West Seattle, Washington
28 Thursday
During the 9 years that Jo Ann Yockey has been head of school at Westside School (WSB sponsor), enrollment has doubled, from 130 to 268, and a middle-school program has launched, among other achievements. Now, Yockey is moving on to a new challenge, with a new job starting in July at Abiqua in Salem, Oregon. Her successor, Kate Mulligan, chosen by Westside’s board earlier this year, was at the Sunrise Heights campus this morning, visiting from her current job at Hualalai Academy, a K-12 school in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. We stopped by the school as Mulligan, at left in our top photo with Yockey, was finishing a school-community meet-and-greet. It’s a big week at Westside for other reasons – one of which you can glimpse toward the right side of the photo, a sign about the 23rd annual auction coming up Saturday. Even if you’re not going – you can bid in the online auction, continuing through Thursday night – the listing/bidding site is here.
Also happening at Westside, as we found out from communication/development director Jana Barber, who showed us around, new raised beds for an edible garden:
Barber says a grant from the Medina Foundation is helping fund the garden, where the students will grow food to donate to the West Seattle and White Center food banks, and they’re already raising seedlings in classrooms for short-season crops they hope to be able to harvest before this school year ends in June. Also growing inside the Westside building – this year’s baby salmon:
Westside second-graders raise salmon ever year, and these baby fish will be released into Fauntleroy Creek this spring.
Thanks to Michelle Riggen-Ransom for the photo taken at The Kenney (WSB sponsor), where she helped chaperone two 3rd-grade classes from nearby Gatewood Elementary this morning as they read their poetry to residents:
The poems were great, ranging in topics from soccer, writing, nature and the elusive Seattle sun. Third-grade teacher Amy Griffin did an amazing job organizing the event – the kids were very well-behaved and The Kenney residents were all smiles during and after the performance.
After the reading, children presented hand-written, original poems to their new friends. Attached is a photo I took of some of the kids, with teacher Ms.Griffin on the left. And here’s a quote from The Kenney’s Activities Director Amy Seebeck that she just sent over to Ms. Griffin: “Just wanted to thank you so much for coming today. Our residents absolutely loved having the kids here. Also wanted to extend a special thanks to those who went to our memory care unit. That was so special for them. You made our day!”
Very proud of our third-graders and a big thank you to Amy Griffin for putting together this lovely event!
Our video features the Denny International Middle School Jazz Band, the first of three student groups directed by Marcus Pimpleton that performed Saturday night for the Big Band Dinner Dance; the two others were from adjacent Chief Sealth International High School – here’s the Jazz 1 group:
Last night’s benefit combined what had been the Denny Jazz Dinner and the Sealth Big Band Dinner Dance, in this first year of the two schools sharing a campus (they had already been sharing a “pathway“). The above photo and the next one are courtesy of Denny principal Jeff Clark, who also shared these words:
Congratulations to Denny and Sealth Jazz musicians on an outstanding night of music. The dance floor has filled as guests are dancing to the sweet sound of jazz. Thank you to our amazing volunteers, families, and staff for making this event possible. A special thank to the West Seattle Big Band for joining us!
The WSBB has long supported student music programs.
3 notes about the new West Seattle public elementary school K-5 STEM at Boren, opening this fall in the two-years-closed Boren building on Delridge:
ENROLLMENT: We’ve been asking Seattle Public Schools about an update from open-enrollment applications submitted for the new school, since it’s been a couple weeks now. They won’t give us an exact number – processing isn’t over yet – but here’s the reply forwarded by SPS spokesperson Teresa Wippel:
We are continuing to work with the data in processing Open Enrollment applications for schools around the district. Because this work has not been completed, we are not prepared to release data that is still in process. Assignment information will be available on April 16 for schools and families. However, since K-5 STEM at Boren is a new program, we are tracking that data in particular, and can report that applications have surpassed the 200 mark.
NEW ONLINE DISCUSSION GROUP: In case you missed this announcement in the WSB Forums or the comment section following an earlier story – Families who applied to – or are considering applying to – the new school have formed an online discussion group, open to anybody interested. It started briefly on Google and then moved to Yahoo! Find it at groups.yahoo.com/group/K5STEM – anyone can read the posts, but you have to join in order to participate. The group’s e-mail address is K5STEM@yahoogroups.com.
NEXT DESIGN TEAM MEETING: The school’s Design Team, discussing issues and making decisions to help shape it, has its second meeting at 6:15 pm Wednesday (March 28), at district HQ downtown. Here’s our report on the first one.
So far in the two years that Chief Sealth International High School has observed World Water Week with special events, it’s become a tradition – Friday sunshine! On the track at Southwest Athletic Complex across the street, where students walked with heavy containers of water on WWW Friday last year, today the task was a Food Walk, visiting various student-created stations to learn about food and water issues from around the world.
Special activities were the order of the day for all Sealth students, including a multitude of indoor activities (such as workshops with guest speakers), and also gardening outside adjoining Denny International Middle School:
The garden’s namesake was a Denny principal who died 20 years ago during the school year and had a garden named after her at the school’s old site – now, there’s one at the new site.
A KING 5 crew was there to help document the action:
We promised to come back later this spring to see the garden after it’s planted and growing!
The Chief Sealth International High School Polynesian Club‘s dance was the grand finale to a series of student performances last night, highlighting Multicultural Night in the school’s Galleria. Proud school-community leaders were on hand too, like principal Chris Kinsey and assistant principal Lupe Barnes:
Kinsey told us he was proud of the fact that everything was student-created, student-led, though the event was sponsored by the Chief Sealth PTSA – whose president Amy Daly-Donovan was on hand too – below at right, with school nurse Alison Enochs:
The wall poster behind them is a reminder that Multicultural Night was part of this year’s World Water Week observance at Sealth. Today, regular classes are suspended so the students can be part of an all-day teach-in, which includes workshops, guest speakers, gardening, and a youth-led Food Walk to highlight challenges faced by people in East Africa.
As noted in earlier coverage, this year’s World Water Week at Chief Sealth International High School is focusing on food issues as well as water – they are intertwined around the globe. And right now at nearby Southwest Teen Life Center, a basketball tournament organized by East African Sealth students is under way. Even if you can’t drop by to donate in person, you can do so online by going here. Here are the seniors who organized it:
Standing, from left, Samura, Nina, Hussein, Mohamud; sitting, Jueriya and Hanan. World Water Week continues with daily events on the Sealth campus, including an all-day “teach-in” on Friday in which WWW-related activities will replace regular classes for the day.
ADDED 8:16 PM: Thanks to Sealth teacher Noah Zeichner, who’s been working on World Water Week these past two years, for this photo of the tournament’s winning team:
Teams from other schools participated, but the winners were from Sealth.
Thanks to Chellie at Roxhill Elementary School for sharing the news (and the photo):
Sixteen first through fifth grade students (and one parent!) from Roxhill Elementary School competed in the NW Regional Sport Stacking Tournament in Auburn. This was our school’s first representation at the tournament. We had a blast. The day began early with preliminary rounds where students tested their skill in three different stacking events. After lunch we learned which of us would go on to the finals. We were happy that five students and our competing parent moved on to the finals and brought home medals. It was a terrific event that we will be attending again next year. We are proud of all of our stackers. Great job!
(WEDNESDAY UPDATE: The dance has been canceled due to lack of ticket sales. 5K is still ON!)
Two West Seattle High School fundraiser reminders this morning – The WSHS Class of 2014 has organized a Father-Daughter Dance for elementary-school girls and their dads, coming up this Saturday night, 6-9 pm. More details are in the event’s listing on the WSB calendar. Also, today marks exactly two months till the West Seattle 5K on May 20th; it’s the run/walk along Alki that is the unofficial kickoff to summer (here’s hoping), and precedes the annual “car-free day,” aka Seattle Summer Streets (here’s our latest report on this year’s plan). The WS 5K is a presentation of the West Seattle HS PTSA. Online registration is open; you can sign up online right now! (WSB is co-sponsoring again this year, and there’s room for more sponsors.)
The Alliance for Education has announced this year’s Philip P. Swain Excellence in Education Award winners. Of the six winners citywide, two are from West Seattle!
Huong Nguyen teaches math at West Seattle High School. From the nomination form sent by principal Ruth Medsker:
‘Ms. Huong’ works tirelessly to ensure that all students entrusted to her succeed. She teaches Intensified Algebra, which is our most supported extended block math class, Algebra I and Advanced Placement Calculus. Ms. Huong is blazing the trail at West Seattle High School for Standards Based Grading. She is currently in the process of developing performance rubrics to help students understand what their learning outcomes need to be. When students do not meet standard on a learning target, she provides additional support for the student to relearn the skill and opportunities to demonstrate mastery. An example of her relentless push to standard is a letter she is sending home to families this week. Each Algebra student who has a C or lower and a MAP score of 240 or less is getting a letter and a call inviting the student to after-school tutoring/support. Our data shows that these students are just under where they need to be pass the Algebra End of Course Exam.
Also, she “has invented a math tool to help students learn basic numeracy skills. The Numero Cube System helps students learn place value, base 10 number decomposition, Factoring, Multiplication/Division, among other things.”
From Denny International Middle School, meet Swain Award-winner Leticia Clausen, photographed with some of her students:
From Denny principal Jeff Clark‘s announcement:
It is a great pleasure to announce that Ms. Leticia Clausen is a winner of the 2012 Philip P. Swain Excellence in Education Award! It was an honor for me to nominate Ms. Clausen for this award for the following reasons:
When Denny became an international school, Ms. Clausen quickly volunteered to serve as our dual-language Spanish teacher. This program is intended to give our scholars, who are fortunate enough to already speak Spanish, a chance to learn social studies and language arts in Spanish at school. This approach will help our students to be bilingual and bi-literate, while mastering academic concepts in both languages.
Even though we were starting this program without curricular materials in Spanish, Ms. Clausen was excited to start right away (without a year for planning). She did this for one reason: she knew this was what was best for our kids and knew that they didn’t have any time to waste.
We are now in our third year of Spanish dual-language. Remarkably, Ms. Clausen teaches this block class at all three grade levels! The program is flourishing—academic achievement is rising—and our families are thrilled to have this opportunity!
The Swain Award description, as also shared by Denny’s principal: “The yearly award is given to Seattle Public Schools secondary teachers or counselors who exemplify the qualities and values that distinguished Mr. Swain’s years of community stewardship. Teachers or counselors who are nominated are staff who inspire a love of learning in students while helping them reach their highest academic potential.” All six citywide winners will be honored at the Alliance’s community breakfast March 29th, and each receives a $1,000 prize.
Two of the events we covered on Saturday had a fortuitous meeting of the minds afterward .. thanks to Martha for the followup photo and report:
After its book sale yesterday, Sanislo Elementary generously donated its leftover books to the West Seattle Rotary Club’s “Books for the World” book drive. Photo is of Sanislo and Rotary volunteers. Both the sale and the book drive were successful thanks to the help of all the donors, shoppers, and volunteers (and WSB coverage)!
Martha Sidlo
West Seattle Rotary
If you haven’t caught up with yesterday – our report on the Rotary book drive was here, and the Sanislo sale here.
(Photo by Bruno Cross)
West Seattle had a big presence in the downtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade on Saturday. Denny International Middle School principal Jeff Clark forwarded the photo and reports:
I am pleased to share that the Denny International Middle School marching band did a terrific job marching in the St. Patrick’s Day parade on Saturday. The crowd was very enthusiastic and supportive of our kids—it was great and we are proud of them!
Adjoining Chief Sealth International High School‘s band participated too, and can be seen in two photos in the Seattle Times (WSB partner) photo gallery, which features one more West Seattleite – Seafair Clown “Officer Lumpy,” aka Chris Henggeler.
That’s barely the half of it – literally – at the Sanislo Elementary book sale and bake sale, happening till 2 pm at 1812 SW Myrtle, raising money for the 4th graders’ annual overnight camping trip. Hardbacks and paperbacks for kids and adults – we even found some vintage-1940s hardbacks about topics including American history and the news business. Browse the hallway, and don’t miss the bake sale:
Before our whirlwind visit ended, we also got a pitch for a special drawing they’re having – $5/ticket for a homemade New Mexican dinner for six, delivered to your home. Never been to Sanislo? Lovely forested campus, and don’t miss the portrait of its namesake inside the entrance.
We photographed the new fencing, lock, and signage at closed Genesee Hill Elementary‘s southeast field, after multiple tips from WSB’ers. They wondered if it had to do with the field’s popularity as an unofficial off-leash dog park. No, says Diane Taguba with Seattle Public Schools, who answered our inquiry:
The fence at Genesee Hill recently repaired and secured was not due to the “dog park” use, but to prevent additional vandalism that was happening to the building. To maintain building security, we do not intend to reopen the gates anytime soon. To also note, it is district policy that dogs are not allowed on district property without proper authorization.
Genesee Hill has been closed since Pathfinder K-8 moved out in summer of 2009. It’s considered a possible site for building a new school or extensively renovating the old one as part of the BEX IV levy that will be finalized this year and sent to voters next year. (Three public meetings about that levy are set for next month, including one in West Seattle on April 5th.)
Seattle Public Schools students don’t have classes today because it’s a “Professional Development Day” for teachers – and if you ever wondered what that really meant, here’s one example. Chief Sealth International High School principal Chris Kinsey explains what’s happening at his school (and its neighbor) today:
Right now on the Denny/Sealth campus teachers from all current International schools (Sealth, Denny, Hamilton, John Stanford, Beacon Hill, Concord) and future International schools (Ingraham and McDonald) are all engaged in an International Education Symposium focusing on global competencies. Veronica Boix-Mansila from Harvard was the keynote speaker where she provided an overview of her book, Educating for Global Competence: Preparing Our Youth to Engage the World and provided a framework for teachers to analyze student work.
Teachers will spend the day looking at curriculum, projects, student work, and bouncing ideas off one another so they can better support the work being done in our International schools.
Side note: One of the projects that has underscored Sealth’s reputation for global awareness, World Water Week, is about to come around for its second year – events are running Tuesday through Friday, according to teacher Noah Zeichner; we’ll have a more detailed preview ahead, but for now, this webpage has a preview.
Earlier this week, we brought you news of two West Seattle teams making it into the finals of the Seattle Public Library’s Global Reading Challenge competition – Da Peeps from Arbor Heights Elementary and George’s Magician’s Treasure from Alki Elementary. Tonight, we have word that a fifth-grade team from Roxhill Elementary, The Stoehr SuperStars, is in the finals too. From Roxhill’s head teacher Christopher Robert:
Jade, Cory, Natavia, Jeremy, Viridiana, Pieran, and Sarah placed second in today’s semifinal to earn a spot in the finals in two weeks. (Graham Hill placed first in today’s semifinal to earn the other spot.) All seven are students in Kristie Stoehr’s class. Their classmate, Akira, served as a coach. Congrats to the team…and good luck in the finals!
(Christopher is not only Roxhill’s head teacher, but also Pieran’s dad!) Roxhill had a team in the 2011 finals, too. Like last year, the finals are downtown on March 27th (at the Central Library auditorium).
Lots of news about reading and books this week – and here’s more. Tonight, Sanislo Elementary invites you to its Literacy Night event – 6-7 pm, “Passport to the World,” with storytelling/reading in Russian, Mandarin, and Spanish. Then on Saturday, it’s the famous Sanislo Used Book Sale, benefiting the 4th graders’ annual overnight camping trip – 10 am-2 pm (March 17th). Sanislo is at 1812 SW Myrtle.
By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
The decisions made during the first meeting of the newly announced Design Team for West Seattle’s new public school, K-5 STEM at Boren, were primarily logistical.
Wednesday night’s meeting at Seattle Public Schools‘ headquarters in SODO was mostly a getting-to-know-you and stage-setting event – the opening act of five-and-a-half intensive months of work to give birth to a new school.
“You are doing very important work,” declared Dr. Cathy Thompson, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning (and a West Seattleite), to the 14 (of 16) design-team members who assembled for the history-making session.
She also pronounced the new school “a viable entity … good to go,” saying 141 applications already had been counted as of Tuesday, and that more were expected as the district continued to process what it received during open enrollment, which ended Monday afternoon. They expect to “max out” at three kindergarten classes and two each for 1st through 5th grades.
From Marcus Pimpleton, news about some of his Chief Sealth International High School musicians – including an event coming up weekend after next:
Please join me in congratulating the following Sealth students who were selected for Commendation Awards from the 2012 Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. The award states that the students were selected for “giving a Superior Solo Performance within an Ensemble or Combo.”
Spencer Duncan, piano
Janelle Maroney, voice
Will McMinn, alto sax
Paal Nilssen, alto sax
Cameron Nakatani, trumpet
Nehemiah Parker, trombone
Emma Pierce, clarinet(You can see all these students in action and many more at the Big Band Dinner dance on March 24th – see below for more on that:
On Saturday, March 24th, from 6-10 pm, please join the jazz ensembles of Chief Sealth International High School and Denny International Middle School for a night of jazz music, dinner, and dancing in the Chief Sealth International H.S. Galleria. Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for students. Dinner will feature Otis Pimpleton’s awesome barbecue chicken, chicken gumbo from the New Orleans restaurant, red potatoes, baked beans, rice, and cornbread. A vegetarian option is available upon request and attendees will enjoy the sounds of the Denny Jazz Band, Chief Sealth High School Jazz Ensembles I and II, and the West Seattle Big Band. Students interested in dancing without the dinner, can purchase a special dance-only ticket for $10. This will be a fun night…. please come out and support our jazz students.
After our report from an Arbor Heights parent about that school making it to the Global Reading Challenge‘s citywide finals, we heard from the Alki Elementary community:
Another West Seattle Elementary School has advanced to the All-City Finals of the Global Reading Challenge!! The team called George’s Magician’s Treasure from Alki scored 115 out of 120 points at Monday’s semi-finals at the downtown library. From left in the photo above: Marcus, Gracie, Alina, Georgia, Jaylin, Alex and Carl. Go West Seattle!!
Congratulations to the readers! Anyone else from WS in the finals? Let us know!
Tomorrow night, the newly announced Design Team for the new K-5 STEM at Boren school will meet for the first time. Tonight, the school’s first principal visited West Seattle – she is still on the job as a principal in Tucson – to meet families and other community members. In our photo, principal-to-be Dr. Shannon McKinney is in the center with, at left, West Seattle’s School Board rep Marty McLaren and, at right, the district’s executive director of West Seattle-area schools, Aurora Lora. Dr. McKinney is expected to move up here next month to start work getting ready to launch the new school; we hope tomorrow’s meeting will include information about how many families applied for admission to the new school during the open-enrollment period that ended just yesterday.
Two weeks ago, we stopped by Arbor Heights Elementary School as students battled it out in the Global Reading Challenge school finals. Today, the winning team, a group of 5th graders calling themselves Da Peeps, went downtown for the semifinals – and after scoring 110 out of 120 points, according to an AH parent volunteer, advanced to the all-city finals! (7 pm March 22nd) From left in the photo above (also courtesy of the parent volunteer) are Chase, Dylan, Stone, Siobhan, Ayden, Steph, and Ruby.
Long past the Christmas season, the holiday spirit carries on at Holy Rosary School – it’s just finished distributing a share of the 2011 Christmas Tree Lot proceeds to four charitable organizations in West Seattle: The WS Helpline, WS Food Bank, Salvation Army’s Hickman House, and the Kingston Foundation. “Holy Rosary School is proud to give back to our community,” says Refawne Acarregui, a Holy Rosary parent and tree-lot organizer who’s at right in our photo, along with Father John Madigan, parent/volunteer Currie Baker, and principal Michael Cantu. We caught up with them at the recent meeting of the Holy Rosary Parents’ Club. The 15 percent share of tree-lot proceeds equaled $5625.44, of which the four organizations each received $1406.36. (You might recall one other donation – after the lot closed, unsold trees were given away.)
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