Principal
Notes
Doug
Lyons 11/04/2013
The first quarter is
closing out this week and the kids are recovering from a great week of activities.
We had the Nature’s Classroom trip, class field trips, a Red Sox World Series
Victory and of course Halloween. We were
fortunate to be able to get anything done last week with all of the happenings. Fall/winter has arrived and we are hearing
from kids getting ready to switch seasons and start the second quarter. Students have worked hard to complete all of
their work for the quarter, as teachers have also been hard at work trying to
support, engage and challenge your children.
Grades will be uploaded to Edline Friday, November 8th. If you have questions about your child’s grades
or a particular subject please do not hesitate to be in touch with their
teachers or team leader.
Giving
Students Time, Space and Most Importantly a Voice…
The Parker Peer
Leaders and Service (PLS) group continues to lead the school in service work and
activities that highlight our core values of Kindness, Community and Personal
Best. These values could not have been
more evident at our annual Parker Heroes Among Us Award presentation. This year, Kathleen Walsh and Olivia Reardon
took the lead organizing the eighth grade peer leader luncheon to present the
process and decide who would be the Hero that the Parker student community
would like to recognize as this year’s recipient of the award. After much back and forth several well
deserving members of the Reading community were nominated but in time it became
clear that students really wanted to honor and recognize, Shores Salter (Parker
class of 2006).
The following piece
was written and presented by Kathleen Walsh and Olivia Reardon at the 2013 Heroes Among Us presentation
on October 24th at Parker Middle School:
A hero can be described
in many ways. When you think of a hero,
you think of someone you are proud to know, someone whose actions are an
example for the people around them. As
the school year began, the 8th grade Parker Leadership & Service
students began to think of someone in Reading who makes a difference. Throughout the process one person truly stood
out to the group. This is a person the
entire school is proud to recognize. His
actions at the Boston Marathon are actions that all of us should take as an
example…
When the first bomb
went off, he knew it was something that wasn’t supposed to happen, but when the
second bomb exploded just across the street from him, he knew they were in
danger. He says that he just stood there
in shock as people ran around him screaming, but when he gathered himself he
ran across Boylston Street to help. As
he reached the barricades he heard the cries of a woman, “Somebody help me! Who’s going to help me?” He credits destiny
for drawing him towards this woman, whose identity he would later learn was
Roseann Sdoia. She informed him that her
leg was badly injured. Under the
instruction of nearby first responders Mike and Shana, Shores tied a tourniquet
around her leg and then carried her down Boylston Street leaving the stranger
(Roseann) with paramedics. He wouldn’t
learn whose life he had just saved for a couple weeks.
A few weeks after the
tragic ending to what is supposed to be one of the best days in Boston, Shores
and Roseann met for the first time with the help of the news media. In a desperate attempt to find her hero,
Roseann gave a picture of Shores to the media, and within hours she had his
identity. Shores had also spent that day
in the wake of the tragedy wondering if the lady he helped had survived. In addition to being connected with Roseann,
he was also connected with Boston Police Department Officer Shana and
Firefighter Mike. He says that the
relationship he has with these three is much stronger than the relationship he
has with some of his close friends because of the fact they were all there for
each other in the scariest moment of their lives. Their relationship will be lifelong he says.
It takes a big person
to do what Shores did, but it takes an even bigger person to reflect on
it. Shores says, “I have done my best to
take this horrific and extremely sad experience and become stronger as a person
through it.” Shores is incredibly
deserving of this award. He embodies the
aspects that a true hero carries, and despite all the sad, tragic moments of
the day, when asked he says he would do it all again without a second
thought. He has done what we all like to
think we would do in his situation: take action. Shores is not the only hero that walked away
from the Boston Marathon that day.
However, we would like to think that he is a very good representation of
all of them. Although Shores doesn’t
feel comfortable being recognized for his actions, we here at Parker and in the
Reading community could not be more proud of what he did. Despite all the good things said about
Shores, none of them amount to the power of two words, so Thank You! Shores
Salter, winner of the Heroes Among Us Award 2013.
Shores Salter and Roseann
Sdoia stand as the Parker students give Shores a standing ovation during the 2013
Heroes Among Us presentation.
A highlight of the
presentation was in listening to students talk about Shores Salter as someone who
not only acted heroically but also someone who maybe could represent them in
the future.
Special thanks to Chris
Copeland, Vonda Gauthier, and Leah Cristi for supporting and guiding Kathleen
and Olivia through this presentation. We
also want to recognize and thank eighth grade student leaders. We are learning here at Parker that when we
give students time and space and an opportunity to create… they always exceed
expectations.
Learning
from what we test…and why it works in Reading!
The teachers in all curricula
areas have been working on common assessments called District Determined
Measures (DDM’s). These assessments are
to act as an indicator or link between teacher professional practice and student
achievement. This is all part of the new
teacher evaluation system in Massachusetts.
All districts are participating in creating assessments to use in this new
process. The Massachusetts Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) have graciously given systems an
opportunity to pilot new common DDM assessments this year. Reading is taking full advantage of this
opportunity to give teachers time to collaborate at the middle level to create
assessments, and to genuinely learn from the process which will include really
looking at student work and how that relates to instruction. This work has not been reduced to an act of
compliance, but has become an opportunity to participate in a professional
learning community as it relates to each academic content area. What is also unique in Reading’s DDM process
is that the work is being led and facilitated by teacher leaders, teachers are
given time within the professional development calendar, and most importantly
we are committed to learning how kids learn based on what they produce on
assessments. While teachers lead and
facilitate this work they are directly involved from the start of the assessment
process to create and own what is produced.
This is not common throughout the state but is working for us here…more
to follow.
