Student comment from Mr. Doughan's Blog

If you get a chance, take a look at the conversations taking place on Mr. Doughan's Blog. The following quote came from one of our students. She is right! You, our staff, is what sets us apart........

PHS has one thing that SHS (Schaumburg H.S) didn't really have or I never saw it because I was a Freshman and a Sophmore. Mr. Meister states that an effective high school has "Professionals that are willing to take risks, willing to admit they do not have all the answers and never lose the yearning to keep learning." Personally, I think this statement describes most of the PHS Staff.

A Pat on the Back

We spend a great deal of time discussing the areas of Paris High School that we would like to improve and rightly so. If we are not getting better we are moving in the wrong direction. However, I fear that we often focus on the need to improve at the expense of failing to recognize teachers that are doing a great job of engaging their students or making the improvements that we are striving to attain.

I am always concerned when I do this that I will leave out some teachers that have done terrific things. I will apologize up front if I slight any of you that are going above and beyond in your classes and I realize that I do not see or hear all things but it seems that not recognizing the many good things I have observed is a greater omission so at he risk of missing something here are some of the congratulations that I think are due (or overdue).

Thank you or well done to:

Brett Block, Mark Thomas and Staci Garzolini-Skelton for stepping in and working with the lunch bunch. You have had many successes with this group this year and it works because of your effort.

Mark Cox for his work on coordinating the emergency plans of the different buildings in the district. This has been a job that will never be considered that important until we need it and then we will all be glad you undertook it.

All the teachers that have served on one of the High Schools That Work committees.

Ernie Wallace and Mark Cox for their air car assignments, Mrs. Earlywine for her Academy Awards lesson, and Brett Block for the work on boat building. I love these assignments because you have kids that are really excited about being able to excel and do some creative things.

Kevin Hibschman for moving students from reworded biographies when they write essays. I like your approach that students have to develop and test a hypothesis with their research.

Doug Happ for making students do more questioning as they undertake experiments. Students are made to discover the best method for carrying out their work instead of simply working through the teachers step by step hand holding.

All of the teachers that have taken on the mentoring program this year and done very special things with your groups. The list here is too long to go name by name but this will be the best thing we ever decided to implement if we continue to improve on a good forst year.

Speaking of the mentoring program, I also want to thank the teachers of the M & M group for the hard work that they put into setting up this program. You all continue to put in countless hours of hard work to pull this together month after month and I want you all to know that if is appreciated and difference making.

Ed for the great work he does on a daily basis keeping this building clean. He as well as the night crew for TBM do a great job.

Cindy and Loretta who keep the office running in spite of the way that Dave and I get in the way.

Heather Seaton for her work on the calendar, Shannon Sherer for the newletter, Mrs. Propst for here work with moviemaker and all of those that have set up blogs (Mr. Ogle, Mrs. Phegley, Ms. Franklin, Mr. Doughan, Mrs. Sherer. Mr. Kirby, Mrs. Witmer, Mr. Lynch and Mr. Musselwhite). These are all great ways to model the use of technology for our students. I especially like it when the students are posting and participating in the conversation.

Carrie Ann Phegley for the online presentation of student work in her Art classes.

The PR committee for the work on the wall of fame that was posted this year. With it right outside my office I get the chance to frequently see the students looking to see those that preceded them.

Ms. Hill for her work presenting technology to the staff and all her hard work in securing grants for the building.

Gary Ochs and Sandra Liebe for the hard work that they put into FFA week and the barnyard last week.

Jayne Brown for placing student after student in jobs

Roger Thomas and the special education staff Mitzie, Pam, Diane, Nancy, and Renae for their work with RTI

Sandy Dahlin for stepping into a midyear opening and filling a void

Karen Earlywine, Mark Cox, Doug Happ, Lindsey Hewitt, Sid Shuler, Lee Smith as well as others that open their classrooms to students before and after school and at lunch in order to provide extra help.

Lori Drake for being willing to step in and help with a student that needed help getting up and down the stairs for most of this year.

Jeff Barnes for the extra time that he has spent with students working with the workkeys program.
Tom Punzelt for the encouraging word that he has for every single person he meets especially our students

Mrs. Pittenger as well as others that have served as an ad hoc guidance counselor to several students.

Denise Craig who has maintained her sanity while collecting a ton of homework, entering all the discipline into the computer and worked daily with a group of students that do not want to be with her as well as Marlene Terrell that oversee this everyday at lunch.

Michelle Smith who tracks over 300 kids everyday for the closed campus lunch as well as Mary Lou and Paula that make sure that these kids are fed daily and the teachers that work lunch duty and interact with those kids every day.

Jami, Marian, and Sandy for developing lessons that included use of the clickers systems in your classes.

Mr. Aydt for all the work you do with the WYSE Team

Jane and Sandy for running the nurse’s office which can be every bit as chaotic as anyplace else in this building.


OK, I am sure that I have overlooked some if not many of the good things being done by staff members……………if so then take it upon yourselves to comment and recognize them. This is, after all, an interactive medium.

Good reading

Read this blog entry from Bill Ferriter. He succinctly states in this blog many things that I happen to agree with. Warning, the blog itself takes some time to read, but I think it is well worth it. The comments are also valuable! What do you think?

Isn't it Time to Change?

I recently read a 96 page article on school reform given to me by a professor at Illinois State University. The article was written by a gentleman named Franklin Bobbitt at the University of Chicago. Mr. Bobbitt is a strong advocate of school reform. He believes that we should improve public education by increasing standards, testing our results, and holding educators and students accountable.

I realize that these are not earth shattering ideas and that you have heard them expressed many times and in many different formats. The interesting thing about the article is that it was written in 1913 by a man who passed away in the 1950’s. As a student of history this does not surprise me. It is a case of “everything old is new again”.

However, it is time for change. It is time that we move away from dispensing information and instead teach the skills that will allow student to access the vast information that is available at their fingertips. It is time that we consider things like year round calendars, senior projects, as well as true and meaningful apprenticeships for students that wish to move into the workforce instead of going on to higher education. It is time that we realize that a school whose calendar was based on an agrarian economy and whose primary purpose were to train students for hands-on industrial work has past.

I am sometimes easily discouraged by the fact that we have not made more progress in the last four years toward this goal but the other night I sat up making a mental list of the changes that have occurred over that time. It is not an insignificant list.

Mentoring
Lunch Bunch
Online classes
The 8-period day
A real expansion of dual credit offerings
A tremendous increase in the technology available in the building (now how do we take advantage of it)
The return of summer school
Additional staff

as well as others that are in progress but not yet completed.

I think it is sometimes good to think of those things because it reminds me that we are moving in the right direction and it just becomes a matter of what’s next and how fast we will continue.

I spoke on my first day here about the pride that I took in being part of a dedicated staff at Mayo Middle School. I said on that day that I hoped I would eventually grow to feel that way about the staff here at the high school. I want you to know that I have grown to respect this staff and I am proud of the steps that have been taken by you to improve the building for our students. The challenges that we will face and overcome in the coming months and years will not be easy, if anything the easy part is done.

Quote to ponder......

(cross posted from PHSprincipalBlog)
"In a world where information was scarce, schools operated as kind of a repository of that precious resource. But now information is abundant. A school doesn’t have to harvest and distribute this scarce resource. It has to serve some other kind of function." -Daniel Pink

We must define those new functions! What thoughts do you have?

How Do You Engage Students?

Engagement – it is a very popular idea in education over the past few years. It seems to make sense. If students are part of the learning process they will be more inclined to work harder and therefore receive a better education. However, the more I think and talk to people about how we engage our students, the more I realize that this means different things to different educators. In some cases I have been told that engagement is asking questions of students, in others they are put in full control of the outcome of an assignment or task. Obviously there may be as many methods to engage students as there are teachers trying to accomplish the task. But it seems to me that students are not engaged because they are active, they are engaged because you have created a classroom situation or assignment that has caused them to think at the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The levels at which they are applying, assessing, and synthesizing what they are learning.

So I will pose the question because I believe that it time that we do more than talk about what we are doing and that one teachers method may be helpful to many others. How do you engage your students? Is there a good method you use for this? Do you have a particular assignment(s)? Does it happen in your class on purpose or by accident or both?