Issaquah Highlands Connections
September 2014
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SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT by Leslie Warrick, Ashland Park
First Day of School September 3, 2014 Did you know that your MS or HS student will be attending school 45 minutes later on Wednesdays? Some education advocates have been patiently waiting for this, as the push to get ESHB 2261 implemented has been a long journey. In the Washington State Legislative Session in 2009, it was mandated that the minimum instructional hours in WA State public schools be increased for students in grades 1-12. According to RCW28A.150.220(2), districts must meet 1,000 hours of instructional hours for grades 1-8, and 1,080 hours for grades 9-12. The Issaquah School District has decided to implement these changes one year ahead of schedule and to encompass more grade levels than what the state law requires. This Issaquah School District Administration made this decision in the collaboration with the Issaquah School Board and the Issaquah Education Association; now that’s teamwork! You can visit the Issaquah School District website for more information about this topic at www.issaquah.wednet.edu Issaquah PTSA Reflections Art Competition It’s not too early to start on your Reflections project! The 2014-2015 Reflections Art Contest theme is “The world would be a better place if…“ Entries from all grades and all abilities are welcome in the following six categories: Visual Arts, Literature, Dance Choreography, Film Production, Photography and Music Composition. Student entries will be collected soon after school begins in October. Great Schools Happen Because of You! What makes a great school district? Community support is crucial in maintaining the excellent schools that Issaquah is renowned for! Don’t forget, there are three ways you can support your schools to kick-start the school year. First, join your PTSA – your PTSA funds educational programs that our state does not pay for. In addition, the PTSA is the strongest and largest advocacy group which advocates for the welfare of our students in Olympia. Second, donate to the Issaquah School’s Foundation. All in for Kids Annual Fund Campaign this is this Fall. The final thing you can do is, learn about VIS (Volunteers for Issaquah Schools) and their important work in supporting education. Visit their website at www.visvote.org for more information.
SEPTEMBER EVENTS
Attention Middle School and High School Parents: Increased Instruction Hours – Wednesdays!
Grand Ridge Elementary 9/2 9/3 9/23 9/26
Meet Your Teacher/Welcome Back Social: 3:00 – 5:30pm First Day of School Curriculum Night: Grades 3-5 6:00-6:45pm Grades 1-2 7:00-7:45pm Picture Day
9/2 9/3 9/4 9/18
Meet the Teacher Day – check website for details and time First Day of School for Grades 1-5 First Day of School for Kindergarten Curriculum Night 6:00pm – 8:00pm.
9/3 9/12 9/16 9/18
First Day of School Back to School Family BBQ, 5:30 - 7:30pm Curriculum Night, 7pm PTSA First Meeting, 12:30 - 2:00pm in the PCMS library
Clark Elementary
Pacific Cascade Middle School Issaquah High School
9/3 9/4 9/5 9/9
First Day of School – Modified Schedule (check online for schedule) Picture Day First Home Football Game –vs-Skyline at 7:00pm Curriculum Night at 6:30pm
Grand Ridge Elementary Meet Your Teacher on September 2 from 3:30pm – 5pm. Attention GR parents/guardians: you don’t want to miss this year’s “Welcome Back” event for all parents and students. The “Meet Your Teacher” event will start at 3:00 until 3:30. The 2014-2015 GR PTSA hosts a Welcome Back Social immediately following.
WITS AND TIDBITS
Exchanging Plowshares For Polygons by Tami Curtis, Two-Slides or Summit Park
The concept of childhood is a relatively recent one in the past 100 years or so. With a few exceptions since the industrialized era, we’ve created a cultural expectation that children under the age of 15 should indulge in long periods of leisure time without much responsibility, schedule, or hard work. We now raise our children to spend their summers exploring, experiencing and getting lost in thought, more than laboring in drudgery. In general, apart from some perfunctory chores like unloading the dishwasher, running some loads of laundry, making beds and caring for the family pet, kids don’t spend their summertime working to feed hungry mouths. In the Highlands, however, summertime is spent feeding hungry minds. If I went door-to-door in my neighborhood and asked what kinds of activities parents lined up for their kids the past few months, there would be reports of pool memberships, vacations with the grandparents, and Science Camp. I would find an assortment of leisure activities paired with educational activities. In place of mucking stalls or picking crops on a farm, kids are learning HTML and marine biology. Twelve-year-olds are more likely to be found logging on to an online Spanish course instead of chopping logs for firewood. Highland parents seem to waste no time finding activities that bring fun and learning together in ways that will hopefully benefit their children’s development and future. We all know our darlings are capable of whiling away the summer toggling between Xbox and Netflix (pushing every parent’s buttons in the meantime), and wasting every brain cell lodged between their ears. Some would say our culture has had enough of long luxurious childhood summers and would prefer to return to an era of minimal idle time. Some would claim that we have overindulged several generations of children who grew up to be lazy and unprepared young adults. Will it be that within the next generation our youth will exchange repose for recitals, leisure for learning, and fun for photosynthesis workshops? I’m not convinced either extreme is the way to raise kids. Complete and constant engagement in academic pursuits can be stressful and is suitable for a minority of agile minds. Let’s go with a farming analogy. In working with crops, farmers periodically set aside their fields for fallow time to regenerate the soil’s nutrients, so the next season they will bounce back with abundance. Let’s say our minds work the same way as these fields. If we push them too hard
our “crops” become weaker and less abundant. If our children are given no time to relax, they may experience “crop” burn-out. Studies show that great creativity comes under circumstances where the mind is peaceful and not randominzed in multitasking. We all do our best thinking in the shower after all, right? It would be nice to spend the entire summer in a state of creative receptiveness -- as if we were in a two-month-long shower -- but that is easier said than done. Being engaged in creative thought is a discipline unto itself and requires diligent practice. The other extreme of allowing our kids to do absolutely nothing over the course of summer seems erroneous too. After all, when we leave a field fallow for too long, it gets overrun by weeds and stubborn to return to planting condition. This fall when our students return to school, our teachers will know which “fields” were had been worked too hard season after season, and which ones were choked with brambles from lack of attention. One of the most disputed topics amongst Highlanders is childrearing and how to best prepare our children for a productive future where they can positively contribute to society. Very few parents want their children rising at 5am, working their fingers to the bone all day just so they can collapse in bed exhausted and awake the next morning to do it all over again. Yet most parents know that leaving kids to their own devices means they’ll be on some electronic device all day “doing nothing”. Whether engaged in computer camps or backpacking, geology or GeoCaching, Highlanders typically put a lot of time and thought into their own approach to childhood. This September, will your children look back at summer having tilled their fields with vigor, or let them run rampant and become overgrown? A two-slide park resident (Summit Park), Tami Curtis is mother of two middle school boys and can be seen running all over the Highlands with Lacey Leigh. Her very supportive husband, Glenn is a great fan and sounding board of her Celtic band, The Fire Inside.