virtual learning best practices. While evidence in the field is "sparse" and "inconsistent," the report noted that logistical issues like accessing materials—and not content-specific problems like failures of comprehension—were often among the most significant obstacles to online learning. It wasn’t that students didn’t understand photosynthesis in a virtual setting, in other words—it was that they didn’t find (or simply didn't access) the lesson on photosynthesis at all.
That basic insight echoed a 2019 study that highlighted the crucial need to organize virtual classrooms even more intentionally than physical ones. Remote teachers should use a single, dedicated hub for important documents like assignments; simplify communications and reminders by using one channel like email or text; and reduce visual clutter like hard-to-read fonts and unnecessary decorations throughout their virtual spaces.
Because the tools are new to everyone, regular feedback on topics like accessibility and ease of use is crucial. Teachers should post simple surveys asking questions like “Have you encountered any technical issues?” and “Can you easily locate your assignments?” to ensure that students experience a smooth-running virtual learning space.
9. LOVE TO LEARN LANGUAGES? SURPRISINGLY, CODING MAY BE RIGHT FOR YOU
Learning how to code more closely resembles learning a language such as Chinese or Spanish than learning math, a 2020 study found—upending the conventional wisdom about what makes a good programmer.
In the study, young adults with no programming experience were asked to learn Python, a popular programming language; they then took a series of tests assessing their problem-solving, math, and language skills. The researchers discovered that mathematical skill accounted for only 2 percent of a person’s ability to learn how to code, while language skills were almost nine times more predictive, accounting for 17 percent of learning ability.
That’s an important insight because all too often, programming classes require that students pass advanced math courses—a hurdle that needlessly excludes students with untapped promise, the researchers claim.
10. RESEARCHERS CAST DOUBT ON READING TASKS LIKE ‘FINDING THE MAIN IDEA’
“Content is comprehension,” declared a 2020 Fordham Institute study, sounding a note of defiance as it staked out a position in the ongoing debate over the teaching of intrinsic reading skills versus the teaching of content knowledge.
While elementary students spend an enormous amount of time working on skills like “finding the main idea” and “summarizing”—tasks born of the belief that reading is a discrete and trainable ability that transfers seamlessly across content areas—these young readers aren’t experiencing “the additional reading gains that well-intentioned educators hoped for,” the study concluded.
So what works? The researchers looked at data from more than 18,000 K–5 students, focusing on the time spent in subject areas like math, social studies, and ELA, and found that “social studies is the only subject with a clear, positive, and statistically significant effect on reading improvement.” In effect, exposing kids to rich content in civics, history, and law appeared to teach reading more effectively than our current methods of teaching reading.
Perhaps defiance is no longer needed: Fordham’s conclusions are rapidly becoming conventional wisdom—and they extend beyond the limited claim of reading social studies texts. According to Natalie Wexler, the author of the well-received 2019 book The Knowledge Gap, content knowledge and reading are intertwined. “Students with more [background] knowledge have a better chance of understanding whatever text they encounter. They’re able to retrieve more information about the topic from long-term memory, leaving more space in working memory for comprehension,” she recently told Edutopia.
Week Ahead
This flyer was sent to parents this week:
Friday attendance: Our Friday scheduler program has recorded that 154 students visited a class on Friday. The problem with that number is that we are positive our number of students in the building was much higher than 154. For contact tracing and our own data purposes, please make sure students are using the Friday scheduler program if they are coming to see you on Fridays. Even if they just show up unannounced, please have them log in and request you so that we can document which students are in our building and what classroom they are going to. Please revisit this point with your classes throughout the week.
Important Dates, December:
1-16 FCCLA "Food War" between grades
7-8 Student Council dress-up days, "Holiday Pajamas"
9 BLT @ 2:50 - Link to follow
9-10 Student Council Dress up days, "Fleece or Flannel"
14-15 Student Council Dress up days, "Holiday Hat"
16-17 Student Council Dress up days, "Wish it were Summer"
16 Faculty Meeting @ 2:50 - Link to follow
16 Board Meeting, 6:30pm
21-22 Student Council Dress up days, "Ugly Sweater"
