Lassiter’s Liberator

Lassiter’s Liberator!
Week Beginning February 11, 2008

Hello, friends of Southern Lee High School! I am pleased to announce that the second semester of our academic year is moving along quite nicely and smoothly. It’s hard to believe that our year is moving so fast, as I was commenting to one of our assistant superintendents that we’ve officially entered what
I like to call “Banquet Season,” which usually signifies that the proverbial “end is near!” I will write a little about the Southern Lee High School Sound Machine’s annual banquet held on February 5, and some individual and team accomplishments a little later on!

Perhaps the biggest thing I would like for you to take away from this Liberator is for you to be ready to hold out your hand on Friday, February 15, 2008, as your student will bring home their first round of progress reports for the third grading period! We have a program at Southern Lee that requires us to periodically assess and frequently monitor the progress of our students. The frequent monitoring piece requires us to send home progress report every three weeks to you, and return these signed the teacher. These come out at week 3, week 6, and the periodic assessing piece kicks in at Week 9 with the Mid-Term Exams, which are cumulative in nature and cover everything that was taught from day 1 to day 45 (and they count for 2 test grades!).

The second big thing we would like for you to take from this edition of the Liberator is our plan to prepare our sophomores for the North Carolina Writing Test for Grade 10, scheduled for Tuesday, March 4, 2008. All year long, our school and its students have been engaging in what we entitled “Drop Everything and Write” or DEW activities. Each student had to participate, as we are striving to help our students improve their writing skills, as there is renewed emphasis on quality writing across the board. For example:

• Freshmen will have to perform a graduation project in order to graduate from a public high school in North Carolina. Part of this is an 8-10 page research paper on the topic of their choice.
• Sophomores will have to perform this graduation project, in addition to participating in the North Carolina Writing Test for Grade 10.
• Juniors will be introduced to the SAT and ACT, both of which have writing components to them.
• Seniors take the SAT/ACT, write college/university application essays, and have an English term paper as part of our Rigor and Relevance program. In addition, seniors who are matriculating to the 2-year college, technical college, the military, or the workforce MUST be accomplished writers in order to effectively communicate their skills to prospective employers, contacts, or customers. In fact, we are pleased to announce that we are hosting a Community College Fair on Wednesday, February 13 at 1:30! Please encourage your JUNIOR or SENIOR to REGISTER and attend!

With this in mind, Southern Lee will convene an Advisory (homeroom) on Wednesday, February 13 from 8:00-8:15 a.m. Sophomore students will receive a “Primer” for success on the North Carolina Writing Test while they are in homeroom, along with a letter and schedule of events from me. On February 20, we will have a sophomore class assembly in our gymnasium (time to be determined), where we will cover the important aspects of the writing test. Then, on February 27 or 28, we will have a motivational assembly celebrating the accomplishments of our students and to recognize the sophomores for a job well done. We believe that the power of life and death and success rests in the tongue, and if we flood our sophomores with positive reinforcement, we believe they will meet the challenge. Finally, on the morning on March 4, we have planned to feed the 10th graders breakfast prior to the writing test.

The third biggest thing I’d like to present to you is our continued desire to have a flourishing and successful Parent/Teacher/Student organization/association at Southern Lee. I have applied for our school to be a PTA-affiliated school, yet I am also open to the possibility of there being a PTO at our school. To this end, I will invite parents out to another PTA/PTSO Rally at a date to be determined in March.

Fourth, I am pleased to announce that Mr. Randall (Randy) Berkland, Computer Technology teacher, has been named Southern Lee High School Teacher of the Month for February 2008. Mr. Berkland joins Diane Premo, Julie Randolph, Jaci Watson, Wendy Bryan, and Robert Scott as previous winners. These teachers will very soon be eligible to be named Southern Lee High School Teacher of the Year, and move on to district, and hopefully regional and state competition!

Fifth, I am pleased to announce several accomplishments by Southern Lee High School students! Take a look:

At the Southern Lee High School Band Banquet held on February 5 at the Civic Center, the following students were recognized for their outstanding contributions to the band:

Ulises Luviano: Rookie of the Year
Lindsey Burriss: Sophomore of the Year
Jessica Glasson: Junior of the Year
Mary Stevens: Senior of the Year
Jordan Carter: Outstanding Leadership
R.J. Ceynar: Saber Award
J.W. Williams: Musicians Award
Katlynn Premo: Outstanding Marcher
Kimberly Marshburn: Most Dedicated
Jason Simmonds: Most Improved
Doris Clark: Directors Award

Also, on the athletic front, here’s what we are celebrating today:

• Southern Lee High School Men’s Swimming: Cape Fear Valley 3A Conference Champions and state meet participant.
• Southern Lee High School Wresting: Cape Fear Valley 3A Regular Season Conference Champions
• Southern Lee High School Men’s Basketball: Cape Fear Valley 3A Regular Season Conference Champions
• Southern Lee High School Indoor Track: Logan Shearer-2nd place among 1A-2A-3A pole vaulters. Addison Johnson, Nick Bracken, and Aaron Lassiter finished ranked in the top 20 in their respective events (pole vault, shot put, and 300 meter dash, respectively).
• Southern Lee High School Gymnastics: Participant in regional competition.

There are lots of good things happening at and for our school. We appreciate all of your kind words, thoughts, prayers, and visits for and to our school. It is an objective for us to have a top-flight school, and although we experience an occasional “Blip on the Screen,” we enjoy good days and exceptional teachable moments, and that’s what the stuff of a progressing school is made of!

As you check out our webpage, please be sure to visit our P.R.I.D.E. page, which chronicles the accomplishments of our graduating seniors. Mysteriously, some of our seniors have been shy about completing the P.R.I.D.E sheet and allowing us to put them on our P.R.I.D.E. Wall of Fame and P.R.I.D.E. page. Please, if you have a senior, encourage them to share their post-secondary plans for the whole world to see!

Well, that’s about it for this edition. As you know, the doors to our school are always open, and we’d love to host you for a tour and visit. Everything will be on display, and you will be able to walk into any classroom, locker room, restroom, or area of our grounds you wish. All you have to do is show up, ask for me or another administrator, and we’ll go!

Until then,

HDL

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.