This Week in Newberg Nation

Breaking NEWS! Breaking NEWS! AVID Comes to Newberg Nation!
We just heard this past Monday that the Nike School Improvement Foundation has awarded NHS a large grant that will help fund the implementation of an AVID program at NHS! AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination and is a national program that has proven highly successful with kids that struggle in their essential and academic skills growth. The program is known for helping students that want to go to college yet don't  necessarily have the support or skills to reach that goal without some additional assistance.
We are excited that we received the grant as it will help us make an immediate impact on a subgroup of our students that have continued to struggle here at NHS over the past several years! With its own curriculum, core teachers and an AVID elective class, we will be working with middle school teachers to help us identify a cohort of incoming freshmen to help us make up at least one class of AVID this coming fall! This is great news!

Our Tigers RIOT???
You know, it's a good thing Mrs. Risen loves high school activities as much as Mr. Risen because she just had to head over to Memorial Coliseum with him on Wednesday and Thursday evenings to see the Tiger Riot Dance Team tear up the hardwood floor!
With an electrifying routine, uber cool costumes and dance moves most of us wish we could pull off the Tigers tore it up finishing 7th overall at the OSAA State Dance & Drill Championships! Competing in a very difficult bracket the coaches and dancers brought their 'A'  game Wednesday night but stepped it up yet again on Thursday blowing the doors off Memorial with a stellar routine that could only be given an A+!
Way to go dancers, you guys just rocked the Rose Quarter and we are proud of you!

Forecasting Forms DUE NOW!!!
A reminder to all of Newberg Nation that our forecasting forms were due to school counselors yesterday, March 19th. If your student has not returned their forecasting form please do so as soon as possible!

The forecasting forms can also be found at http://www.newberg.k12.or.us/nhs.

Forecasting Help Center a Success!!!
This past Wednesday, March 18th, NHS held the first ever Forecasting Help Center in an effort to help students and parents choose courses, make academic planning decisions, and to fill out our forecasting sheets. The two hours that administrators and counselors staffed the Forecasting Help Center were busy with students and families getting the help and support they needed! We were very excited to see so many Newberg Nation faithful take us up on our offer to assist them with their forecasting needs and we look forward to continuing to pilot this exclusively NHS activity in the years to come!

CRAB FEED AND AUCTION
This past Saturday evening the Newberg Nation Booster Club put on their annual Crab Feed & Auction at the Newberg Armory. With crab stacked four feet high and Matt Willcutts leading the way as our auctioneer, the fun filled evening raised thousands of dollars that will positively impact all things Newberg Nation!
Given the outstanding decor, food, auction items and the number of individuals volunteering to make the event a success one can only wonder how many volunteer hours alone went into making this such a successful evening! In that same spirit we would like to thank all of the volunteers, and especially our booster club members who went the extra mile, for putting on such a spectacular event in an effort to help provide financial resources to our programs! Now those are some Flying Tigers!

Silverton or bust!
It's Future Farmers of America (FFA) State Convention weekend this weekend as our Future Farmers head to Silverton to compete in the FFA State Championships! From electrifying statewide meetings to public speaking, debating, interviewing and more, our FFA students will be competing against other district and regional qualifiers from across Oregon during the four day event that begins today, Friday, March 20.

We wanted to give a shout out to our very own Margaret Halstead who is running for a coveted state officer position while in Silverton. FFA state officers spend their first year out of high school as FFA ambassadors across the state of Oregon helping to run all things FFA at the state level. Good luck Margaret and all of our FFA competitors!

VandenHoek does it again!
Kudos to Kiernen VandenHoek who was announced this week as the winner of a national medal at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards! Kiernen backed up an outstanding state performance having won three Gold Keys at the state level by taking home the national gold as well! Way to go Kiernen!

Got Career?
This past Tuesday all of our juniors, their advisory teachers and all of our counselors loaded up and headed to the Career Expo being held at the Oregon Convention Center. Filled with employers, workplace gadgets, mock interviews and networking with potential employers it was awesome to see our Tigers adorned in business attire and rehearsing those soft skills they will need to make themselves more employable!
Kudos to our counseling, advisory and volunteer teams that all came together to make this an overwhelming success!

 Many other scholarships are due soon after Spring Break. Check the current scholarship list for more details.

Where Eagles (errr, Tigers) Dare!
Congratulations to Chris Sproul who shared this week that he has been accepted to Portland State University while also just earning his Eagle Scout! Have you ever earned your Eagle Scout? Wow, what an accomplishment Chris, you are one Flying Tiger and we are proud of you!

Spring Break Plans? Check these Tigers out!
Twelve of our beloved NHS Tigers are building houses in the remote desert of Mexico this spring break for people currently living in plywood shacks! Clearly a display of what type of "Tigers" Newberg Nation has they each had to apply to be approved as volunteers, nor are they all members of the local churches that are sponsoring the event, but our Tigers wanted to participate on this project nonetheless!
With supply trucks crossing the border this week and the students leaving yesterday (Thursday, March 19), these Tigers also had to go through extensive training beginning in August and ending as recently as this week.

The Tigers'  involved are:
Noah Stone, Megan Tarmichael, Jessica Gauvin, Megan Kaus, Jenna Allison Kasey Allison, Brenna Baker, Jacob Brand, Sabrina Denton, Isaac Fawver Ben Hampton, Betsy LeClair, Magiee Hodgdon

Joining a group of 12 adults and 18 other teens they will be building homes and relationships in Equipo City, Sonora, Mexico this Spring Break, about 200 miles south of Bisbee, Arizona. They will build four houses for families currently living in tin shacks and they will do it all in six days! Yes, we said four houses in six days!
They will also help with other community improvements and work with school children. Several students are taking down clothing and household supplies they collected from the greater Newberg community as well and several NHS students have made this trip their senior project! They will live in tents (no electricity, Wi-Fi, limited water etc.) while there. If that¡¦s not enough our Tigers also had to raise their own $650 to go on the trip! This is not a new thing to Newberg Nation, however, as each year the North Valley and Newberg Friends Churches partner together to provide this support for Equipo City, with many Tiger alumni also attending over the years. Meanwhile, Lumbermans and Beaudry¡¦s Cabinets along with other Newberg area companies have donated the lumber, hardware, etc. for the project, making this one truly Newberg Nation effort!

Tiger Music
Congratulations to Luke Hartley, Tyler Mays and JJ Olson who won a berth to the OSAA State Choir Soloist Championships after qualifying at last weekend¡¦s district competition. Luke finished first in the baritone voice category, Tyler finished first in tenor and JJ finished first alternate in the bass. They will compete May 1 & 2 at the state championships! Way to go Tigers!
Similarly, the Newberg Nation Wind Ensemble qualified for the OSAA State Band Championships this past Saturday at the GFU Invitational Band Festival with soloist qualifiers including Anthony Bithell who placed 4th in the clarinet and is a 2nd alternate to the state competition, Thomas Gaumer who placed 3rd in the trombone and is a 2nd alternate as well, and our brass ensemble made up of Robert Bohall (horn), Liam Hathaway (tuba) and Thomas Gaumer (trombone) qualifying for the state championships with their 2nd place finish as well!

A reminder to all of our Newberg Nation faithful that there are two band festivals remaining: April 2 they travel to Western Oregon and perform at 6pm and on April 14 they travel to West Linn.

Registration and Freshmen Orientation:  NEW DATES!!!
Our last two newsletters included information about the dates we have set aside for fall registration. As recently as this week we have had to make a change to the days that we will be registering students this fall. Our new dates will include Wednesday, September 2, when our incoming freshmen will register in the morning and stay for frosh orientation that afternoon. That same afternoon (September 2nd) our seniors will register. The morning of September 3rd our juniors will register followed by the sophomores that afternoon.
Please know that the physical changes to NHS (the career center, student support center and the counseling center outlined in the newsletter below) will be included in the school tour students and their families receive at registration. We are excited to walk you through these new areas prior to school beginning!
REMEMBER, SAVE THE DATES!!!!

Newberg Nation 15'-16'????  PART III

WHY REORGANIZE NHS?
NHS has been undergoing a re-organizational effort over the past year in an effort to meet the needs of all students that attend NHS. The reason for the reorganization is that our data has shown that we have continued to have about two-thirds of our students doing quite well as they travel their high school years at NHS and beyond, while about one-third of our students have continued to struggle in terms of graduating, passing their essential skills
exams (OAKS and now Smarter Balance) and having the support they need to connect to post-high school college and career opportunities.
We have framed the following question as central to all of our thinking and planning;

How do we continue to successfully support the 62-70% of our students that are doing well while ensuring that we find ways to support the 30-38% that have continued to struggle?

It is important to share that this challenge is all inclusive! It is a commitment to improving the NHS experience for all students, stretching all of our students as far as we can while in our care and ultimately expanding opportunities for every one of our students while at NHS and beyond!

HOW IS NHS RE-ORGANIZGING ITS CURRICULUM?
NHS reorganization efforts are focused on us ensuring that 100% of our students graduate, pass their essential skills exams and have the support they need to pursue their dreams beyond high school. To this end we have identified five essential curriculum questions to help frame our thinking and conversations about how we are going to reorganize our curriculum at NHS. Those questions include;
Five Essential Curriculum Reorganization Questions:
i. How will organizing our curriculum like this help us close our achievement gaps?
ii. How will organizing our curriculum like this help us close our graduation gap?
iii. How will organizing our curriculum like this help us meet our student¡¦s essential skills (literacy) needs?
iv. How will organizing our curriculum like this help us continue to grow a post- secondary connected culture?
v. How will organizing our curriculum like this help us remain rigorous and relevant?
While the five essential curriculum questions are central to our curriculum discussions they are also helping us determine how we are going to structure our curriculum. The following short explanation of each of the questions should help students and families understand the reasons for these reorganization efforts as they pertain to curriculum.

FIVE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: (1& 2) ESSENTIAL SKILLS & ACHIEVEMENT GAPS
Closing our achievement gaps is important! It is an indicator of how all of our students are doing on passing their essential skills tests and when achievement gaps exist, it brings up the question of how well we are supporting all students at NHS. The fact that we have achievement gaps in which a student with an identified disability, from an economically disadvantaged family or a student with a Latino/Hispanic background performs less favorably on our essential skills tests than the NHS norm, means that we have work to do in determining how to support these students so that they have an equal opportunity to achieve and our achievement gaps close.
Similarly, teaching literacy, critical thinking and content simultaneously will support all of our student¡¦s post-high school endeavors and experiences. Literacy, in particular, unlocks the student¡¦s ability to access more content and to more critically think in all regards. Thus, NHS will focus on providing instruction that emphasizes literacy, critical thinking and content feedback across curriculum areas in an effort to help students develop a vast toolkit in these regards, a tool kit that will serve 100% of our students well during and beyond their years at NHS!
Meanwhile, our efforts to align literacy, critical thinking and content knowledge simultaneously also neatly aligns with the new Common Core State Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium tests that students have to pass in order to earn their high school diploma. All that said, we are trying to create a curriculum that meets all of these needs in one simple swoop!

FIVE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: (3) GRADUATION RATE/GAPS
Helping more students complete high school and improve our graduation rate is also important. It is not only important to the individual student and their family, there is much research that supports the notion that a community with a high rate of graduation in their schools results in a better quality of life for all citizens in that community. If we keep this improvement area at the center of our reorganizational efforts it will also assist us in helping us plan, prepare and support more students to earn their high school diploma and thus improve our community!

FIVE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: (4) POST SECONDARY CONNECTIONS
In alignment with the state of Oregon¡¦s 40-40-20 campaign (40% of our graduates earning a bachelor¡¦s degree by 2025, 40% of our graduates earning an associate¡¦s degree/certificate of completion by 2025, 20% entering the work force or an apprenticeship program by 2025) and the Newberg School District¡¦s Strategic Plan NHS is working hard to also ensure that 100% our students graduate NHS college and/or career ready. With approximately 60% of our graduates already attending colleges and universities NHS has work to do in helping the roughly 40% that are not getting immediately connected upon graduation from NHS. We need to help them get connected to colleges, universities, apprenticeship opportunities, certification programs and any other meaningful post-high school connection we can provide for our graduates!

FIVE ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS: (5) REMAINING RIGOROUS & RELEVANT
Remaining rigorous and relevant means that NHS takes pride in challenging our students so that we can make sure they are growing as much as possible under our tutelage. ¡§Rigor¡¨ means how challenging we build our curriculum while we differentiate it for each student while ¡§relevant¡¨ means that students find our curriculum relevant to their lives and they can connect and engage with it easily (or they find it interesting!). These are both important in terms of ensuring that every one of our students feels challenged and grows to their fullest potential while also feeling like they have an opportunity to engage in the curriculum on their terms, which, after all, is the essence of learning!

CONTENT DEPARTMENT STRUCTURES
In an effort to create more opportunities to support student achievement NHS is bringing our content departments together (i.e. Math, Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, Second Language, Special Education/ELL, Fine Arts, Performing Arts, Career & Technical Education, Physical Education, Health, Counseling, Administration) for more collaboration and curriculum planning.
We are excited about the opportunity to provide our students more courses, updated course sequences that align to current state and national standards, consistent assessment and grading practices and more variety and flexibility when it comes to course offerings and teacher access. Our departments have been working hard all year in an effort to update their curriculum in preparation for our transition to this department model and we are looking forward to seeing how this restructuring will impact student achievement at NHS!

INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP TEAM
While our departments are working hard to prepare a new, more diverse and aligned curriculum to help all of our students have their needs met we have also implemented an Instructional Leadership Team (ILT) at NHS to help provide the professional development we will need to help support these efforts. Made up of a diverse group of teachers, administrators and counselors the ILT will help our staff prepare instruction that is focused on our five essential curriculum questions while also supporting staff trainings on content specific curriculum.

2,500 CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS!!!
In support of all of our efforts around our curriculum please know that the administrative team has set a goal of conducting 2,500 classroom observations during the 2015-2016 school year! A lofty goal this effort should provide endless insights, instructional growth opportunities and lots of discussion as it relates to our efforts to provide exemplary instruction for all of our Tigers!

NEW COURSES/MORE OPTIONS FOR STUDENTS
In this year's course guide and forecasting sheets there are several new courses and opportunities for students to choose from. This is a result of our efforts to reorganize our master schedule into a whole school model. By removing the small school constraints on the master schedule (meaning, dividing up our teachers/courses/departments/students by small school first) and moving to a whole school master scheduling process we have been able to create more flexibility in terms of the courses we can offer, which teachers teach which courses, students ability to access a wider range of teachers and for our curriculum departments to work together in offering a broader range of experiences for our students. We are excited about having these additional opportunities for our students!

STUDENT SUPPORT CENTER
One reorganization initiative we will unveil in the fall is how we will support our efforts to have our school wide attendance rate at 95% or higher as well as how we work to keep our students in school more frequently, even when making a poor behavioral choice. To support this effort we will be creating a Student Support Center.

Our new Student Support Center will be located where our current Career Center is located and will feature an attendance window and behavioral management center. We are currently working on acquiring the technology for students to swipe their ID card when running late thus reducing their time out of class. Meanwhile, going to an attendance specialist will also help us more efficiently and effectively monitor our student¡¦s attendance and subsequently inform us so that we may follow up on attendance matters more quickly (remember, 95% or better is our goal!).

From a behavioral management standpoint the Student Support Center will also give us a staffed location in which we keep students in school more frequently, even when making a poor behavioral choice. Keeping students in school under these circumstances has also proven that students are more likely to still complete class/homework, it will allow us to have staff in place to help them, and studies show that it keeps students more connected to school than assigning out of school consequences. We believe this will help improve our achievement gaps and graduation rates!

COUNSELING CENTER
Our efforts to support students from a counseling perspective will also be slightly altered next year as we move all four of our counselors into what is the current Silver School Office. We will call this area our Counseling Center. Moving all four of our counselors into their own counseling center will have multiple effects.

First, it will allow our counseling team to function more as a team, leaning on each other¡¦s strengths when supporting students with needs. Secondly, it will allow them to design a comprehensive guidance office with rich materials that support students¡¦ academically, socially, emotionally and in terms of having our Tigers career and/or college ready. Thirdly, having the student registrar located within the Counseling Center will also allow for expeditious access to student records and academic progress. Finally, this move will also improve our ability to ensure that all of our students have access to a counselor when needed, even if their counselor is absent at that time.

While this unified approach to our counseling services has many benefits we want to remind our students and their families that our current students will remain with their current counselor all four years that they attend NHS. Thus, we will have the personalized consistency of support our community has grown accustomed to while also being able to use the strengths, backgrounds and individual expertise of all four of our counselors when the need arises.

WRAP AROUND SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS!
Our efforts to reorganize our student support structures and practices is due to our desire to make sure that we can provide wrap around support for every student. Wrap around support means looking at our students from all angles, taking a 360* view of how they are doing, and having the right people in the right place to support each student¡¦s needs most effectively.

Central to our efforts to wrap around every student is ensuring that we have the students entire support network engaged in their support with healthy relationships between everyone at the table so that we can ensure strong partnerships in supporting every one of our students.
Our new structures will also help support our wrap around efforts by allowing us the flexibility, once again, to utilize more strengths, expertise and experiences when it comes to supporting specific student needs.

GRADE LEVEL TEAMS
In our recent newsletters we talked about having Structured Learning Communities in place for our freshmen. Similarly, we will also have grade level teams to support students at each grade level as they travel through NHS. Comprised of teachers, counselors, administrators and support staff our Grade Level Teams will be yet another layer of support that we can wrap around students when the need arises.

STUDENT SUPPORT TEAMS
While grade level teams will help us ensure that we have relevant grade level supports in place for our students as they travel their four years here at NHS, we will also have Student Support Teams in place that will be available when we feel we simply need to get everyone around the table and talk about how we are going to help a student in need. Also comprised of a variety of stakeholders in the student¡¦s life our Student Support Teams will transcend all four grade levels as compared to our Grade Level Teams.

NEXT WEEKS EDITION OF This Week In Newberg Nation?¡¨
We will talk about our other efforts to help improve NHS, especially around¡
- Growing our leadership capacity in all stakeholder groups!
- Developing ¡§champions¡¨ mindsets academically and otherwise!
- Our overarching efforts to make Newberg High a Level 5 School!

Got A Story? An Accomplishment?
An Award? Scholarship? Internship? Joining the U.S. Military?
As we talked about in last weeks newsletter we want to know, we want to celebrate, and we want to honor all things Newberg Nation! This message was delivered to all NHS students at last weeks assembly by Activities Director Mark Brown, Assistant Principal Janay Cookson and Principal Mark Risen.
Again, we want stories, we need to celebrate your and our accomplishments, and we are proud of everyone in Newberg Nation! Please feel free to send your stories to brownm@newberg.k12.or.us and rennet@newberg.k12.or.us. Go Tigers!

Grad Night $$$$
Every Tuesday, Ye Olde Pizza donates a portion of their proceeds to help support NHS Grad Night. Take the family out for some great pizza between 4:00-9:00pm and help provide a safe and fun grad night for our 2015 Seniors.
April 6th - Abby's Pizza Fundraiser and Registration Kickoff Event 4-8pm
Seniors and their families can come on down to Abby's Pizza, have dinner, and get registered for our grad night celebration. Registration for Grad Night is $70.00 if paid prior to May 1st. After May 1st, the price goes up to $80.00. There will also be a raffle to enter that YOU are going to want to be a part of!! You can win 4 extra graduation tickets and have your own parking spot at graduation. Tickets will be $5.00 each or 5 tickets for $20.00. We will need a few volunteers to help at this event.
April 9th - Lil Cooperstown Fundraiser 5pm - close
This great local business is dedicating this evening to our graduating seniors. They are donating 10% of their profits to support Grad Night Fundraising efforts! All we need to do is the pack the place!!
April 16th  La Sierra Dinner Night 5-10pm
This great local business is dedicating this evening to our graduating seniors. Feel free to eat in or call in a to go order.
April 18th - Annual Grad Night Rummage Sale 8am
Contact people: Heather Storedahl and Tina Oathes 503-810-7216
Start saving your sellable items. Help will be needed on Friday, April 17th, for picking up stored items, pricing and set up. Stop by and help as you can on Saturday. The Rummage Sale will take place at the Armory.
May 2 - Paper Shredding Event and Krispy Kreme Sale
Tire Factory is the location for both
Contact Person: Amanda Seifert 503-780-4440
Volunteers will be needed for this event. If you are interested in helping, contact Amanda! We have many local businesses that take advantage of this fundraiser, so SPREAD the word!!
May - Art Sale at First Friday
Contact Person: Suzanne Kern
More information is coming! Be thinking of what Art could be donated to be sold! For now save the date!
May 14 - Jem100 Dinner Night 5-9pm
This great local business is dedicating this evening to our graduating seniors. We will need 6 volunteers to help work at this event. There will be a My Sign Up created(thanks Linda DeLong!) to get us organized here. We will also announce the winner of the Graduation Ticket Raffle.
Optional Purchase Dates for Grad Night: April 16, 23, 24, 30
Contact Person: Lynne Tucker, 503-704-3344
Students can purchase their tickets for $70.00 during both A/B lunch on the dates listed below. If you are available to help sell them, please contact Lynne. If you choose to purchase your ticket after May 1st, the ticket will go up to $80.00. We want EVERY senior to attend this event. If you have a question or a concern about purchasing a ticket, please contact us.
Next Grad Night Meeting
April 13th at NHS Commons at 7pm.

Newberg Nation Thoughts
~Principal Risen
Have you ever stopped and imagined how powerful the act of forgiveness is? I found myself in need of, and receiving, forgiveness this morning when meeting with our Newberg Nation Special Education Teachers. To my dismay they pointed out a mistake I had made and to my delight they were also forgiving when I realized that they were right and owned my mistake.
It seems as though these are two traits that have somehow become less popular; owning our mistakes and forgiving others for them. It seems as if it has become increasingly customary to vilify others while taking less responsibility for our own actions. Meanwhile, it also appears that we increasingly do not forgive each other. Perhaps these trends are related? I believe they are.
Given these observations and the impact the Special Education Teachers had on me this morning I felt compelled to say that if we are going to have healthy relationships, grow together, become one and partner in truly authentic ways we are going to have to not only
understand, but model forgiveness and ownership to one another (¡§ownership¡¨ being defined as simply owning what we own). Relationships will not work if they are give and take, the truly healthy ones are built on give and forgive.
It is this challenge I pose to all us; how can we make giving, and forgiving, our trend all across Newberg Nation? I certainly witnessed it this morning and am proud to say I did!
Have a safe, fun filled Spring Break Tigers, I am proud to serve you!

Flying Tigers...

"Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them!"
~Bruce Lee