More than 200 early educators, kindergarten teachers and administrators from across the county gathered on Wednesday, February 29th, for the 3rd straight year to attend the "Together for Kindergarten" community forum. Organized by the COE and the Child Care Planning Council, the forum presented an opportunity for early educators to sit together in neighborhood "hubs" working cooperatively to brainstorm activities that support kindergarten readiness. After a long day at work, educators conversed about how to make a child's first impression of school more positive and less stressful, and how to better prepare children to enter kindergarten socially, emotionally and academically ready.

Read more about the Together for Kindergarten community forum. 

This spring Natural Bridges High School and Green Careers Center students are participating in the LiMPETS program as part of Community Service Fridays. LiMPETS (Long-term Monitoring Program and Experiential Training for Students) is a hands-on environmental monitoring and education program for students, developed to monitor the coastal ecosystems of California's National Marine Sanctuaries to increase awareness and stewardship of these important areas. 

Learn more about Natural Bridges High School and the LiMPETS program. 

For close to 30 years, the most gifted spellers from school sites across Santa Cruz County have been coming together to show off their superior word formation knowledge. Saturday, February 25th, 2012, followed suit with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education hosting concurrent Spelling Bee Championships at UCSC for students in grades 4-6 and 7-9. 
  

Find out more information about the 2012 Spelling Bee. 

Educators across our county are spending time this year becoming familiar with the new Common Core State Standards in professional development workshops offered by the Santa Cruz County Office of Education. These California educators have joined a national movement to adopt common standards and assessments for English language arts and mathematics. Currently, standards for what students should know and be able to do vary among states, as does the difficulty of the assessments used to determine whether students are meeting those standards. Common standards allow for collaboration among states on best practices and professional development. 
  

Find out more about these workshops on California's Common Core state standards for local educators. 

Upon hearing that the Santa Cruz County Office of Education's Inside Education participants would be visiting the campus to learn more about small schools, excited and motivated students who wanted to show what is special about Bonny Doon School spent three weeks filming as many facets of their school life as possible. The short film features interviews with teachers and staff as well as the art, music, and dance programs at the school. It was "crunch time" as excited students worked through recess and noon hours to finish the film before the premier on November 16th, 2011 to the Inside Education group. 
 

Find out more about Bonny Doon Elementary School and watch the video.

There has been a decline in arts programs in Santa Cruz schools over the last couple of decades which makes it tempting to focus on what isn't happening, rather than the high quality arts teaching which is still happening in several schools throughout the county. Santa Cruz is a county which attracts artists of all types and fortunately for our students, many of those artists are also credentialed teachers. However, the limited number of arts programs in schools leads many arts teachers to feel isolated with little (or no) peer interaction. 

Read more about local professional development for art teachers.