Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/203877
Friday, November 1, 2013 – Daily News Education in Tehama County KEEP ON LEARNING Early childhood awards Creative Hands Preschool and Child Care, NCCDI Happy Trails and Our Little House Day Care Center each recently received a High Quality Program award, presented by the Te h a m a County Local Child Care Planning Council, a program of the Tehama C o u n t y Department of Education. "Each program was nominated by a parent or community member and then evaluated further before being chosen to receive the award," said Paula Brown Almond, Project Director. "These three programs scored very high in the evaluation process and we are happy to be able to recognize them." All nominated programs are visited by a judging committee, and ranked using Courtesy photos 11 measures, which include Top: Cynthia Cook, LPC history of prochairwoman, and Kelly Estrada, gram, staffing, owner of Creative Hands physical enviPreschool and Child Care, were ronment and awarded the Large Family Child safety, curCare Home. Middle: Hilda Torres, riculum, materials and Happy Trails teacher, and Debbie supplies, parStevens, Happy Trails teacher ent involvedirector. Bottom: Maryanne ment, and Montandon, ROP teacher and community OLH teacher director, Pauline involvement. Ostrowski, teacher and Britt "Our goal is to focus on eduTorgersrud "Lollo", teacher. cating the community about the numerous high quality early childhood programs families have available in Tehama County," Said Brown-Almond. Creative Hands Preschool and Child Care is a large family child care home, owned and operated by Kelly Estrada. Kelly serves children ages 0-12 years old. "I am a single dad and very fortunate to have my children in her care, Kelly really cares about my children and takes excellent care of them," wrote one of the parents who nominated her for the award. NCCDI Happy Trails is a Federal and State funded preschool program which serves Head Start and State Preschool children and is operated by Northern California Child Development, INC. "I am happy to know that parents have nominated our program and I give credit to the dedicated staff, especially Teacher Director, Debbie Stevens and Hilda Torres, Teacher," said Executive Director Brian Heese. Our Little House Day Care Center serves infants, toddlers and preschoolers whose parents are employed at Red Bluff High School District as well as other families in the community. Our Little House is also an early childhood training program for high school students who participate in the school's Child Care Regional Occupation Program. The next quarterly award nominations will be due by Nov. 29. Parents and community members who are interested in nominating a licensed center or family child care home are encouraged to do so. Nomination forms can be found on the LCCPC page at www.tehamaschools.org or by calling 528-7343. Good to great through learning communities Red Bluff High School's educational mission is not simply to ensure that our students are taught, but to ensure that they learn. There has been a shift in RBHS's focus on teaching to a focus on learning. This has become our pledge to ensure the success of each student. Teachers are collaborating through Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) during Professional Development Monday afternoons. In developing PLCs, teachers are asking: What are researchbased, best practices and strategies that have been successful in helping students achieve at high levels? How can we implement these practices into our school culture? What commitments will we make to one another in order to support our teaching? What data will we monitor to support our teaching? What support systems will we have in place to implement the Common Core? What common formative assessments can we develop in order to monitor our teaching strategies? After our PLCs built a shared vision to these questions, our school established a strong foundation to improve student learning. RBHS has created ten PLCs facilitated by teacher leaders. These leaders have experienced extensive training in order to engage all colleagues in the ongoing exploration of three crucial questions that drive the work of our school: 1. What do we want each student to learn? 2. How will we know when each student has learned it? 3. How will we respond when a student experiences difficulty in learning? PLC Math teacher leader, Brooke Kennedy shared, "The training provided to the PLC teacher leaders has been some of the best professional development of my career. As a department, we are collaborating on our new integrated 1 Curriculum. We are currently working on our third common assessment, as well as, our curricular map for the remaining fall semester. The PLC has been a fantastic opportunity for In its first year as Vista Preparatory Academy, the school has already shown its competitive edge in grabbing an extra scholarship for its students. Vista already had six scholarships as a part of being a Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEARUP) school, but was able to win a seventh one in a contest. At a leadership conference, staff was given an I love GEARUP postcard and told to come up with a creative picture with the best winning the extra scholarship. Scholarships awarded are for $2,000 each. Principal Isaac Scharaga was pretty excited about his team winning it, he said. "It will give our students a head start and at this age so many students have a big push to go, but don't realize the expense," Scharaga said. "This is a way for their hard work and efforts to be rewarded. For us to say it was not unnoticed here and this is a start so now you're Call 527-2151 Over 25 years of experience STOVE JUNCTION BBQ PELLETS The North State's premier supplier of stoves Now in Stock! Popular customer request Serving Butte, Glenn & Tehama Counties Tues-Sat 9am-5pm • Closed Sun & Mon 22825 Antelope Blvd., Red Bluff 530-528-2221 • Fax 530-528-2229 www.thestovejunction.com our department members to take on leadership and collaboratively work toward improving student learning." Lauren Stroud, PLC Ag teacher leader commented, "This training has helped me be able to articulate the importance of collaboration that is focused on learning rather than teaching. The training has shown me how important it is to keep our decisions based on results in order to increase the productivity of our students and teachers here at Red Bluff High. Our Ag PLC has been focusing on pacing guides, standards, and assessments this year so that we are set up for immediate interventions next year. We all practice interventions, but new strategies have not been developed since we have been focusing on the infrastructure items this year. I am loving the collaborative environment PLCs have brought to campus!" Red Bluff High School has appointed veteran teacher/counselor, Wendy Drury as our Academic Intervention Specialist. Her role is to assist teachers in monitoring struggling students on a timely basis and ensure that every student who experiences academic difficulty will receive extra time and support for learning. This year Mrs. Drury's focus is assisting teachers in analyzing data and developing an assessment that will become the baseline data for all students. Her goal is to have a solid intervention system in place for next year. RBHS Professional Learning Communities focus around powerful teacher collaboration that is a systematic process in which teachers work together to analyze and improve their classroom practice. At the beginning of the school year, PLC teams developed norms to clarify expectations regarding teachers' roles, responsibilities and relationships. Teams are currently collaborating on the task of developing common formative assessments to monitor each student's mastery of the essential outcomes. The entire team gains insight as to what strategies are working and what are not working, and members discuss new strategies that they can implement in their classrooms to raise student achievement. Ongoing conversations enable team members to share their goals, strategies, materials, pacing guides, questions, concerns and results. PLCs have provided teachers a supportive team that focuses on student learning. Principal Ron Fisher has empowered all PLC teams to create their weekly PLC agendas. They have been provided with the guidance to focus on formative assessments, pacing guides and Common Core standards. A common formative assessment process provides information needed to adjust teaching and learning. The formative assessment process guides teachers in making decisions about future instruction. Examples of formative assessment include: observations, questioning, discussion, graphic organizers, peer/self assessments, practice presentations, and think-pair-share. When PLCs develop common formative assessments throughout the school year, each teacher can identify how his or her students performed on each skill compared with other students. Teachers can call on their PLC team colleagues to help them reflect on areas of concern. PLC teams review all students' test data and share these results with colleagues. Through this practice, teachers can quickly learn if a teacher has been particularly effective in teaching a certain skill. PLC team members consciously look for successful practice and attempt to replicate it in their own teaching. They also identify areas of the curriculum that will need more attention. Each teacher has access to the ideas, materials, strategies, and talents of the entire PLC team. The PLC model has proven to be an effective and powerful new way of working together that profoundly affects the practice of Red Bluff High School education. PLCs have required our teachers to invest in hard work, and the commitment to focus on learning rather than teaching, work collaboratively, and hold RBHS accountable for continual improvement. RBHS teachers are committed to the PLC movement and to diligently support the vision of the school: "Graduates from Red Bluff High School will be well prepared for college, career, and life." Vista nabs extra scholarship for students News tip? The 5A Friday, November 1st Saturday, November 2nd 9am to 5pm Free Hearing Consultations Buy One, Get One Free Hearing Instruments Hearing Instruments & Services • Ear Protection 20 Antelope Boulevard Red Bluff, CA 96080 (P) 530-527-2403 • (F) 530-527-2409 Jenny Jackson-Crespin Clinton Jackson Hearing Aid Dispenser Trainee Hearing Aid Dispenser Lic#8981 ears4u@outlook.com Lic#7575 English, from 6-7 p.m. Thursdays on the Vista campus. It's a program that upon completion can help parents with students who meet GPA and academic requirements extra leverage when it comes to applying to the CSU system. For more information on GEARUP or PIQUE call the school office at 5277840. on you're way. Keep building on it." Educational trust awards are given out all over the state with about $10.75 million given out over the years to about 5,300 middle school students, Dean of Students Connie Holland said. It is nice to have resources like GEARUP and the school's PIQUE, which is open to all of the schools, to help parents navigate the road to college, she said. PIQUE stands for Parent Institute Quality Education and is a 10-week course, available in Spanish and Amazing Finds NEW & USED FURNITURE & MUCH, MUCH MORE! Hurry in for the Fall Haul Sale Two Locations - 30,000 square feet RED BLUFF 530-917-1138 REDDING 530-917-7797 22660 Antelope Blvd. 3351 S. Market St. amazingfindsredbluff.com amazingfindshome.com 9am – 8pm (closed Saturdays) 9am – 6:30pm daily Tehama County 4-H Program Enrolling new members for the upcoming year. Enrollment deadline is the November meeting of the club you are joining. 4-H is open to youth members ages 5-18. Wide variety of projects! More information is available: http://cetehama.ucanr.edu and 527-3101 Red Bluff Businessman's Bible Study (RBBBS) Join us!! Network with other Christian Businessmen Next Meeting Monday, November 18th 7:00a - 8:00a FREE Coffee 331 Elm Street, Red Bluff RSVP 530-736-6775