April 26 - April 30

 D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update

Weekly Happenings

Congratulations to our Dance Team!  This year the State Dance competition was not in person, rather videos were submitted by teams and scored virtually.  Today the results were announced and our Dance team placed 1st at the State competition in Pom.  They also placed 5th in Jazz.  A number of individual awards were also given out - Janessa Moua - 1st team all-state, Kaylee Rajek - Honorable mention All-State, Kennedy and Liberty Christianson - 3rd place duet.

Please congratulate the girls when you see them this week and of course our coaches: Renee Buchholz, Alexandria Villiard, and Wendy Vesper!

Congratulations to the top four graduating seniors of the class of 2021. Annually, the top students are invited to a banquet put on by Marathon County schools entitled Honoring Excellence in Education where they are recognized with their county peers.  As part of the banquet, students are asked to invite an educator from their career who has had a significant impact on them. Please congratulate the following students and their honored educators when you see them.

Lucas Allen and Erin Stoffel

Kate Magnuson and Glenn Olstad

Shannon Powers and Anne Marie Jagodzinski

Isabelle Waller and Dawn Whitsett

Limited seating available for this outdoor show. Get your tickets!

Spring sports are finally going! Here's a few photos from the weekend - Thank you Audrey!

Curriculum and Instruction

I do not believe that we as a school are overly focused on learning loss, however, I did find this article forcing me to reflect on the reality that students next Fall may be at a different academic point than classes of the past. If that is true, our language in how we approach students now and then must stay positive and instill confidence in them as learners.  Interesting read if you have a few minutes.

Too Much Focus on ‘Learning Loss’ Will Be a Historic Mistake

Learning loss is real and needs to be addressed, but how we go about it should be commensurate with the size of the moment.

By Stephen Merrill
April 16, 2021

Despite the understandable skepticism—and all the adjustments and sacrifices we've grown accustomed to—a sort of miracle is materializing in the distance. Published reports from the Centers for Disease Control suggest that the vaccines are doing their slow, steady work, and just a few days ago the state of California announced that they expect to be “fully back to business by June 15.” The siege appears to be lifting, and this time a full return to schools across the nation, while perhaps months away, is almost certainly not a mirage.

Large-scale disruptions like the one that’s ending now are always a hardship, sometimes a tragedy, and often an opportunity. Frequently they’re all three, points out Ron Berger, a former teacher of 25 years, the author of eight books on education, and a senior adviser at EL Education, in his recent piece Our Kids Are Not Broken, published in The Atlantic online.

“Our kids have lost so much—family members, connections to friends and teachers, emotional well-being, and for many, financial stability at home,” the article begins, sifting through a now-familiar inventory of devastation, before turning to a problem of a different order. “And of course, they’ve lost some of their academic progress.”

That last issue isn’t trivial. It’s perfectly sensible to worry about academic setbacks during the pandemic. Ever since the first stay-at-home orders were issued, teachers in Edutopia’s community have reported that some students have been pressed into caretaking duties or forced to get jobs, while many others couldn’t get online at all. The crisis first exposed, and then cruelly amplified, the inequities bound up in issues of poverty, race, disability, and rural isolation. Months into the pandemic, attendance and attentiveness remained abysmal. There’s a broad and growing consensus that online learning, in both its hybrid and purely remote forms, has been an anemic substitute for in-person instruction.

But our obsessive need to measure academic progress and loss to the decimal point—an enterprise that feels at once comfortably scientific and hopelessly subjective—is also woefully out of tune with the moment, says Berger. “I kept hearing about ‘remediating learning loss,’ and I had this vision that school was going to be a place where all the kids come in and get tested and triaged and sent to different areas to get fixed,” Berger told me, almost wincing as he explained why he wrote the article for The Atlantic. The intention is good—but our children are resilient, not broken, “and as long as kids feel like their job is to come to school to be fixed, their hearts won’t be in their own work,” he insists.

A FAILURE OF IMAGINATION

If there’s a pressing need for measurement, it’s in the reckoning of the social, emotional, and psychological toll of the last 12 months. Over a half-million Americans have died. Some kids will see their friends or favorite teachers in person for the first time in over a year. Others will be overwhelmed by the sheer joy of recess, band practice, sporting events, and the myriad academic and social passions they’ve missed. Teachers, too—who have been deeply and unfairly maligned for insisting on safe working conditions—are desperate to see their kids, to connect, teach, elevate and love. The need to rebuild the frayed social fabric of our learning communities, which study after study indicates is foundational to true learning, should be the paramount concern.

The consequences of getting our priorities wrong and putting the content before the child are serious and long-term. “We fall into this trap of thinking if a kid misses three months of math content, that’s a crisis,” Berger tells me, reflecting on the toll that remediation and tracking often takes. “The truth is that if your kid was sick at home and missed three months of math content, but got her confidence back, it wouldn’t be a big issue in her life. But if her confidence as a mathematician is destroyed because of labels that were put on her, it’s a lifelong issue for her. She’ll never be confident in math again.”

Whatever we do when we return will be historic by definition. If all we come up with is passing out diagnostic tests to quantify learning loss and then track kids into groups for remediation, it will be a terrible failure of imagination. “You know what’s going to happen to the kids who couldn’t get online last year because they had to support their families or because they were homeless when the sorting happens, right?” asks Berger. “They’re going to be sorted in a way that will only exacerbate the equity issues.”

Trailing down the backside of a steep mountain at long last, and picking up speed as we head into a promising new year, we seem to have our eyes fixed on the wrong problem entirely.

MORE HARM THAN GOOD?

We have every reason to know better.

Already the federal government is requiring that states administer standardized tests, and Berger worries that districts will add other assessments and diagnostics to identify a battery of “student weaknesses.” We should use the data wisely, not “to judge and rank students, teachers, and schools,” he insists, but to guide our response to individual student needs—and spend our time and resources on creating an asset-based culture where everyone belongs.

Focusing on the social and emotional needs of the child first—on their sense of safety, self-worth, and academic confidence—is not controversial, and saddling students with deficit-based labels has predictable outcomes. Decades of research demonstrates that stereotype threat is a real phenomenon, anchoring kids to the self-fulfilling prophecy of lower expectations.

Simple gestures like greeting kids at the door, meanwhile, improve academic engagement by 20 percentage points, and the mere presence of images of women in science textbooks moves the needle on inclusion. Ensuring that all kids have at least one adult who cares about them is an effective buffer against adverse experiences like poverty, violence, and neglect. Last year a group of renowned researchers and influential educators including Pamela Cantor, MD, Linda Darling-Hammond, and Karen Pittman published a paper on the science of learning and development that didn’t mince words: “The presence and quality of our relationships may have more impact on learning and development than any other factor.”

It’s not that learning loss isn’t real, or that social and emotional initiatives alone will solve it. “Districts face a hard reality,” Berger concedes. “Many children lost a great deal of academic growth last year...Districts need to know which students need extra support, including tutoring in and outside the classroom. But educators need to assess students’ abilities in a way that motivates them to grow.”

But high schools are filled with kids getting Cs and Ds who have “begun to tune out academic instruction,” he writes, and his colleague Uri Treisman, a professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, has conducted research showing “that when students interested in pursuing mathematics were assigned remedial work, it was essentially a dead end for those students’ future in math.”

To motivate students now, as at any other time, we have to address learning gaps—they “should learn mathematical facts and build literacy skills”—but do so in service to challenging work that shows them that schools, like the athletic field or their after-school lives, are a “domain where they can contribute something great,” Berger says. “They’ve gotten the message that school isn’t a place where they can do that.”

It’s an unexpected and even radical idea, but if we make school both welcoming and highly engaging—difficult, even, according to Berger—we stand a better chance of honoring the needs of all children and open up the possibility of connecting kids to topics they feel passionate about as we return to school next year. “Addressing concerns about learning loss by raising difficulty levels may seem counterintuitive,” he says, in one of his most provocative statements, “but with strong relationships and support, this approach can be surprisingly effective.”

RISING TO THE OCCASION

The last 12 months have been a furious, unrelenting assault on the senses. In March of 2020, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, the in-person school year was first suspended, and then abruptly canceled. Many children from historically marginalized communities simply failed to appear online, their absence pointing to enduring, systemic inequities in our school systems. Only a few months later, as our collective sense of dislocation grew increasingly taut and unbearable, George Floyd was killed in Minnesota, setting off months of some of the largest protests in U.S. history.

Maybe it’s time to consider that the emerging science of learning and our national reckoning with unfairness and inequity are pointing in the same direction. Perhaps the size of the moment requires a commensurate response. We have a better sense of the tools we need to do the job, and a clearer sense of the size and nature of the problems.

Can we—should we, in the aftermath of the clarifying events of the last year—find the will to challenge the testing regime, return some agency to both our teachers and our students, bring the science of learning into our classrooms, and honor all children with challenging, engaging work that ushers in a new, better, fairer era in education?

Announcements/Week Ahead

Forward Test Make-ups - With so many sophomores gone last week on the make-up day, there will be one more time to do make-ups on Tuesday, April 27th during period 2 in the IMC.  There are 25 sophomores (not including EVA students) that will be pulled.  Depending on the student, they will be sent to class when they have completed.  

Registration - A few dates left for the registration process.

• Current Sophomores
• April 26 course verification sheets delivered (17 minute ELT) ELT teachers
• Current Juniors
• April 26 course verifications delivered (17 minute ELT) ELT Teachers
• April 30 NO MORE COURSE SELECTION CHANGES

Wednesday, April 28^th Aspire Testing- General information: No school for 11^th or 12^th graders

See the email Jodi Devine sent on for detailed information. Room supervisors (readers), proctors and subs need to check their logins this week @ www.aspire.act.org .   User name is your school email.

 

7:40 – 9:15          Session I               English (45 minutes) then Writing (40 minutes)

9:15-9:25              Break

9:25-10:45           Session II             Math (75 minutes)

10:45-10:55         Break

10:55-12:05         Session III            Reading (65 minutes)

12:05-12:35         Lunch

12:40-1:45           Session IV            Science (60 minutes)

Jostens Graduation Items Delivered - FYI the Jostens rep will be here Friday, April 30th and Tuesday, May 4th to hand out purchased graduation items (caps, gowns, tassels, etc.) from 10-1pm in the field house hallway.  He will also have extras to be purchased.  Balances must be paid to pick up.  If anyone needs their balance, Dawn Seehafer has a list.

Important Dates for April:

26        17m  ELT for course verifications delivered by ELT teacher

28        Sophomore Aspire Testing, NO school for juniors and seniors

30        Graduation items pick-up, field house hallway, 10-1pm

30        NO MORE COURSE SELECTION CHANGES

May

3             NO SCHOOL

4             Graduation items pick-up, field house hallway, 10-1pm

5             Aspire make-up testing

10-21      Senior iPad, charging block & cord due to AV department off of IMC

12           BLT meeting @ 2:50 p.m. in room 310-329

18           45m ELT, ACP for all grades & WebEx senior meeting

19           Faculty Meeting @2:50pm

21           Seniors last day, some will return and be required to stay and finish up classes

26           7 p.m. graduation - All faculty expected to attend.

30           Memorial Day,  NO School

April 19 - 23

  D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update

Weekly Happenings

Happy Administrative Professionals Day! - On April 21st please make sure to THANK all of our secretaries and aides for their amazing work in supporting our students and our staff!  Thank you for working very hard to ensure our students get a great experience!

Congratulations to Max Dassow, Elsie Brzezinski and Lehna Olstad for taking part in the Everest Area Optimist Oratorical Contest 2021. Max was a $500 winner, Elsie $250 and Lehna $100.

   

Interesting Information

I was able to spend a good amount of my weekend working outside, going for walks, and enjoying the changing temperatures.  Feel free to find time during the day to get yourself and/or your class outside to enjoy the Spring!

The Simple Dutch Cure for Stress

"Uitwaaien" is a popular activity around Amsterdam - One believed to have important psychological benefits

In 2019 I was in San Francisco, a city known for its tech companies, steep hills, and fierce winds. Each day I’d run around the neighborhood and up through the park, ending with a spectacular view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Back in my AirBnB, I’d feel energized and refreshed, fingers tingling from the breeze. It was cold, exhausting, but completely exhilarating. 

As it turns out, there’s a unique term, from the Dutch, for this sort of pastime. In the Netherlands, people have been seeking out windy exercise for more than a hundred years. Today, the practice is so common that it’s known as “uitwaaien.” It “literally translates to ‘outblowing,’ explains Caitlin Meyer, a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam’s Department of Dutch Linguistics. “It’s basically the activity of spending time in the wind, usually by going for a walk or a bike ride.” Meyer has lived in the Netherlands for more than 20 years and has come to specialize in the language, despite being a non-native speaker. She says uitwaaien is a popular activity where she lives—one believed to have important psychological benefits. “Uitwaaien is something you do to clear your mind and feel refreshed—out with the bad air, in with the good,” she tells me. “It’s seen as a pleasant, easy, and relaxing experience—a way to destress or escape from daily life.”

A growing body of evidence suggests that Dutch speakers may be onto something. “Pretty well every group of people benefits from being outdoors in the presence of nature,” says Jules Pretty, Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex. “It takes us out of the stresses and anxieties of the rest of life.” Over the last 15 years, he’s explored how a range of outdoor activities affect human psychology, including walking, cycling, and even farming. He’s found that people from all walks of life can increase their well-being after spending as little as five minutes amid natural settings, with positive impacts on sense of self-worth, mood, and sense of identity. 

Other researchers have found similar results, linking activities like nature walks with reduced levels of depression, perceived stress, and negative emotions. Some research goes even further, reporting that walking in nature can help reduce headaches, improve immune function, and even, as in the case of the famous forest-bathing studies, increase anticancer protein production. 

While research into the benefits of waterscapes isn’t as well-established, evidence suggests these “blue spaces” may be equally—or perhaps even more—beneficial to mental well-being. For example, people who live closer to the coast, like many Netherlanders do, report better physical and psychological health than those farther inland. Water may have a restorative effect, helping people overcome negative emotions and diminish their mental distress. Apparently, when it comes to relaxation and recovery, a little “outblowing” at the beach might be just what the doctor ordered. 

There are lots of theories about why spending time in nature might be so good for us. Some researchers, like Qing Li, a physician at Nippon Medical School Hospital and the President of the Japanese Society of Forest Medicine, believe the answer may literally be blowing in the wind. He and his team have spent years studying the effects of phytoncides, antibacterial and antimicrobial substances that trees and other plants release into the air to help them fight diseases and harmful organisms. When humans breathe in these substances—typically by spending time in nature—their health can improve. Across several studies, phytoncides have been shown to boost immune function, increase anticancer protein production, reduce stress hormones, improve mood, and help people relax. 

Pretty attributes the restorative power of natural spaces to their immersive quality. He tells me that activities like watching shorebirds or collecting seashells on the beach can be really engaging—so engaging that they can help us temporarily deactivate a part of the brain, located in our prefrontal cortex, called the default mode network, which allows us to scheme, plan, and innovate. “It’s what makes us brilliant humans,” Pretty says. The trade-off is that it’s also extremely active. “The one thing that we haven’t got is an off-switch for our thoughts,” he says. As a result, many of us “find ourselves living our lives on simmer—[like we’ve] got a pot on the stove that’s almost ready to boil.” 

In the long-term, this constant low-grade stress can damage our health and well-being, increasing our chances of cardiovascular diseases, inflammation-related issues, and other dangers. That’s why Pretty believes a regular “dose” of something akin to uitwaaien can be so beneficial. In our over-stressed society, listening to the sound of the wind or admiring the colors of ocean waves may be among the few ways we can truly unwind. “We just need a name for it, an encouragement for people to undertake it and then to carry on doing it.” 

Pretty agrees. “Go out at lunchtime and take a break,” he says. “Park a bit further away [from the office] and walk for five minutes.” Whatever your lifestyle, he says, look at your schedule, and ask yourself the simple question: “How you can fit in small amounts of exposure to nature?” 

So open that calendar app and note some time for uitwaaien. Whether it’s a windy, riverside bike ride or a jog up a steep San Francisco hill, chances are, your mind—not to mention your body—will thank you for it. 

Alice Fleerackers is a freelance writer and a doctoral student at Simon Fraser University, where she studies how controversial science is communicated in the digital sphere.

Announcements/Week Ahead

Thank you, thank you, thank you! It is so amazing how senior high employees stick together and help out wherever and whenever needed. We are a family and the last few years have proven it - Dawn Seehafer

Unparade - PLEASE HELP US OUT!  Student Council is hosting an unparade on May 15th and they are in need of floats.  We're hoping to engage our clubs and sports teams that would typically (or not) have a float in the homecoming parade.  If you advise or coach and can get some kids together to make it a good evening please do so...We need more floats!!!!

Forward Test Make-ups - Tuesday, April 20th during periods 2 and 3 there will be sophomore Forward make-up testing in the IMC and 3rd floor conference room.  There are 43 sophomores (not including EVA students) that will be pulled.  Depending on the students, they will be sent back to class when they have finished.  The list of sophomores being pulled will be emailed Monday morning.

Registration - A few dates left for the registration process.

• Current Sophomores
• April 26 course verification sheets delivered (17 minute ELT) ELT teachers
• Current Juniors
• April 20 course input deadline for students
• April 21 course selection sheets checked & collected ELT teachers
• April 26 course verifications delivered (17 minute ELT) ELT Teachers
• April 30 NO MORE COURSE SELECTION CHANGES

Wednesday, April 28^th Aspire Testing- General information: No school for 11^th or 12^th graders

See the email Jodi Devine sent on Thursday, April 15, 2021 for detailed information. Room supervisors (readers), proctors and subs need to check their logins this week @ www.aspire.act.org .   User name is your school email.

 

7:40 – 9:15          Session I               English (45 minutes) then Writing (40 minutes)

9:15-9:25              Break

9:25-10:45           Session II             Math (75 minutes)

10:45-10:55         Break

10:55-12:05         Session III            Reading (65 minutes)

12:05-12:35         Lunch

12:40-1:45           Session IV            Science (60 minutes)

Fully Vaccinated - Now that the district Covid Vaccine clinic has taken place, the quarantining guidelines will change once you have reached two weeks past your last shot date.  Please see the stipulations for quarantining below.

If you have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and were in close contact with someone with COVID-19, you do not have to quarantine if you meet ALL of the following criteria:

• Your exposure to someone with COVID-19 happened at least two weeks after receiving the last dose of your vaccine series; and
• You have not had any symptoms of COVID-19 since your last close contact.

Continue to monitor for symptoms for 14 days after your last close contact. If you develop any symptoms of COVID-19, isolate from others, contact your health care provider, and get tested.

Jostens Graduation Items Delivered - FYI that the Jostens rep will be here Friday, April 30th and Tuesday, May 6th to hand out purchased graduation items (caps, gowns, tassels, etc.) from 10-1pm in the field house hallway.  He will also have extras to be purchased.  Balances must be paid to pick up.  If anyone needs their balance, Dawn Seehafer has a list.

Important Dates for April:

20        Soph Forward Make-up Test, Period 2 & 3

21        45m ELT for Soph Aspire Tutorial/Practice, Junior Course Selection sheets checked & collected by ELT teachers

21        Faculty Meeting @ 2:50 - Webex

21        School Board Mtg @ 6:30pm
26        17m  ELT for Junior course verifications delivered by ELT teacher

28        Sophomore Aspire Testing, NO school for juniors and seniors

30        Graduation items pickup, field house hallway, 10-1pm

30        NO MORE COURSE SELECTION CHANGES

May

3        NO SCHOOL

4        Graduation items pickup, field house hallway, 10-1pm

26      7 p.m. graduation - All faculty expected to attend.

April 12 - 16

  D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update

Weekly Happenings

The energy was very different Wednesday and Thursday - It felt good to have students back.  Thank you Ann Geier for the photos!

Interesting Information

I was meeting with a group of students this week and we talked briefly about their school improvement efforts.  I shared with them that the definition of a leader I have most ascribed to is "anyone who has influence over another person."  I then read this article below in Educational Leadership that gave me an opportunity to reflect on my own practice. I share it here with you. As members of our staff and faculty, every adult in our building acts as a leader for others throughout their day.  If you have a few minutes, hopefully this article can offer some reflection on your own practice as a leader.  Think about your role as a member of a team, PLC, department, operational team, a coach, an adviser, a teacher, or as a colleague.

April 2021 | Volume 78 | Number 7
Educational Leadership

Research Matters / What Kind of Leader Are You?

Bryan Goodwin and Kent Davis

The times call for leaders who can navigate change and inspire others.

The darkest days of the pandemic may soon be behind us, but new and perhaps even greater challenges are looming, including helping millions of students recover many months of lost learning while re-energizing (or replacing) thousands of exhausted teachers. Guiding people through uncertain times often requires a different, more empowering style of leadership. This may be a paradigm shift for many leaders, one that requires them to reflect on not only what they must do, but more deeply, who they must be as leaders.

Over the years, research has surfaced two distinctly different styles of leadership. More conventional, transactional leadership works from the outside-in—creating expectations, assigning roles and responsibilities, and establishing and ensuring compliance with processes. Transformational leadership, on the other hand, works from the inside-out—instilling aspirational goals and vision, creating a collective sense of purpose, defining collaborative goals, and encouraging risk-taking, continuous learning, and self-reflection (Lyons & Schneider, 2009).

While both styles have their place and purpose, transformational leadership supports better team performance in many ways. For example, in a laboratory experiment with 214 adults, participants received directions for completing a complex task from three different styles of "leaders" (actors evoking transactional, transformational, and laissez-faire leadership styles). Those who received directions via transformational leadership styles reported greater feelings of efficacy, more social support, and less stress; most important, they performed better on the task (Lyons & Schneider, 2009). Those who received marching orders from leaders with no-nonsense, let's-get-to-work transactional styles reported less confidence, higher stress, and less social cohesion—and performed worse on the task.

We're referring here to leadership styles, not people; so, leaders can (and should) shift between styles based on the current needs of the organization. Nonetheless, leaders who are more adept with transformational styles often share the same core beliefs and dispositions, which suggests the following touchpoints for empowering others.

Believe in Yourself and Others

Perhaps the most important trait for any leader is self-efficacy—believing they can have a positive impact on the world around them. Research dating back to the 1970s (e.g., Anderson & Schneier, 1978) has, in fact, shown that teams led by those with self-efficacy or an internal locus of control—leaders who believe their own actions (not external forces) control their life's outcomes—outperform teams led by those who tend to blame others or extenuating circumstances for poor outcomes.

A comparison study of 20 leaders—10 who were successfully turning around low-performing schools and 10 who were not—identified internal locus of control as a key differentiator between effective and ineffective leaders (Bournés, 2017). Unlike "externals" who tended to attribute school performance to lack of resources, slow-moving district bureaucracies, or students themselves, "internals" were more apt to exert control over their environments—pushing back against counterproductive district mandates, asserting control over curricular decisions, and being a "squeaky wheel" to secure resources needed for their schools.

Be Optimistic

Leaders' optimism is often rooted in seeing assets where others see only deficits. A study of principals from five, high-performing, high-poverty schools in South Africa found they all shared an asset-based orientation to their work and schools. They weren't pollyanna-ish; they acknowledged the poverty around them. Yet they identified and drew upon strengths, capabilities, and insights from their communities and found ways to build on bright spots in their schools (Chikoko, Naicker, & Mthiyane, 2015).

Care About Others

A longitudinal study of 400 Chicago schools found that the most important predictor of sustained school improvement was "relational trust"—the extent to which everyone in the school community shared a sense of moral obligation, mutual respect, and reliance on one another (Bryk & Schneider, 2003). Trust developed slowly over time—the cumulative effect of multiple positive conversations, interactions, and observations that made people feel heard, respected, and valued.

Here again, trust emerged from leaders who genuinely cared about others, earned their respect by holding others in high regard, and demonstrated integrity by treating others fairly. They didn't shy away from tough or unpopular decisions; to the contrary, many made tough decisions but they did so with integrity, impartiality, and compassion.

Know Thyself

Research also links transformational leadership behaviors to "emotional intelligence"—the ability to understand our emotions, see ourselves as others do, and adjust our behaviors accordingly (Barling, Slater, & Kelloway, 2000). A study of 72 high school principals (Hanlin, 2004) found a strong link between emotional intelligence and several responsibilities associated with effective leadership identified in a McREL International meta-analysis (Waters, Marzano, & McNulty, 2003). In particular, leaders' self-awareness (the ability to identify and understand their own emotions) was strongly linked to their focus (establishing clear goals and keeping them at the forefront of a school's attention), intellectual stimulation (keeping staff informed about research and best practices), monitoring (assessing the impact of improvement efforts on student outcomes), and situational awareness (sensing undercurrents in the school and addressing them quickly). Effective leaders appear to be reflective leaders.
Balancing Leadership

Transactional and transformational leadership are not mutually exclusive; transactional leadership, in fact, often serves as a foundation for transformational leadership. Even in challenging times, leaders still need to set expectations, define roles, and implement plans well. But they should also incorporate behaviors that encourage can-do optimism, trust, and self-reflection. Likely, doing so starts by looking within to ensure they are the change they want to see in their schools.

Announcements/Week Ahead

Tuesday, April 13, 55 minute ELT - Teachers will receive their Forward test manual in your mailbox Monday morning.  Please read this small manual to prepare yourself to help students with tutorials, practicing, and taking the test.  Pay special attention starting on page 16 for the tutorials and practicing for Tuesday and then the rest for the test on Wednesday.  Here are links to the 55 min ELT and Forward Teacher Assignments.  There are a few that still have not signed the Confidentiality Agreement.  Please sign and return on Monday.

Wednesday, April 14, 87min ELT for Forward Testing - Refer to your Forward manual.  87 min ELT 

Finals week - We will not be running a special schedule for finals this year and the requirement to host finals on the last day of school will again be at PLC discretion.  Please work with your team to make the best decision on behalf of students.

Vaccination Clinic Wednesday - A reminder to those who need to get their 2nd dose that the clinic is this Wednesday at Greenheck.

Tornado Drill - We will be conducting our yearly severe weather awareness week drill Thursday, April 15th after announcements at 9:25am.  This will be a table top drill and we will NOT move kids to their safe areas.  Right after daily announcements, we will ask staff to talk to their 3rd hour students about where they would go in the event of a severe weather alert.  If you are not sure where your safe area is, please see me or Dawn Seehafer.

REGISTRATION is just around the corner, so we wanted to give you the dates. We will get you updated schedule, times and registration materials as soon as possible.

CURRENT SOPHOMORES

• April 12 course input deadline for students
• April 13 course selection sheets checked & collected ELT teachers
• April 26 course verification sheets delivered (15 minute ELT) ELT teachers

CURRENT JUNIORS

• April 14 WebEx scheduling presentation counselors
• April 20 course input deadline for students
• April 21 course selection sheets checked & collected ELT teachers
• April 26 course verifications delivered (15 minute ELT) ELT Teachers

EVA 9-11

• April 16 WebEx scheduling presentation 10:00 a.m. EVA counselors
• April 20 course input deadline for students
• April 21 course selection checks EVA counselors
• April 26 course verifications delivered EVA counselors

April 30 NO MORE COURSE SELECTION CHANGES

Important Dates for April:

13        55m ELT for Soph Forward tutorial/practice, Soph Course Selection sheets checked & collected by ELT teachers
14        87m ELT for Soph Forward Test and Juniors WebEx on Scheduling

14        BLT Meeting @ 2:50
14        Vaccination Clinic Shot 2, GH

15        Tornado drill, 9:25am

20        Soph Forward Make-up Test, Period 2 & 3
21        45m ELT for Soph Aspire Tutorial/Practice, Junior Course Selection sheets checked & collected by ELT teachers

21        Faculty Meeting @ 2:50 - Webex

21        School Board Mtg @ 6:30pm

April 5 - April 9

  D.C. Everest Senior High School Staff Update

Weekly Happenings

Exciting news over break for two of our colleagues - Brandon and Jaycie Stremkowski welcomed Isla Everleigh on Wednesday at 5 lbs and 11 oz.  - 19.5 inches.  Isla, Jaycie, and Brandon are doing well!!! Congratulations!

Also, Marlee and Ben Mueller welcomed Emily Eileen on Wednesday at 8 lbs. - 20.5 Inches. Emily, Marlee and Ben are doing well!!! Congratulations!

Lastly, a huge thank you to all who delivered or helped with delivering food for our 80 families before the break.  Many hands make light work.  It is always an amazing experience to see so many awesome people willing to give of their time to make it happen.  This staff rocks!

Curriculum and Instruction

RESEARCH

8 Ways to Bolster Executive Function in Teens and Tweens

Middle and high school students suddenly face more complex schedules, tougher academic work, and an expanding network of friends. How can we help them manage it all?

By Stephen Merrill
March 12, 2021

As a general rule, scientists like to define their terms before they commit to anything.

So when I begin a recent interview with the eminent psychology professors Angela Duckworth and Ethan Kross by promising to gloss over “easy questions about the brain’s executive functions,” I'm not surprised when they want to dig into the fundamentals anyway.

“Actually, I think we should clarify what we mean,” Duckworth says. “I think the term originally comes from neuroscience, from an understanding of how the prefrontal cortex regulates lower-order areas of the brain, and I think there's consensus that it involves working memory and response inhibition—turning down one part of the brain to turn up another. But the term is a little confusing because sometimes it just means ‘getting your act together.’”

Kross agrees. “Even among neuroscientists, there are probably eight different definitions of executive function,” he notes. “When thinking about kids in school, moving up one level to the question of self-control—which I define broadly as a person’s ability to align their thoughts, feelings, or behaviors with their goals—ends up being a lot more productive.”

While getting distractible teenagers to focus in school sounds great, especially to educators, the language of self-control can sound uncomfortably compliance-based. But the skills that make up the brain's executive functions involve both cognitive and behavioral domains that are crucial to learning and self-realization—goal setting and long-term planning, for example—and “the connotation should really be one of autonomy and not compliance," Duckworth contends.

“Everyone struggles with their impulses. Across cultures, and across the lifespan, self-control is usually the lowest or second-lowest self-reported capacity,” she says. “Who hasn’t struggled with the desire to procrastinate, or to eat unhealthy food?”

The problem of self-regulation is especially acute for teenagers, who are dramatically expanding their network of friends just as they’re besieged by new, complicated school schedules, increased academic demands, and after-school obligations. It’s a lot to keep track of, especially for novices. Still, there are plenty of evidence-based tools that teens and teachers can use to strengthen executive function, according to Kross and Duckworth.

We took some of their best insights, and pored over recent research, to find eight powerful, evidence-based strategies.

TALKING OURSELVES INTO IT

Talking to ourselves as a form of self-management starts when we’re toddlers, and remains a fixture of our conscious efforts to exert self-control throughout our lives. “Initially, kids learn how to control themselves by repeating what their caretakers say to them out loud,” Kross explains. Eventually, they progress to “silent inner speech” as they confront moral dilemmas, process sticky social situations, or prod themselves to rise to new challenges.

To help students manage stressful experiences like tests or arguments with friends, Kross says, we need to coach them in a variety of self-distancing strategies that allow them to “step outside themselves and broaden their perspectives.” That can mean asking them to reconsider a pressing problem from the perspective of a friend—”what would your closest friend tell you?”—to helping them reframe and talk through an issue in “a more positive, challenge-oriented way.”

Consider these strategies:

Recognize pressure points. Social and emotional safety and academic success are tightly linked—and at test time, a period of self-reflection might be as crucial to success as studying is. In 2019, for example, researchers found that when 9- to 13-year-old students took five minutes before a test and “silently spoke words of encouragement to themselves that were focused on effort,” math scores improved.

Prompting this kind of inner speech shouldn’t be confined to test-taking. A growing body of research suggests that giving students scheduled time to talk themselves through challenges like study habits, sporting events, or academic projects improves outcomes.

Have kids write about it. Writing activities appear to exercise the same muscles as internal monologues. A 2019 study that also focused on a helpful pre-exam activity—this time an “expressive writing” task—concluded that when high schoolers wrote for a mere 10 minutes about an upcoming test, reframing their anxiety as “a beneficial and energizing force,” course failure rates plummeted.

Short writing prompts aimed at building social and emotional resilience also appear to benefit teens and tweens. In a 2019 study, 6th graders took part in a “belonging intervention” as they navigated the stressful transition to middle school. They read “typical quotes” from 7th graders who had overcome self-doubt and anxiety in their own middle school careers, then completed brief writing assignments responding to prompts like “name one or two reasons why a 6th grader like you might worry...about whether you fit in or belong at your school.”

The results of this simple, highly replicable emotional processing exercise? Sixth graders concluded that there was “not something wrong with them,” the researchers reported—paving the way for better grades, attendance, and behavior.

Empower peer advisors. Break students into groups to discuss preparation strategies for an upcoming test or presentation, for example, or ask them to write emails to peers (real or fictional!) about how to manage their schedules. Unexpectedly, it’s not just the receiver of the advice who benefits: A 2019 study of almost two thousand high schoolers, for example, concluded that teens who provide written guidance to peers about “optimal study locations and strategies” significantly improved their own grades.

When adults tell teenagers to put their phones on mute and hide them when studying, kids often disregard it. But when you ask teens to give advice to other teens, Duckworth explains, they say things like “put your phone on mute and hide it”—and are themselves convinced. The big takeaway: teens who dispense advice are often persuaded by it, probably because, as Kross confirms, “you’re actually wiser when you’re counseling someone else.”

LEARNING—DO IT ON PURPOSE

“It is either not possible or extremely difficult to tell a teenager what his or her purpose for learning should be,” wrote a team of researchers including David Yeager and Duckworth in 2014. In fact, they warned, “doing this could threaten autonomy, a key concern for adolescents.”

Instead, the study’s authors asked high school seniors to connect their learning to a higher purpose themselves. Students wrote solutions-oriented essays about an injustice “they found particularly egregious,” then submitted a brief testimonial to future students explaining how learning can make the world a better place. Separately, the same study assembled 9th graders to write about a “self-transcendent purpose” in their future careers, which had some freshmen casting themselves as stewards of the environment or geneticists tasked with increasing the world’s food supply.

Though it all took less than a single class period, students who connected learning to purpose improved their grades (particularly the low performers), attended and finished college at greater rates, and spent almost twice as much time on “boring but important” academic tasks—presumably because they looked forward to a future payoff.

To link learning and purpose, try these approaches:

Ask about interests and passions. It’s good practice to conduct beginning-of-the-year surveys about student passions, or to engage in activities that might reveal student interests early on. Some educators take “student inventories” (20 sentences that complete the prompt, “I am someone who…”), or assign “Laws of Life” essays (about the values and principles that govern a student’s life).

A teenager’s passion for music, politics, or the environment are points of leverage, enabling teachers to reframe assignments in ways the student finds compelling.

Pass the torch to the kids. Include regular exercises that get kids to connect their own learning to real-world outcomes. A sample rubric can be found on the Character Lab website—a nonprofit organization founded by Duckworth and two K-12 educators—but any approach that gets kids to regularly make connections will have value: journaling, a brief exercise after each unit which connects the learning to life, or researching and identifying interesting careers linked to ongoing schoolwork, for example.

Make time for (rigorous) projects. School can feel like a bubble, and teenagers “need better answers than something’s going to be on a standardized test” to feel engaged, Duckworth asserts. Good project-based learning (PBL) asks kids to articulate a real-world problem they’d like to solve, often in their own communities, and “wraps itself around” questions of student passion and agency, she says. A 2021 study, meanwhile, concluded that almost half of high school students in Advanced Placement project-based learning courses passed their culminating tests, outperforming students in traditional classes.

PLAN TO PRACTICE, PRACTICE TO PLAN

When I ask Duckworth and Kross whether we should teach kids things like calendaring or making priority lists in the same way we teach traditional subjects, Duckworth nods but quickly adds a disclaimer: “Yes, I absolutely think educators should be teaching students how to make plans and to develop routines, but unless the student perceives that there’s a real need I don’t think it works very well.”

That’s a crucial insight. Self-control, Kross elaborates, actually has two parts: motivation and ability. “There are all these tools and hacks out there: self-distancing, perspective-broadening, calendars, other organizers, and that's one piece of the puzzle. But you can have all the tools that exist—if a student isn't motivated to use the tools they’re not going to achieve anything.”

The key lies in making things like calendars and long-term planning an integral part of your curriculum—a habit that’s indispensable to success—Duckworth asserts, so that the “skill or the habit will be rewarded” and students will be more “receptive and eager” to learn the skills.

Keep these tactics top of mind:

Scaffold scheduling, deadlines, and study habits. Model good scheduling and work habits by publishing—and regularly referring to—a master calendar with class assignments, due dates, and upcoming tests. To help students manage busy periods and complex assignments and projects, set up group discussions during which students break down upcoming work into priority lists.

Introduce your tech tools. You can scaffold your tech tools, too, according to high school teacher Ian Kelleher. If you’re using an LMS like Google Classroom or Schoology, set aside class time for a “first assignment to help students learn the LMS fundamentals: how to view an assignment, how to submit and resubmit assignments, and how to access and use feedback,” he advises—and revisit the tools throughout the year.

That’s a lot of strategies—you can't integrate all of them. In the end, though, if we’re going to teach executive function skills to teens as effectively as we teach traditional subject matter, we need to use the same fundamental principles of learning: retrieval, spaced practice, and frequent, low-stakes feedback.

Introducing a calendar once or twice during the year is not the same as integrating one into classroom routines, and a great gulf lies between assigning an essay that connects learning and purpose, and asking students to make those connections weekly. To get teens to start “aligning goals with behaviors,” in Kross’ words, we need to find ways to get them to practice, fail, and practice again.

Announcements/Week Ahead

Monday/Tuesday Transition - We are remaining as a cohort schedule on Monday and Tuesday in an effort to help students transition. Please take time in each class to foreshadow any adjustments that may be made upon all students' return. Please re-emphasize our sanitation efforts as well as discuss masks in each class. Students not following directives to properly wear masks will be asked to leave the building. Please be consistent in your enforcement.

REGISTRATION is just around the corner, so we wanted to give you the dates. We will get you updated schedule, times and registration materials as soon as possible.

Friday,  April 9th from 8:00-8:30am Teacher training for new staff or staff that need a refresher on scheduling requirements.

https://dce.webex.com/meet/joosterhuis

CURRENT SOPHOMORES

• April 8 WebEx scheduling presentation counselors
• April 12 course input deadline for students
• April 13 course selection sheets checked & collected ELT teachers
• April 26 course verification sheets delivered(15 minute ELT) ELT teachers

CURRENT JUNIORS

• April 14 WebEx scheduling presentation counselors
• April 20 course input deadline for students
• April 21 course selection sheets checked & collected ELT teachers
• April 26 course verifications delivered (15 minute ELT) ELT Teachers

EVA 9-11

• April 16 WebEx scheduling presentation 10:00 a.m. EVA counselors
• April 20 course input deadline for students
• April 21 course selection checks EVA counselors
• April 26 course verifications delivered EVA counselors

April 30 NO MORE COURSE SELECTION CHANGES

Important Dates for April:

5          Quarter 4 Begins, Cohort A Schedule
6          Cohort B Schedule
6          Grades due by 1 p.m. (changes after 1 p.m. must go through Melissa)
7          School returns to in-person Monday-Thursday
8          45m ELT for Soph WebEx on Scheduling
13        55m ELT for Soph Forward tutorial/practice, Soph Course Selection sheets checked & collected by ELT teachers
14        87m ELT for Soph Forward Test and Juniors WebEx on Scheduling

14.       BLT Meeting @ 2:50
20        Soph Forward Make-up Test, Period 1 & 2
21        45m ELT for Soph Aspire Tutorial/Practice, Junior Course Selection sheets checked & collected by ELT teachers

21.       Faculty Meeting @ 2:50 - Webex