Glendale Union High School District

Blankets made for grieving children
Members of the girls badminton team at Sunnyslope High School joined together for a volunteer opportunity with nonprofit organization, New Song Center. The organization assists grieving children who have suffered the loss of a close family member. Sunnyslope Badminton helped the cause by sewing and creating special felt blankets that would be delivered to the children.

To learn more about Sunnyslope volunteer efforts, visit the Sunnyslope website at http://sunnyslope.guhsdaz.org.

McClure wins school supplies
Sunnyslope High wood shop teacher William McClure recently won a Teacher of the Month recognition and $250 worth of school supplies from Phoenix attorney, Mark Breyer.

McClure’s students nominated him in Breyer’s monthly Teacher Appreciation Contest. He was surprised when Mark Breyer himself showed up to his classroom and rewarded him with a $250 check, an appreciation plaque and a pizza party for him and his students.

Madison Elementary School District

Take a tour of all Madison schools
The Madison Elementary School District will host its annual Discover Madison tour Thursday, Dec. 6. The tour will begin at 8:30 a.m. at the Madison District Office, 5601 N. 16th St.

Attendees will board a yellow school bus and visit each of Madison’s elementary schools, with principals serving as tour guides. Each stop will focus on individual schools and offer insight about their signature programs. Open enrollment begins Dec. 1.

The tour includes a luncheon at the District Office and will conclude by noon. The event is open to the public; space is limited. To RSVP, visit https://madisonaz.org/discover-madison-tour/.

Osborn Elementary School District

Longview principal lauded for leadership
Longview Principal Benjamin Smith has been selected as the 2018 Outstanding Administrator by the Arizona Art Education Association. His support of staff and focus on the arts help bring the school’s core focus and vision to life and are valued by students and teachers alike.

The arts are integrated into the life and spirit of all things Longview, and Smith’s leadership allows this whole-child and whole-adult learning to occur. Smith will be honored at a conference in early November.

Encanto creates Thinking Maps
Osborn District teachers began professional development studying Thinking Maps as a means to provide students with a way to graphically represent their thinking. They promote concept development, reflective thinking, and assist with clarity in communication.

Encanto School third graders in Maria Garcia’s class worked on a life-sized tree map when studying the text “Winning the Right to Vote.” The purpose of the tree map is to classify or sort ideas into categories. After reading the text, students identified the main idea and key details. They created the tree map by organizing key details. For this text, the key idea (at the top of the tree map) was the idea that many people fought long and hard for the right to vote. Details were gathered under the following categories: African Americans, Women, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Mexican Americans, and Young People.

Students then physically arranged the ideas and their next step in learning will be to move from the concrete (physical placement of ideas) to the abstract (organizing ideas into writing).

Phoenix Union High School District

Hackathon set for Nov. at Camelback
Camelback High School is gearing up for an overnight Innovation Hackathon, Nov. 17-18. The Hackathon includes entrepreneurship, engineering and Montessori science students from Camelback as well as fifth-eighth graders from four partner elementary schools: Madison No. 1, Pat Tillman, William T. Machan and Wilson Elementary.

The students and teachers choose to focus the hack on four of the goals from the Global Goals Initiative campaign—Fresh Water, Education, Food/Agriculture and Recycle & Reuse.

Several community partners, colleges and entrepreneurs will help kick off the event and the first “hack” of the evening will be two “farm to table” chefs who will be working with Camelback’s advanced culinary students to prepare the evening meal.

The teams of inventors (students) will come to the Hack with a problem to solve and the idea for their prototype. They will have Friday evening through Saturday morning to build their prototype (in the school’s maker space) and create their pitch board. They will pitch their idea to a panel of judges to compete for awards in various categories, Saturday morning.

The Camelback Entrepreneurship/ DECA students came up with this event. They secured the sponsors, met with the teachers, and designed the agenda.

Bioscience gets visit from radio station
Bioscience High School won the KISS FM Radio Campus Invasion featuring radio personality Bryce Vine. Bioscience competed against 30 other Valley schools and won “through relentless voting on behalf of the students.”

The radio station visited the campus on Sept.14, and took over lunchtime with performances and giveaways. School Student Government President Miguel Camacho Calderon learned of the contest and, along with the rest of Student Government (STUGO), “it took off like wild fire. Each day, our student body visited the KISS FM website to vote,” STUGO sponsor Brooke Shapiro-Heisel said.

Police, fire students attend conference
Franklin Police and Fire High School students attended the ABLE (Arizona Black Law Enforcement Employees) 2018 Criminal Justice Conference held at Mesa Community College, Sept. 12-14.

Students participated in the three-day event and had classes such as Effective Communication Techniques, Understanding Mental Health, The Community and the Criminal Justice System, Stop the Bleed, and Using Your Skills after Policing.

Councilwoman helps students register to vote
Phoenix Dist. 4 Councilwoman Laura Pastor was very excited to spend National Voter Registration Day at North High School, helping some first-time voters register on Sept. 25.

One Arizona partnered with Phoenix Union High School District to help get youth registered at all 18 high schools. “It is so important to vote and let your voice be heard,” Pastor told students at North High. “It only takes two minutes to change the world.”

Sanders receives Esperanza Award
Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC) last month honored its 2018 Esperanza Latino Teacher Awards recipients, and among them was Genevieve Sanders of Metro Tech High School. Each honoree received a $5,000 cash award and a stipend of $2,500 to their respective schools.

Sanders teaches Honors Spanish 3-4 and Advanced Placement Spanish, and is the school’s World Language Department instructional leader. She has been at Metro Tech since 2014, and taught four years at Cesar Chavez High School. Her teaching career spans 25 years, including seven years in Mexico.
Raised in Mexico in “extreme poverty” during her formative years, she didn’t go to school in second, third or fourth grades, but sold chiclets and candy in the streets to help the family. She was a high school dropout, a teenage mom. But with her children as her motivating force, and “esperanza,” or hope, she made it to the United States in 2000. Now her classmates and colleagues call her La Doctora.

The Esperanza Awards continues to be the only awards program in Arizona that specifically recognizes Latino teachers who are nominated by their peers. For the past 20 years, CPLC has recognized more than 100 outstanding Latino educators who continue to inspire future generations and positively impact communities in Arizona.

“This recognition means a lot to me because it reminds me of my humble origins and the many struggles and hardships my children and I have overcome as first generation Mexican immigrants,” Sanders said. “I feel that my story inspires my students to stay focused on their education no matter what obstacles they face.”

PUHSD hosts expo for middle schoolers
The fifth-annual Phoenix Union Experience High School Expo is Saturday, Nov. 3 at Phoenix College, 1202 W. Thomas Road. It is an opportunity for middle school/junior high students to explore the many schools and programs available at Phoenix Union High School District and meet students and staff.

It is also the first official day to register for one of the Phoenix Union schools. There is student entertainment, giveaways, food and fun, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is free to attend and no RSVP is needed.

New club at Central for LGBTQ youth
Central LGBTQ youth advocates created the school’s first Genders and Sexualities (GSA) club in 10 years, as well as a campus and community supports network, Rainbow Spectrum. Student Prevention and Intervention Specialist Aedan Hanley is sponsoring the student club.

Washington Elementary School District

New program to help kids with behaviors
Childhood can be a difficult period, full of adjustments and challenges—and can shape the behavioral health for a person’s entire life.

By bringing treatment directly into schools, PSA Behavioral Health Agency’s new partnership with Washington Elementary School District makes critical BH services more accessible to North Central Phoenix children.

Students at three WESD schools—Orangewood, R.E. Miller and Royal Palm—will have access to individual counseling services, psychiatric evaluations, and medications provided by PSA’s nearby Youth Intake and Service Center.

By providing these services inside the school students will have access to on-site care in real time by licensed professionals.

Through the partnership students learn to better manage stress and anxiety by learning coping and resiliency skills. Students will also learn to develop healthy boundaries to help them better focus in school.

Private and Charter Schools

Many countries represented at Phoenix Christian Prep
Phoenix Christian Preparatory School has welcomed students from all over the world through its international program for almost 20 years. These students enrich the campus and teach students and staff about the uniqueness of their own cultures, while also showing how much they have in common with U.S.-born students.

The school currently hosts international and exchange students from China, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Ethiopia, Brazil, Sweden, Spain, and Mexico.

International students have the opportunity to build relationships with other Phoenix Christian students through participation in extracurricular activities such as athletics, symphonic band, robotics, and more. The school also offers an ESL (English as a Second Language) to every international student to help them become more confident in their mastery of the English language.

All students at Phoenix Christian are well served by its college preparatory curriculum, which equips students for college acceptance tests and sets a strong academic foundation for them to thrive in their future. They also thrive in Phoenix Christian’s diploma program concentrations, such as STEM and Fine Arts.

MHP seniors set to tour Japan
About 25 Madison High Prep seniors will explore Japan March 16-24, 2019 through a partnership with EF Educational Tours. MHP students will be guided through Tokyo, Hakone, Odawara, and Kyoto by a full-time tour director.

Highlights of the spring break excursion include guided tours by local experts of a technology showroom, Buddhist temple, Shinto shrine, and sumo wrestling venue in Tokyo. Students also will enjoy a cruise on Lake Ashi and a cable car ride to Mount Komagatake in Hakone, as well as a castle tour in Odawara, and a bullet train ride to Kyoto, followed by a guided tour of the city.

EF Educational Tours has partnered with educators for over 50 years to transform the way more than one million students look at the world. As an accredited institution, EF Educational Tours provides global education programs that blend classroom, digital and experiential learning for students. EF Tours emphasizes experiential learning to help students gain new perspectives and build skills for the future.

Fashion Show spotlights Brophy Prep seniors
The Brophy College Preparatory Mothers’ Guild and Neiman Marcus will host the annual Brophy Fashion Show on Friday, Nov. 9, with proceeds exclusively benefiting the Brophy Financial Aid Fund.

This year’s event will take place at the JW Marriott Camelback Inn, and feature the fashions of select local retailers.

While the fun and lively event is an annual crowd pleaser, the Brophy Fashion Show’s fundraising purpose is to dramatically change the lives of deserving young men thorough contributions to the Brophy College Preparatory Financial Aid Fund.

The event starts at 10:30 a.m. and includes a social hour, lunch, shopping, raffles, and spectacular fashions showcased by professional models and Brophy seniors. To purchase tables, individual tickets, centerpieces, commemorative shirts or raffle tickets, go to www.brophyprep.org/fashionshow.

Bomb dogs search kids’ backpacks
Phoenix Police and Homeland Security introduced Midtown Primary’s students to two “bomb dogs” during a special visit to the campus last month. The trainers and handlers told the kids about the skills the dogs have, how they are trained, and how they are put to work to keep us safe.

The handlers put the dogs through their paces to demonstrate to the students how they can smell out an unsafe object in a backpack or on a person. The dogs successfully found the planted backpack hidden around the assembly hall, among the students’ backpacks. The dogs are rewarded with play. The dogs then hung around to give the students a chance to meet them.

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