Sorted by date Results 1 - 11 of 11
On Sunday, March 15th Governor Bullock announced he was closing schools across Montana due to rising concerns about the Coronavirus. We had already planned to take the next day off as a snow day and we used it to make plans for how we would proceed with distance learning. On Monday teachers made plans and bagged up things the students would need. On Tuesday we passed out materials in a drive up situation at the Elementary and High School. And on Wednesday, just three days later, our students were receiving online instruction! What an...
It’s been awhile since I’ve sent out my positive praises but I’m back with a long overdue one this week. I would like to send out praises to all of our bus drivers. We have one route for school that Trent Cline or Charlie Sipler drives and two contracted routes through Matthews Transportation that Pat and Dan Matthews and Clara Allderdice drive. So far they have made 168 trips on their routes which totals 61,992 miles! These same bus drivers, including Layne Taylor, Shaud Schwarzbach and Kelly Haaland have also driven over 6000 miles takin...
This week my positive praise is for our three amazing lunch ladies! Do you know that they have prepared 23,684 meals for our students so far this year? They also prepare 2 snacks a day at the elementary which totals 12,896 snacks! They show up early and never stop to rest the whole day. Thank you Lunch Ladies for providing delicious food for us everyday and for always delivering it with a smile on your face!...
This week my positive praise is for our TEACHERS! We have 19 certified teachers in our K-12 district, 7 teachers in the elementary and 12 in the high school, six of those teachers travel between both buildings. Together they have more than 250 years of experience! They each hold a 4 year degree. Among them they have 14 minor degrees or concentrations and 6 masters. They have spent 24,960 minutes with your children so far this year, that number being based on their contracted hours. Although I would estimate that they have put in an extra...
There are so many great things going on at our school and I think it’s high time I shout it from the rooftops! I’ll be sharing some Positive Pioneer Praises each week in the paper. My first praise goes out to our students, the heart of our school. We have 103 students in the Elementary and 99 in our High School Building, which is 7-12. They have already been learning for approximetely 15,912 minutes over 34 days of school! Their average attendance rate for this year so far is 94%! On top of school they are also involved in everything from Foo...
For the last five years, FE Miley Elementary Teachers have been working very hard to improve our Reading scores. It’s been a long process, but we have made huge gains and have some amazing data and scores we want to share with you. Before we get into all of our data, here is some background knowledge that will help you understand the data better. The model we based our interventions on is called the RTI model, and that means we put our students into three tiers, or categories. Tier 1 students are at the Benchmark level, meaning they are on t...
September Students of the Month were: Elementary K- Marie Bold 1- London Keane 2- Daijalin Sunchild 3- David Morsette 4- Dolan Sunchild 5- Ryder Oats 6- Conner Sibra Junior High/High School 7-Ryan Tan 8- Samantha Sandlin 9- Cameron Schwarzbach 10- Faith Gasvoda 11- Shania Walks Over Ice 12- Andrea Rutledge Each student received a certificate, a bag of Kracklin Kamut (donated by Big Sandy Organics) and a free milkshake (donated by the Grocery Store). Then I drew a grand prize winner from those names for each school and those winners were: Dolan...
Too often we hear about the negative aspects of how public education has changed all the way from the federal level down to the one room school house. There is no debate that public education has changed. Some say those changes are not positive and feel we should go back to educating students like we did in the 50’s or the 80’s or at the turn of the century depending on what time frame you grew up in. Every change in public education can be debated on whether those changes are positive or negative and will continue to be debated from the fed...
#1 Buddy Day- As a new teacher here, I was indoctrinated into this tradition through trial by fire as I was on recess duty that day. There I was on the playground with 60 or so elementary kids, just barely mastering all their names, add to that 60 or so Junior High/High School kids who I had no clue about. I feared it would be chaos, but that didn’t happen. What did happen was pure magic, and it happens every year during Buddy Day. The Big Buddies and Little Buddies have so much fun having lunch and playing at recess together that I would be ha...
Do to a technical problem we missed half this story last week. Here is the story in its entirety. It’s my favorite time of year...buying new school supplies, getting new school clothes, new haircuts, decorating my classroom (although this year it was decorating my office) hearing the football and volleyball kids at practice, and the all the excitement in the air for a new school year! The new school year always begins for me as a great adventure. What kind of journey will this year bring? Well here are my hopes for what we will accomplish at B...
It’s my favorite time of year...buying new school supplies, getting new school clothes, new haircuts, decorating my classroom (although this year it was decorating my office) hearing the football and volleyball kids at practice, and all the excitement in the air for a new school year! The new school year always begins for me as a great adventure. What kind of journey will this year bring? Well here are my hopes for what we will accomplish at Big Sandy Schools this year. Back in 2016 we started a Strategic Planning Process, which basically m...
