Dear Families,
Well, today is the last day of school and as the teachers plan to wave the busses off for their final departure of the 2018-2019 school year I wanted to send one last e-mail recapping the year and some final reminders!
First and foremost I want to thank you for allowing us the opportunity to watch over and teach your kids. I know when you enter the building as a kindergarten parent there are millions of questions but the primary is will my child be okay. I hope as our 5th graders leave this school the answer is not only were our kids okay, they were well taken care of, well taught, and grew tremendously due to the fact that they were at Hutchings Elementary School. I also wanted to take a moment and thank the staff here at Hutchings for their dedication and passion for working with children. What we have assembled here in terms of staff is truly special and I cannot think of a better group of people to call colleagues than the staff I get the pleasure of working with every day.
As the year ends the office staff will be around until the middle of June. If you need assistance over the summer please reach out to our central office and they can assist. I will return in the beginning of August and over the summer I will have access to my e-mail but I’ve also made some promises to three special kiddos in my life that we are going to have a really fun summer with some much-needed vacation time. I will check it periodically and e-mail back as soon as I can during this time period.
The 2018-2019 school year came with changes and I wanted to take a moment and highlight those changes that occurred here and where we are going from here. Our goal as a school is always to provide the best possible learning opportunities to empower our students and we continually work towards that each and every year.
Positive Behavior System:
I want to thank our specials team (Mr. Adam, Mrs. Schultz, Ms. Cain, and Mrs. Schippers) for really spearheading our PBIS revamped system this year. Students had the opportunity to earn Husky Paws, learned about social-emotional skills tied to monthly traits, and had time to practice the soft skills of patience, listening, kindness, compassion, and teamwork this entire year. Teachers in their classrooms had daily morning meetings to build community and also focused on the monthly traits in read aloud as well. Our school counselor pushed into classrooms and taught lessons on these traits as needed to continue to reinforce that being a good person is just as important as getting a good grade in a subject area. As a result of this work, we had the lowest amount of office referrals in my three years of being an administrator at the school. We saw students taking leadership roles in the schools and instead of being unable to talk through and work through a problem they utilized some of the strategies taught during this work. During our 5th grade graduation our 5th grade team reported out that this year was one of the lowest years of behavior referrals since they began working here and the word they chose to represent the entire grade level was compassion.
TIES & Reaching Higher
Our TIES program (Teaching Interacting Encouraging Students) reached a new record number of students who participated in the program for the year which was 66 students. The TIES program was aimed and showing students that with empathy, friendship, and teamwork anyone can be successful. Reaching Higher was also run for our 5th graders to show the unlimited possibilities you have in your life when you work hard and believe in yourself. The students in the programs had a chance to reflect on their experiences in the program and I thought this piece from a 5th grader was pretty powerful. “I always did good in school, but after seeing that other people can’t do it like I can it made me think that I could help others. It felt really good being able to help people in school because I didn’t really do that before and it made me feel like a great person”
Robotics & Hutchings Choir:
We had a tremendous year with the robotics teams taking off and another fantastic year with our Hutchings Choir. Mrs. Benn, Mrs. Shultz, and Mrs. Clifton were instrumental (no pun intended) in providing students with unique opportunities that most children do not have. These programs will continue into 2019-2020 so if you are interested please let us know!
Acceleration and Enrichment:
All of our 3rd-5th-grade teachers went through three days of professional development in different ways to accelerate and enrich all of our students which culminated in our Elementary Student Spring Showcase. At the showcase over 120 students presented their original work and projects in front of the community. As a result of the professional learning experiences, student’s district-wide participated in programs such as Wonder Workshop, Genius Hour, and integrated project-based learning units. Our staff here did a fantastic job pushing students out of their comfort zones and the growth was fantastic.
Highest Academic Growth Year
Finally, and this one is a team effort for sure, we had one of our largest years of students displaying jumps in growth data. Based on NWEA data, At-Risk data, M-Step Scores, DIBLES, DRA, MLPP, KRA, and common assessments our students displayed massive jumps in their scores from the start of the year to end of the year. I want to be clear that I’m not saying every child got an A or 100% I am speaking on they came into the year at a level 6 and left the year at a level 28. The amount of knowledge gained over the year, to me, is always the goal, not hitting a random benchmark sent from the state.
ELA Essential and Curriculum Work:
This year Mrs. Stolle and Mrs. Ott were our pilot teachers for a new ELA curriculum that we will be implementing K-5 next year. They did a ton of working making sure the program was going to be great for our students. As a staff, we also spent the entire year working on specific essentials sent down from the Early Literacy Task Force. Our staff as a whole has made tremendous shifts in their instructional delivery to ensure that all students are having their needs met.
Staff Departures & Arrivals:
We have to say goodbye to some fantastic people this year but we also get to welcome some amazing people as well. Jennifer Starkey will be leaving us to be the full-time counselor at Voyager Elementary. Jen is a great counselor, a fantastic colleague, but above all else an amazing person. We wish her the best over at Voyager. We will be interviewing for our full-time counselor in the upcoming weeks.
We also are saying goodbye to Julie Holewinski who has taken a full-time resource room position at Northwest Elementary. Julie has been instrumental in our building when working with students and teachers to provide the best accommodations and supports we can offer. Our building will truly miss Julie but we know that we will see her often as Northwest is just down the road!
Sue Donavon, one of our paraprofessionals, has decided that while she loves working with our kids it is time to move closer to family and spend time with her own kids!
One change to our staff next year is that Mrs. Cain is going to be a ½ time technology teacher in combination with Mrs. Randi Cheyne (currently a 4th grade teacher at Three Fires) Mrs. Cheyne and Mrs. Cain bring with them two completely different backgrounds which will allow our students to have some pretty unique experiences in technology.
We are also welcoming Jennifer Levely as our new Teacher Consultant for the 2019-2020 school year. Mrs. Levely joins us from Northwest Elementary School where she was a resource room teacher this past year.
I hope you all have a fantastic summer and we look forward to seeing everyone again for the 2019-2020 school year!
All the best,
Mr. Moore