Greetings from the Trinity University

Basic School Center

HOPE matters.

Our Basic School Center celebrates ten years serving the whole child with our Tenth Annual Basic School Summer Institute- Destination: HOPE. Coincidence? Epiphany? “Tipping Point”?

You might be thinking why it took us ten years to arrive at such simple profoundness. I am not sure it is so much about an epiphany as it is what Laurie Beth Jones calls a “transformation”. In her book, Teach Your Team to Fish, she describes the difference between transactions and transformations- “a transaction is an exchange between people- be it goods or services. They are obvious, literal, commonplace, and easy to spot.” Transformations she adds “are invisible, uplifting, transcendent experiences that involve a fundamental shift or change.”

Not so much a coincidence when one recognizes as Laurie Beth Jones does, that “successful teams are those that understand that the desired end product is transformation, not transactions.” How often do we as educators look at teaching and learning as a transaction? In a high stakes accountability system, it is challenging, to say the least, not to act in this manner. I give you reading and math skills and you pass the test. A clean transaction- it’s obvious, literal, commonplace, and certainly easy to spot!

After ten years of fulfilling our core purpose and core values grounded in the foundational ideas of Dr. Boyer’s work, I would say we SEE the transformation we have been living in spite of the transactions we have been leading in schools. As we prepared for this tenth institute, our reflection, our search for a grounding connection caused us to SEE what has been in front of us, what we had not stopped to recognize. Our work has been all about HOPE.

The signs were all around. We needed only to make that fundamental shift- a transformation. It helped that the signs presented themselves in learning.

Laurie Beth Jones, Dr. Tom Sergiovanni, Eric Jensen, Robert Marzano, and Malcolm Gladwell were speaking to us in varied ways all about HOPE.

Sergiovanni was the most blatant voice for us through his writing, “Building a Community of Hope”. Very directly, he tells how placing hope at the core of school community provides encouragement and promotes clear thinking and informed action. For you doubters who need something you can manage- see and compute- Sergiovanni is clear in his distinction between being hopeful and realistic versus just facing reality. “Being realistic differs from facing reality in important ways,” he writes. “Facing reality means accepting the inevitability of a situation or circumstance; being realistic means calculating the odds with an eye toward optimism.” In the end, the activating effect of hope makes the difference for Sergiovanni, who shares, “Hopeful education communities take action to turn their hopes into reality.”

Eric Jensen presented a general session at the 2006 ASCD Conference in Chicago where he spoke to attendees about Poverty and the Brain. If this were not a sign, then think about this. After providing an operational definition of poverty, he offered a purposeful list entitled- What Works for Children of Poverty. “Hope- it’s Priceless” was the very first thing listed followed by “accommodations, skill-building, and enrichment”. The power of hope he stated is grounded in “affirmation, prediction… of positive outcomes, and a vision of personalized, compelling possibilities by a believable authority figure (parent, teacher, mentor, etc). Ultimately, the power of hope results in “enhanced brain chemistry that supports mood, attention, cognition, memory and even neurogenesis”. Hope matters for the brain.

Robert Marzano, in his book, Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement, discusses similar points to Jensen’s about children of poverty. Marzano shares telling research regarding the discrepancy in experiencing rich language development opportunities, income related familial stress, and encouraging versus discouraging messages (affirmations versus prohibitions) among children of poverty and their more affluent peers.

As Marzano dedicates his writing to helping us as educators address this need, beyond enhancing background knowledge through experiences, he also talks about building mentoring relationships with members of the community. Again, the relationships are grounded in caring and support. Both of these strategies are about best practice. They are about caring as a commitment- a professional virtue as Dr. Sergiovanni has defined it.

Caring is more than kindness, it is about meticulous planning and preparation, providing learning experiences that are meaningful, seamless, and purposeful. It is about promoting excellence, and exemplary practice. This form of caring builds hope- HOPE matters.

HOPE is a great “tipping point”. Malcolm Gladwell, in his inspiring work, The Tipping Point, has convinced me and our mentor team that we must find what will cause us to tip- to grow, support and lead within the Basic School Framework; to serve the whole child with integrity, competence, and with HOPE.

Laurie Beth Jones is correct, it is a transformation.

Hope matters.

Victor Herrera, Director

Bulverde Creek Celebrates Art

“The first goal of the Basic School is literacy for all. The aim is for all children to be successful, not just in reading, writing, and mathematics, but also in the universal language we call art”

–Ernest Boyer

On May 5^th, Bulverde Creek celebrated its first “Fiesta of Fine Arts”. The idea behind “Fiesta of Fine Arts” is for students to spend the day celebrating and partaking in art and art activities. Under the leadership of Bulverde Creek’s music teacher, Angela Leonhardt, all students, Kindergarten through Fifth grade, spent part of their day rotating through various art classes.

Parents, Community members, and Reagan High School students were invited to come to Bulverde Creek to teach the art classes. A wide variety of fine arts were represented. The classes included photography, cake decorating, metal designing, watercolor painting, drawing, theater make-up, cartooning, and scrap booking. When students were not rotating through the classes, they could be watching art lessons being televised throughout the school.

To culminate this fantastic day, the entire school community was brought together so that everybody could enjoy music which was performed by the Reagan High School Jazz Band.

Students thoroughly enjoyed the day and, hopefully, grew to have a deeper understanding and appreciation of art.

CELEBRATIONS AT HARDY OAK ELEMENTARY
”Celebrate what you want to see more of.” - Thomas J. Peters

Hardy Oak continues to celebrate our love for learning, our love for children and our love for community. Because we value each other, and our successes, we celebrate those successes frequently. We do not take our community for granted, because that sense of community, as Thomas J. Peters says: leads us to celebrate what we want to see more of.

“In the end, the Basic School is an institution held together by something far more than connecting corridors and a common schedule. It is a community for learning with a shared purpose, good communication, and a climate with justice, discipline, caring and occasions for celebration.” – Dr. Ernest L. Boyer

Celebrating that TAKS is over!

Earth Friendly Field Day in our school-wide celebration of activities for the body and spirit!

Librarian, Jo Chasse, helps us celebrate reading with Battle of the Books!

Eating our harvest grown from our class gardens!

Brain Power Rules! - at our first annual school-wide Mindfest celebration!

Reading our school-wide Hardy Oak Poetry Books with our school families!

Art contest for school directory - to celebrate our artists!

Tara Wiatrek – we celebrate her success as elementary teacher of the year!

End the year with thanks for all our wonderful teachers, parents, and children!

Coyotes Howl for Success

Canyon Ridge Coyotes are howling as we celebrate the end of our first year as a new school. With the Basic School framework guiding our vision, we created connections that helped us achieve effective results in building community, curriculum, climate, and character. Creating connections involved bringing parents, faculty, and the community together to build relationships that foster trust and respect. Planning school-wide activities that celebrate learning is one way we have been able to do this. On the first Friday of every month we have a “First Friday” assembly, where a member of our community comes to Canyon Ridge to celebrate students’ success.

Building new traditions have brought our community together in fun ways, through Math/Pizza night, Old-Fashioned Game Night, Reading Under the Stars Night, monthly choir and musical performances at PTA meetings, and numerous grade-level curriculum unit culminating activities.

Building character has enabled Canyon Ridge to connect learning to life through the Self-Manager program. We have also implemented several character-building services this year. CHAMPS is a new organization that stands for Caring, Helpful, Ambitious, Motivated, Positive Students. Students volunteer their time to perform various duties at school. We also implemented a Peer Mediation team that requires mediators to be trained in being good listeners, making moral judgments, and encouraging others to solve everyday conflicts in positive ways. Learning traits of leadership is a life-long skill that is so important and students at Canyon Ridge are building a strong foundation for the future.

As we reflect on this past year and prepare for the coming year we continue to search for effective ways to meet the demands of our ever-increasing diverse population. As more teachers become ESL certified, we look forward to opportunities that will meet the needs of all our students. We also have plans for even more parent and community involvement next year through Science Night, Career Day, and weekly “Science Moms” experiments.

Canyon Ridge Coyotes are proud of our achievements, and we look forward to the many opportunities for growth that lie ahead in the coming year!

Basic School Celebrations

Huebner Elementary is celebrating a year of caring, kindness and compassion. We have been nourishing our community with monthly contributions to the Food Bank. In addition to these contributions, our grade levels are making special celebration items to give to these children and to decorate the Kid's Cafes. Our fifth graders donated boxes of healthy cereal and first grade students made valentine cards. Fourth graders have been writing and publishing storybooks for the Café Libraries. Elizabeth Lutri , coordinator of the Food Bank's children's activities, recently said, " It is really important that the children from low- income neighborhoods know that other children in San Antonio care about them." In May, we are excited that the children from the Kid’s Cafes will bring homemade gifts for our students, too!

Huebner students also bought valentine paper hearts and decorated them. The money from the heart sale was given to the Ronald Mc Donald House Charity. The hearts were then given to students in our sister school. Students created special valentines for senior citizens at area nursing homes. We have been living the character traits of kindness and compassion.

We celebrate academically through Huebner parent volunteers who give their time and talents tutoring students at our sister school. In addition, Huebner celebrates school-wide mentoring of students with teachers maintaining a personal connection throughout their educational career.

Every aspect of the school is incorporated into a celebration of learning.

We celebrate our students becoming responsible in service to others as they become

successful learners.

Students Making a Difference at Northwood Elementary School

Ask the students at Northwood why everyone is talking about llamas these days. They will tell you with a smile that they have been on a mission – to alleviate world hunger and poverty and to help rebuild communities where families are impoverished and undernourished.

“Our third graders set out to raise enough money for one llama and ended up purchasing two! said Mrs. Sharrer, Principal at Northwood Elementary.

Four classrooms including 64 students raised over $300.00 to help support Heifer International in its mission to end world hunger and improve the environment. Northwood students demonstrated the Core virtues of compassion and giving while learning about the value of “Producing and Consuming”.

The Read to Feed program encourages children to earn pledges from family, friends and community members for the total number of books read, or amount of time reading. At the conclusion of the program, the Northwood Elementary School readers collected money from their sponsors and donated it to Heifer. The donations will be used to help impoverished families and communities become self-reliant by providing food and income producing animals and training to care for the animals in environmentally friendly ways.

To learn more about Read to Feed and its free resources and materials, visit www.readtofeed.org or www.heifer.org.

ALE students were very busy during November and December raising over $300 to purchase gifts for needy children for the Angel Tree at North Star Mall. Hand-made ornaments were sold to school staff, parents and at the PTA Christmas program. The students were involved in every part of the project including going to stores to purchase the materials, making the ornaments, selling, delivering and counting money and giving change. Each student was responsible for picking out the gifts and helped carry them to North Star Mall by riding the VIA bus. Congratulations to Mrs. Baldassari’s ALE class.

Mrs. McShane's and Mrs. Carter's Kindergarten classes have been experiencing nature first-hand. With much hard work and a lot of laughter, we have planted two vegetable/flower gardens. It has been a wonderful experience--lots of math, science, and language arts experiences Connecting us to Nature. We have harvested our first radish and are eagerly awaiting our first salad! All we need is ranch dressing and a fork!

We have much to celebrate at Northwood. Our students are learning and growing. Our PTA carnival “Go Wild” was a huge success. Our beautiful murals of the Core Commonalities in the Library are complete. Come visit Northwood next year when we joyously celebrate our 5oth anniversary!

Basic School started off with a BANG at Wilshire

It has been echoing ever since. We made major changes to the community of Wilshire which have proven to be very successful.

Our first change was our commitment to teaching virtues by incorporating them into daily lessons. You hear the language of this teaching being used by staff as well as students as you walk throughout the buildings and interact with students. You hear it being used among peers on the playground. You often observe children “reporting” on their peer that exemplified good character. You may enter the morning program and hear a student being celebrated for practicing one of the virtues. The atmosphere at Wilshire is becoming one of celebration of what is good and worthy of building character into our students. Our students are responding positively to that celebration.

Another change is that our staff has become a closer working team. Grade level teams share more information together. They are more supportive of each other and other teams. You will hear many “at-a-boys” as you mingle among the staff. Like celebrations, tragedy has also hit our campus. In these tough times it is nice to have a “second family” that can pull together to give love and support.

Change is not always easy, but a walk through our school will dispel any doubts one might have about the positive influence of becoming a Basic School has had on the community of Wilshire. Success breeds success. As we end this year and plan for the next one, we are looking for more success in the form of new challenges. As Wilshire continues to build character and community, we know that we are making life-time successful people out of our students.

Celebrate! at Jackson-Keller

The last two months of school at Jackson-Keller were full of celebrations that brought the whole school together. Our annual Family Fun Day, organized by Lisa Thompson, Shannon Boyle, and Patty Wampler, was held the end of March. Parents came to school to find grade levels sponsoring such booths as a moon bounce, cake walk, sponge toss, face painting, estimation jars, jail, and cascarones. Community agencies were also set up to help parents with needs they may have at home. All in all, the event was well attended and everyone had a great time. We also raised a lot of money for our grade level field trip funds!!

Besides fifth grade graduation and grade level awards assemblies, the last week of school also held our 2^nd annual Multicultural Fair, organized by our Title Reading Teacher Kris Monsibais. Each classroom took a different country and studied all about it’s culture for several weeks. Then the students decorated their classrooms to reflect their country. The event culminated on Tuesday May 23^rd with a school-wide rotation. Each grade level visited all of the classrooms around the school to learn about their countries and to even taste their unique foods! The students came away with a renewed respect for the diversity that exists in the world.

Just like the first day of school, our last day of school began with a school-wide assembly. The Lee ROTC came over to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance as we honored our departing 5^th graders and teachers. The whole student body sang a song on heroes to the departing teachers that brought tears to their eyes! Finally the day ended with our 5^th grade tradition of walking the halls. The 5^th graders took a last stroll through the halls of JK to the cheers of the younger students and their former teachers. What a send-off for middle school!

The teachers, students, and parents at Jackson-Keller are excited to see what things we will have to celebrate in 2006-2007!!