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The SLV Music & Art Festival
The 3rd annual SLV Music & Art Festival is an outdoor, community event that features performances by: SLVHS choir and bands, SLVMS bands, SLV Nature Academy Band, SLVE and BCE 5th grade bands, and the SLV Community Band! There is an art show and sale (by donation) put on by the SLVHS Art Department! There will be multiple food trucks and also silent and live auctions that support the SLV Music Boosters. Please come and celebrate community while supporting our growing student musicians and artists!
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Alternative Family Education Prospective Family Meeting
Join us for a 2024 Perspective Families Meeting to learn about how you can create an individualized learning experience with your child in this inclusive community! We are a vibrant homeschool community that includes teacher-led classes in core subjects, community-led learning/field trips/events/clubs, and an abundant resource center with a staffed resource specialist. We provide enrichment offerings such as arts, theater, sports and more. Our program includes school district support services and allows for concurrent enrollment in other schools and colleges. *Childcare provided When: Tuesday, February 6 or Monday, March 11 , 6:30pm – 7:30pm Where: 185 Benito Ave. Email us at: [email protected] Or visit our website: https://www.bssc.sccs.net/afe
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Teacher’s Desk
Roots and Wings By Lisa Catterall Children make your life important. — Erma Bombeck I’m staring at a dresser covered with dirty glasses. They have rings of dried and yellowed milk, encrusted smoothie droplets, and they are sitting on top of a stack of plates, some with pizza crusts hanging out. All that goes through my mind this time is a meme my best friend sent me. It said “If you don’t like their messy room, wait until their room is empty…” My best friend has always been one academic year ahead of me in the parenting game, from the time our kids met at age nine months (mine) and…
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Unusual Bliss
Unusual Bliss BY LISA CATTERAL If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. -Joseph Campbell This month I am about to experience my first math competition with a student. This one student will become our school’s inaugural competitive math team. I’m very excited about this. In college, I took a two-week seminar on photography. Suddenly, all I could think about was spending time in the darkroom. It wasn’t even a class; it was just something I found on a…
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When They Melt Your Heart: Teacher’s Desk September 2019
When They Melt Your Heart Teacher’s Desk: September 2019 By Lisa Catterall We were scared, but our fear was not as strong as our courage. – Malala Yousafzai Surely we digress. We were working very hard, painstakingly going over every single detail of a test the entire class failed. When this happens, it’s time to try again. We had spent a class and a half going through every problem asking every possible question, with me explaining it every possible way. It turns out, this is a really good way to build trust. No one had anything in the gradebook for this test, basically, it was heading for the garbage and…
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Potential and the Value of Sitting on the Bench
Potential and the Value of Sitting on the Bench By Lisa Catterall I would never have thought I was capable of sitting on the bench as the number two man. And it showed me that you can really achieve everything in life, even the unthinkable, as long as you’re willing to work on yourself a little bit. – Oliver Kahn Some of my students were particularly distraught today because a friend of theirs quit a varsity sports team after one of the biggest games of the season. There was a speculative consensus that this students’ reaction was because they felt slighted by the coach for being on the bench too…
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On the Best Day a Teacher Can Have…Behind the Desk May 2019
On the Best Day a Teacher Can Have… Behind the Desk May 2019 By Lisa Catterall True teachers are those who use themselves as bridges over which they invite their students to cross; then, having facilitated their crossing, joyfully collapse, encouraging them to create their own. – Nikos Kazantzakis I have a funny tradition in my science class. Each year, when we get to organic chemistry, I introduce the topic in a half-hour long discussion. For the last five minutes of class, I give the kids exactly sixty seconds to come up with a structure for the chemical C6H6. If a student can do it, they do not have to…
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Observing a Digital Day: Behind the Desk
Observing a Digital Day: Behind the Desk By Lisa Catterall I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. Albert Einstein Recently my family was snowed in at a lodge in Tahoe. The roads were closed, and the news declared that students in their district would not take a snow day, they would observe a “Digital Day.” Any time I use something with an electronic screen in my classroom, the students practically wriggle with joy. It’s like they have been wrapped in a warm blanket, plopped on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate, and given a foot rub. It’s an…
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Teacher’s Blog August 2018
Teacher’s Blog August 2018 By Tiffany K. Wayne High school History and Government teacher, Mount Madonna School, Watsonville I am anticipating the start of the new school year and missing my students. The last time I saw most of them was on Friday, May 18th, our last day of academic classes. Finals exams were over but I still had one more day of classes with my 10th grade U.S. History students before they left for a week-long science trip to Catalina Island to study Oceanography. We had started the film, Selma, a few days earlier as an end-of-year movie. “That made me cry,” a student shared, wiping her eyes with…
