Vision of Newberg Nation in 2015-16

Are you, like everyone else in Newberg Nation, curious about what NHS will look like when school opens in the fall for the 15’-16’ school year? Over the next few weeks we will be sharing many of the reorganization efforts that are underway as we work hard to continually improve Newberg High and to provide all of our students with exemplary educational experiences! Beginning with today’s newsletter and following over the next two weeks’ pay attention Tigers as many of the exciting things we have planned will be unveiled!

Our first announcement for all of you Flying Tigers is to share how we are working tirelessly to help freshmen students have a great freshmen year, one in which they feel strongly connected to our school, their transition from 8th to 9th grade feels smooth and seamless, and we provided them with an academic tool kit and mental mindset to becoming very successful high school students!

THE FRESHMEN EXPERIENCE!
We call this campaign “The Freshmen Experience” as we want each of our freshmen to have a great beginning to high school, to get off on the right foot, to feel like they have the guidance and support structures needed to successfully navigate their first year of high and to feel like they are prepared for and excited about the academic challenges that lie ahead for them!

Our first “Freshmen Experience” activity will be our Incoming Freshmen Night to be held this coming Monday,  March 9, from 6-815pm, here at NHS. We will begin the event with a brief welcome in the auditorium and then students and their families can travel through the five presentations we have prepared; College and Career Planning, Developing an Academic Pathway, Getting Involved at NHS, All Things Newberg Nation Curriculum Fair and a session titled “The Secrets To My Success: NHS Students and Parents Sharing Tips, Tricks and Strategies to High School Success!”

The “College and Career” session will focus on helping freshmen and their families understand the multiple pathways that a successful high school journey can entail, as well as the successful futures students can begin building as early as their first term at NHS! Our “Academic Pathway” presentation will talk all things academics, what their students four year academic adventure at NHS can look like in terms of options for choosing courses, etcetera.

Our “Getting Involved” session will talk about why students who get involved are more successful, how to get involved and explain our efforts to get 100% of our students meaningfully involved in at least one or more co-curricular programs here at NHS. “The Secrets to My Success” session will be led by current NHS parents and students talking about tips, tricks, strategies, planning and traveling the four years of high school as a Flying Tiger! It should be very informative for parents new to high school!

Finally, our “All Things Newberg Nation” presentation will be a large curriculum fair with academic, co-curricular, club, activities and athletics booths and tables for students and parents to randomly walk about gathering information on how to get involved as well as to get questions answered! This is a great time to connect with athletic coaches, club advisors, performing arts directors and many teachers while also finding out how to communicate with those staff members and find out what summer camps, activities and plans they may have for their respective programs!

Administrators will also be available during the “All Things Newberg Nation” session in the commons to answer questions about the Freshmen Experience, Incoming Freshmen Night, forecasting for classes next year and anything else incoming freshmen and their parents may want to know about Newberg Nation and/or our reorganization efforts!

INPUT ON COURSES OFFERED IN 2015-16!
Following Incoming Freshmen Night we will begin our forecasting efforts (students and parents giving input on courses they would like to see us offer) at the middle schools with a stop at Mt. View scheduled for Tuesday, March 10 and Chehalem Valley on Wednesday, March 11. During these forecasting meetings counselors from NHS will be handing out forecasting sheets and course guides to students and explaining to students how to go about filling out the forms and selecting courses. The course guides and the forecasting sheets will also be available for download at http://www.newberg.k12.or.us/nhs.

Our forecasting efforts will also be supported by our initial offering of a Forecasting Help Center on Wednesday, March 18, from 5-7pm in the West Commons at NHS. This is a great opportunity to meet with a counselor or administrator and get all of your curriculum, course and forecasting questions answered! We will also help you and your student fill out the form if needed!

Finally, all forecasting forms will be due on Thursday, March 19th!  NHS students will return them to their advisory teacher.  Forms can also be delivered to the Forecasting Help Center on Wednesday, March 18.

2015-16’ COUNSELOR ASSIGNMENTS FOR FROSH
In furthering our efforts to help our freshmen students get a great start to high school we will also be restructuring some other areas at NHS including how freshmen will be assigned to their respective counselors. The incoming freshmen class will be assigned to their counselor based on where their name falls in the alphabet. If the student’s last name begins with the letters ”A through E” your counselor will be Mr. Baker. If your last name begins with “F through L” your counselor will be Mrs. Conrad. If your last name begins with the letters “M through R” your counselor will be Mrs. Eggiman and if your last name starts with the letters “S through Z” Mr. Monson will be your counselor.

This change in how we assign students to counselors was necessitated by our efforts to improve our master scheduling process as was outlined in our article “Changing Needs at NHS” that was published in our December 19 newsletter (available to read by clicking this link: http://www.newberg.k12.or.us/nhs.

 In this article we explain that we are going to no longer schedule students and teachers by small school but instead, schedule the entire school as one. Scheduling the entire school as one allows us the flexibility to offer more choices of courses and teachers for students, it will reduce the number of scheduling conflicts that students have while providing them with more access to more courses, it will help us better balance class sizes, we will be able to provide a more diverse blend of courses and it will empower our content area departments (math, English, etc.) more structure to work together in supporting our students’ academic endeavors.

Moving from a small school scheduling model to a whole school one also warrants our need to rethink how we will provide support services for our students as we will no longer have them grouped by small school. This is why we will be assigning our incoming freshmen next year to their counselor based upon the first letter of their last name. Meanwhile, all students currently at NHS (next year’s 10th, 11th & 12th graders) will keep their current counselor and will continue to do so until they graduate. Thus, we will phase in assigning our students to counselor by the first letter of their last name beginning next school year and phase this in year by year for the next four years, at which time all students at NHS will be assigned to their counselor by the first initial of their last name.

STRUCTURED LEARNING COMMUNITIES
Another initiative we are putting into place to support our Freshmen Experience efforts next year includes grouping our freshmen into Structured Learning Communities (SLC’s). These grouping of freshmen will be aligned with the student’s counselor and the student’s advisory teachers and administrators in an effort to maintain the personalized learning that NHS has become known for.

It is through the SLC’s that student support and communication efforts will be undertaken to ensure that we continue to scaffold layers of support to all of our freshmen upon their arrival at NHS. From building meaningful relationships with our freshmen early in their NHS career to providing academic, career and college preparation (as well as monitoring these efforts for every student), the SLC’s will act as a key support tool in helping define a new “Freshmen Experience” for our youngest and newest students at NHS.

UPDATED ADVISORY CURRICULUM
Having all of our freshmen have a first year of high school in which they feel like they were set up to be successful is our goal for our freshmen and in support of this goal we will also be updating our advisory curriculum. Our new advisory curriculum for our freshmen will be tailored to support their “Freshmen Experience” and will include us helping them build an academic tool box, or a set of study skills, habits, strategies and the mindsets that go with them to help them understand how much control and influence they have on their own academic success, especially when given specific tools to utilize.

Our updated freshmen advisory curriculum will also include a coordinated effort between counselors, teachers and administrators in terms of communication about academic progress, attendance and behavioral matters. With the use of our new Interval Progress Report model (IPR) it is our intent to provide feedback to students and parents on their progress in two or three week intervals (the exact duration remains to be determined). These regular and frequent checkpoints will help support our freshmen from falling off track quite so early, or so often, while providing everyone that is supporting them with regular information on their progress.

Updating our advisory curriculum, especially for freshmen, will also include efforts to help support our freshmen’s social and personal growth, including how they are adjusting to high school life and the additional freedoms and responsibilities that come with this phase of their development. Over the course of the past year we have studied the behavioral norms here at NHS and have identified many areas that we feel we can make a significant impact in helping our student’s social growth while encouraging them to make healthy choices for a brighter future.

Thus, our updated advisory curriculum will support our efforts to define what the Freshmen Experience is at NHS and in so doing help us support our freshmen’s growth in every regard.

COLLABORATION BETWEEN MIDDLE AND HIGH SCHOOLS
While we have outlined many of the new structures and strategies we are going to employ with our freshmen next year there are also a couple of other events that are going to occur this spring in an effort to, again, help make their transition from middle to high school as seamless as possible.

Following spring break many of our middle and high school teachers will be meeting to talk about the incoming freshmen and how to best go about supporting them as they transition to the high school. Meanwhile, administrators and counselors from all three schools will also be partnering to ensure a smooth handoff as our students travel from 8th to 9th grade. These collaboration efforts will continue throughout the spring in varying degrees and at different times.

REGISTRATION AND FROSH ORIENTATION: SAVE THE DATES!!!!
Another effort we are undertaking to help support our freshmen (as well as to help communicate the reorganization changes here at NHS in general) is to hold our student registration on Tuesday, September 1st and Wednesday, September 2nd. On Tuesday, September 1st all of our freshmen will register in the morning and then will participate in our freshmen orientation that afternoon. It will be a day dedicated to getting our freshmen acclimated to NHS, informed about the many support structures we have in place for them, excited about becoming a Flying Tiger, and ready for the first day of school that follows a week later on September 8.

 Please mark your calendars that registration for NHS freshmen will be on Tuesday, Sept. 1 in the morning followed by frosh orientation that afternoon. NHS seniors will register that afternoon. Juniors will follow the next morning (Sept. 2) with sophomores registering the afternoon of Sept. 2. Exact times for each group will be released in the foreseeable future.

More information regarding registration for all students will follow over the next few weeks as we share more and more exciting news about all things Newberg Nation for next school year!

NEXT WEEKS INFORMATION IN THE NEWSLETTER?
Our newsletter over the next two weeks will be filled with even more exciting news about all the great things we are doing here in Newberg Nation to support our beloved Flying Tigers!