September 30th Weekly Blog

Purpose Corner - With the halfway point of first-quarter upon us, grades are starting to flow into the grade book. This video describes our grading philosophy and seeks to provide information on how we grade our students.

Please click here for this 3:09 video

Peers 4 Peers #BETHEMAJORITY - This past Thursday, September 26th brought Waukesha North and West together with a community organization to send a strong message that people who vape, do drugs, or consume alcohol are not in the majority of what most youths do today. This is a powerful message that positive choices win out when these other choices so often have a negative life impact. A great message along with resources for anyone looking, thanks to all of the time and effort for the volunteers that made it happen! Let's keep our kids safe within our community and never forget the positive choices the majority make as an example for the rest to follow.

Freshman Tailgate - Our "Ignition" program under the direction of Mrs. Sue Purpi does so much to engage our incoming Freshmen! It starts with All-Freshmen Day before school, continues with Welcome Week, every morning during the first week of school, and leads up to the Freshmen tailgate. What a beautiful day for games and fun between our Freshmen students, Ignition mentors, and West teachers. Nothing complicated, just building positive relationships over some hot dogs!! Enjoy the pictures.... and we had a couple of rock walls! Thanks to Mrs. Sue Purpi, Mrs. LeeAnn Dominick and our mentors for putting on an outstanding event.

Please click here for this 0:16 video

School Safety - As part of our safety procedures we met with each grade level of students over two weeks during our Advisory period to discuss safety protocols. I encourage all parents to engage students in dialogue around this presentation for a better understanding of their perspective, specifically if they can remember "Run, Hide, Fight". We then recently had a "lockdown" drill with the aide of the Waukesha Police Department. We continue to have positive feedback regarding our protocols and have seen students and staff advance with their decision making process during these moments of potential stress. We are always available for questions regarding school safety.

Homecoming 2019 - I want to give a shout out to Student Council, their advisor Mrs. Emily Ortega and all other staff and student volunteers for a great homecoming week! It was early, but the weather was amazing for our Powder Puff competition and game! It is a ton of work to coordinate and pull it off, culminating with the dance where once again students represented themselves well and had a great time dancing respectfully in our very warm fieldhouse.


College & Career Fair - Please come and engage at your leisure in this outstanding event...flyer below:

Principal Advisory Committee - Below are the names of the individuals on the Principal Advisory Council for 2019-2020. We met most recently on Wednesday, September 25th and will continue to meet monthly throughout the school year. Please access the minutes for more information about our discussions for this school year. The meeting minutes are linked here:

Nate Houlton	Nvhcoach@yahoo.com (Gr. 10)
Cortney Youngblood	cortneyyoungblood@gmail.com (Gr. 10)
Jackie Papageorge	jackie@gpg3.com (Gr.10)
Michelle Cameron	tiki424ma@gmail.com (Gr. 10)
Jennifer Schmeichel	jschmeichel@bethany.org (Gr. 11)
Wendy Dahl	wdahl@gswise.org (Gr. 12)
Michelle Kuokkanen	mkuokkanen@yahoo.com (Gr. 12)
Jana Manning	jmanning@waukesha.k12.wi.us (Gr. 9)
Carri Marlow	carrimarlow@yahoo.com (Gr. 9)
Clifton Hoffman	Clif.hoffman@att.net (Gr. 9)
Katie Pantzlaff	pantzkat@gmail.com (Gr. 9)
Kristi Fischer	kristifischer17@gmail.com (Gr. 9)
Wendy Hamilton	wendyhamilton4@gmail.com (Gr. 11)

Archived Announcements (Link) Please access this link to find all of the information in our daily announcements from previous weeks.

Preview of this week: Please check the calendars here: West Main Page Calendar (Link)

September 23rd Weekly Blog

Welcome to my blog and first post of the 2019-2020 school year! - I look to post every Monday throughout the school year. My posts are sometimes random and other times intentional and the purpose is not to praise all the amazing work that happens (because there is so much!), but do my best to capture what I hear, see and have experienced through staff, students, parents, and the community! Thank you and let's make it another great year! Please see the picture below as this year for Homecoming we had a "meme" dress-up day and this blog was officially part of a meme, specifically my "Purpose Corner" videos which are described under the picture in this blog, obviously, this is a riveting blog for all to enjoy!

Purpose Corner - "Purpose Corner" is a video segment where I continue to focus on what we are doing to boost student success at Waukesha West. It offers an inside view to the professional development and direction our school is taking for preparing our students to be college, career, and community ready!

Please click HERE to access this 1:37 video

Family Connect Conferences - These conferences are in the place of traditional student/teacher conferences where grades and work completion were predominately discussed. Grades and work completion are just as important as they have always been, but technology allows families to track these things and communicate more efficiently with teachers. So, I have purposely moved conferences earlier in that connections can be made more quickly to support student success. Why?... see the snippet below of this March, 12th 2019 Ed Week article on why relationships matter as in captures and reaffirms my thought process. They are from 4-7 P.M. on 9/24 and 4-6 P.M. on 10/1.

"People sometimes mistake a kind of casual familiarity and friendliness for the promotion of really deep relationships that are about a child's potential, their interests, their strengths, and weaknesses," said Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Southern California who studies the effects of emotions and mindsets on learning.

"A lot of teachers ... have really strong abilities to engage socially with the students, but then it's not enough," she said. "You have to go much deeper than that and actually start to engage with students around their curiosity, their interests, their habits of mind through understanding and approaching material to really be an effective teacher."

Fox River Marching Band Invitational - This Sunday, September 29th is the Fox River Marching Band Invitational. A huge shout out in advance to Mr. Dan Duffy, Kali Granzow, and the marching band parents for all of their work in making this a great event! Come out to enjoy all the variety this competition brings among all of the participating schools. See the flyer below:

Principal Advisory Council - Below are the names of the individuals on the Principal Advisory Council for 2019-2020. We will be meeting monthly throughout the course of the year and will keep meeting minutes that will be shared out to all West families through this blog. Our first meeting is this Wednesday, September, 25th at 6:00 P.M. Please contact anyone of the reps to have them bring your questions to the council via the email provided.

Archived Announcements (Link) Please access this link to find all of the information in our daily announcements from previous weeks.

Preview of this week: Please check the calendars here: West Main Page Calendar (Link)