Lassiter’s Liberator

Week beginning October 22, 2007

Hello, everybody out there in cyberspace! I am so happy that you took time out of your busy schedule to visit us this week to check out the latest installment of the Liberator Blog on www.southernleecavs.com!

This week (October 22-26) marks the FINAL week of instruction for the first grading period of the 2007-08 school year! It seems like only yesterday we were welcoming 1,200 students for the first day of school, and here we are now at the MID-POINT of our semester!

This week’s blog entry has a “serious” tone to it, as we are FOCUSED on preparing our students for success on the mid-term exams that begin on Thursday, October 25 (1st and 2nd period), and conclude on Friday, October 26 (3rd and 4th period). As stated in previous entries, and as written in the letter sent home to you by your student, these mid-terms count for TWO (2) TEST GRADES, and we beseeched and implored our students to take these exams very seriously! The exams are cumulative in nature, as they cover everything introduced between August 27 and October 24, and are in 100% alignment with the objectives and competencies in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study. They will be administered under EOC/VOCAT settings, with multiple choice, short answer, and in some instances, essay questions on the test.

Just as you have done for the duration of your child’s educational career, please help them to focus and prepare for success by:

• Insisting that they invest at least one hour per evening on reviewing notes, prior quizzes and tests, and review exercises.
• Insist that they get at least 8 hours of sleep per evening so their body and mind will be rested for the tasks at hand the next day.
• Insist that they enjoy a nutritious and sustaining breakfast either at home or in our dining hall so that they will have enough carbohydrate energy to sustain them throughout the day and their academic activities.

The grading period will officially end after school on Friday, October 26, and after a scheduled teacher workday on Monday, October 29, our students will return to school on Tuesday, October 30 and begin the second (and final) nine week grading period of the first semester!

In other academic news:

Southern Lee High School instructional personnel met on Monday, October 22, 2007 in their Professional Learning Community to discover how to encourage and recognize better writing skills from their students. As you know, one of our instructional goals here is for our sophomores to perform at or above state average (50%) on the North Carolina Writing Assessment for Grade 10, which will be administered in March 2008. Mrs. Wendy Bryan, English instructor, and her colleagues from the English department, facilitated an hour-long workshop on the grading rubric used to grade student essays and on how to recognize quality writing. Beginning Friday, October 26, ALL Southern Lee High School students will participate in a Drop Everything and Write, or DEW, exercise! Here’s why:

12th graders have SAT essays to write as well as college application essays to complete and Senior term papers to write. For those who are entering the workforce upon graduation, there are applications to complete and statements of purpose to write so the company will find them to be an attractive candidate (Resume’s).

11th graders have SAT’s to take, as well as writing the major research paper for their English 11 class!

10th graders have to take the North Carolina Writing Test for Grade 10 AND prepare to write their MAJOR research paper as a component of their GRADUATION PROJECT they must complete in order to graduate!

9th graders are preparing for what they’ll have to do as sophomores, AND be prepared for the GRADUATION PROJECT!

See how important clear and effective writing is? Please support us in our “DEW Date” activities!

Things are going well for us this year because of your kind words, thoughts, and gestures of interest and sincerity. I encourage you to visit with us during the instructional day and walk the halls with us. Please be sure to mark your calendar for November 12-16, which is American Education Week. Don’t forget, your student could mess around and find himself/herself “PRINCIPAL FOR A DAY!”

Until next time,

HDLassiter

Week beginning October 14, 2007

Happy Monday, everyone out there in Cavalier-land and to all of our friends in CyberSpace! Thank you for visiting our website and checking out this latest installment of the Liberator! I don’t know how long this one will be, as I am joining our teachers and staff in preparations for our BIG mid-term exams that are forthcoming on October 25 and October 26.

I spent some time over the weekend preparing a letter to our parents/legal guardians that will be distributed to all students during a special homeroom session on Monday, October 15. These letters discuss the following:

The end of the first grading period (October 26, 2007)
The BIG mid-term exams (October 25-26, 2007)
Our exciting and growing webpage
American Education Week-November 12-16, 2007 and the following associated activities:
Teacher for a Day
Principal for a Day
Thank an Educator Letter-Writing Campaign
Third Annual SLHS Visitation Day (Thursday, November 15, 2007)
Issues in Education Discussion Day
Continued call for volunteerism in our school-hall monitors, test proctors, classroom volunteers, etc.

Please be sure to ask for your letter when your student arrives home from school. If you do not receive a letter, please e-mail me at hdlprincipal@aol.com, and I will e-mail a letter to you as an attachment!

Last week was an interesting week at Southern Lee High School. We enjoyed some tremendous instructional victories, with our teachers and students doing some fabulous things in the classrooms and out in the community. For example, Southern Lee High School students and teachers earned the following accolades at the Lee County Fair:
Our Parenting/Childhood Development Class under the direction of Gwen Williams earned a ribbon for their display on child development
Our Future Teachers of America under the direction of Laresa Watkins and Molly Poston earned a ribbon for their display on the state of teaching in North Carolina.
Our FFA under the direction of Carrie Womack earned a BLUE RIBBON for their display on how everyday household products are generated and produced through the agricultural manufacturing process.
SEVERAL Southern Lee students earned Blue, Yellow, and White ribbons for their artwork that was displayed. These were Ron Noles’ art students, and additional pieces are on display in our hallways.

But, just as there were some great positives, there were some negatives, as a few students who made some poor decisions took up a great portion of my time. This is why parental AND community involvement is SO vital to the success of a school. I heard a very wise man say something that we say to our students as we try to help them to make good decisions:

“Is what you’re about to do/think/say REALLY something that will assist you in the accomplishment of your goals that you’ve set for yourself?”

Although my time was consumed in addressing some of these disciplinary matters, it’s cool. If it takes all day (and some of my weekend) processing disciplinary infractions leading to our school being a better place for the 1, 150 students who wish to do the right thing, then so be it.

We have some events this week at Southern Lee that I’d like to invite you to attend:

Monday, October 15: Boys soccer at home vs. Harnett Central-JV’s at 5, Varsity at 7.
Tuesday, October 16: Third Annual Powder Puff Football Game at 6:30 p.m. in Cavalier Stadium.
Wednesday, October 17: Boys soccer at home vs. Overhills-Varsity at 7.
Thursday, October 18: Boys soccer at home vs. LCHS-JV’s at 5, Varsity at 7.
Friday, October 19: Varsity football at home vs. Western Harnett: Senior Night at 7:30.
Saturday, October 20: Marching Band Competition at Union Pines.

Well, that about does it for this edition. Thanks again for visiting AND reading the Liberator!

HDL

Week beginning October 8, 2007!

HAPPY SECOND WEEK IN OCTOBER, EVERYBODY! Man, I was a little behind schedule getting my Liberator online today, and I appreciated all of the e-mails and calls I got asking “Where’s my blog?” Man, that was great!

Today, October 8, is progress reporting date at Southern Lee. As part of our frequent monitoring of student progress initiative, teachers will send progress reports home by students today and tomorrow. We are 2/3 complete with our first grading period, and it is essential that all students are communicated clearly with so that they know where they stand scholastically. Further, the first grading period ends on Friday, October 26, 2007, and our students will take mid-term exams on Thursday, October 25 and Friday, October 26. These mid-terms are cumulative assessments on what your student has learned thus far in class, and is aligned with the North Carolina Standard Course of Study (available at www.ncpublicschools.org), and should be on par in terms of pacing so that the student/class will have completed all materials that will be presented on their state-administered finals!

We are in intense mode here at Southern Lee, as we have some ambitious academic goals that we must fulfill. I spoke before the full LCSS Board of Education on Friday, October 5, 2007 and presented the main goals that our faculty and staff have discussed at previous staff meetings and during our School Leadership Team meetings thus far:

We have set the following scholastic goals for the school for the 2007-2008 school year:

A minimum proficiency of 50% proficiency on the North Carolina Writing Test for Grade 10
A minimum proficiency of 70% proficiency on the North Carolina EOC’s
The fulfillment of Adequate Yearly Progress under No Child Left Behind

In order to fulfill these goals, we have to continue to do everything with a degree of intensity, planning, and effort. Here’s the deal:

We have to get our students to take writing seriously. Seniors have to write college application admissions essays and competitive scholarship essays. Juniors have to write on the SAT and in their English classes. Sophomores have the NC Writing Test for Grade 10 AND the Graduation Project. Freshmen have the Graduation Project and 1 year to prepare for the NC Writing Test for Grade 10. This affects all 1,174 students under our roof-NO ONE is exempt.
We have to get our students to understand that they have to apply themselves on their EOC’s/VOCATS/teacher-made finals. EOC/VOCAT teachers have goal summary/objective competency reports that highlight what goals/objectives constitute portions/questions on the EOC’s/VOCATS. Pacing guides have been written, lessons planned, and assessments created that are in alignment with the NCSCOS. The key is to follow them and to periodically assess student performance through the mid-term assessment, common assessments, and (new) the preliminary final exam that will be a valid and reliable tool to give our students a glimpse of what their final will look like, demystify the final, give or students a degree of confidence, boost their grade average (preliminary final should count for at least 2 quiz or test grades), and give US an idea of how our students will perform allowing us to tailor last week review to their needs.
AYP can be achieved by accurate record keeping.. When we generate test-builds, we will reference the names on the builds to those actually enrolled in our school. REMEMBER: Our AYP, in part, is determined by performance on the English 9 and Algebra 1 EOC’s by the subgroups in our school. A subgroup is constituted by student enrollment of over 40 in a subgroup (Exceptional Children, Limited English Proficient, Black, White, Hispanic, Economically Disadvantaged, etc.). Another component of our AYP is our graduation cohort rate.

In other news affecting your students at Southern Lee High School:

Southern Lee High School is participating in the Character Education initiative, with the following traits being observed:

October: Responsibility
November: Integrity
December: Selflessness
January: Honesty
February: Perseverance
March: Commitment
April: Courage
May: Self-discipline

The Cavalier Word for the Week is: Dissuade. Please be sure to highlight this word during your instruction this week!

What Does It Mean-Character Education Trait of Responsibility

“There are plenty of recommendations on how to get out of trouble cheaply and fast. Most of them come down to this: Deny your responsibility”
Lyndon Baines Johnson

GET YOUR STUDENTS TO TELL YOU WHAT THEY THINK THIS MEANS!

It’s been a pretty good semester thus far! I am still looking for some parents to come in and volunteer with us during the course of the instructional day. Don’t forget, we will have another PTSO/Parental Involvement initiative in November that will coincide with American Education Week. Featured plans are:

Principal for a Day
Teacher for a Day
Parental Visitation Day (Third Annual)
Thank an Educator Day
Thank a Parent Day

Thank you again for calling and e-mailing me demanding to know where your blog was! I promise I won’t be late again!

Until next time!

HDL