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Upcoming Events:
MON. (9/23) College Visits Begin On Campus
Contact the College & Career Center (seatmon@losal.org,
sriekenberg@losal.org, vbeachley@losal.org) or visit
losal.tandemcal.com for schedules and information.
TUES. (9/24) Teaching & Learning Abound!
GRIFFIN LAB CONTINUES!!!
***Send Students To The Media Center For After School
Help On Homework, Quizzes, And Tests***
WED. (9/25) STATE OF THE DISTRICT w/ Dr. Kropp, 6:30pm In PAC
Common Core Collaboration Day For Teachers
Teachers Set Their Own Agendas For P.D. ---
Optional Sessions For PSAT Training & Socrative App Demo
***More Details To Come By Email***
Carol Jago Works With All English Teachers
8:30am - 3:00pm, In Room 500
Join A Club Weeks Begins @ Lunch!!!
THUR. (9/26) Join A Club Week Continues @ Lunch!!!
FRI. (9/27) MINIMUM DAY --- School Ends @ Noon (Fall Planning)
DISTRICT COLLEGE DAY! --- Wear Your College Gear!!!
ANNUAL FACULTY CLUB BBQ BEHIND THE PAC :)
SAT. (9/28) Saturday School Takes Place
Contact Dr. Gates (igates@losal.org) for more information
9/30 --- Instructional Networking, Round 1 for 2013-2014. Sign Up Today!
10/1 --- Dr. Kropp Walkthrough @ Los Al
10/2 --- "The Dining Room" Begins, A Los Al Drama Production
10/4 --- LosAl4Life Lunchtime Raffle & Wheelspinning, Behind The PAC!
10/14 -- 6-12 Staff Development Day @ Los Al
10/15 -- Fall Plans Due For All Teachers
10/16 -- PSAT On Campus, Reverse Modified Bell Schedule
Unlimited Possibilities...
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Back To School Night '13:
Sights & Sounds From An Incredible Evening...
 Mr. Heeren dazzles the parents of his Seniors in the Government class he teaches every day during 6th period. He had a great turn out!
 Mr. Martinez spends some time in a one-on-one conversation with a parent. As we know, the relationships between school and home start @ BTSN.
 Ms. Brucculeri getting as passionate about math with her parents as she does for her students. And just like during school, everyone's engaged!
 Pictured above are the sign-in sheets from Ms. Meider's class. There's no doubt that this year's BTSN was one of the most attended in the history of our school. Being able to attract even more parents and guardians to campus than usual says a lot about how excited our community is to partner with us in our effort to provide a national-caliber education to each and every one of our Griffins.
Congratulations to everyone for a successful Back To School Night!
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Defining The Struggle:
How One Teacher Uses Tennis As A Metaphor For Learning
Dr. Coriaty shares a personal example of struggle and success to all of his parents on Back To School Night.
By the time I walked into Dr. Coriaty's 5th Period presentation to parents on Back To School Night, a picture of a young boy in the middle of his serve on one of our tennis courts at school was already on the Elmo. Dr. Coriaty had asked parents to examine the boy's serve and break down its strengths and weaknesses. The whole time I thought it was a metaphor for the kind of literary analysis that went on in his class every day.
But this example was much more than that...
The picture was of Dr. Coriaty's son. And the metaphor was about Dr. Coriaty as a parent, not a teacher.
It turns out, the picture of the serve highlights a number of incorrect and inefficient movements. The boy in the picture defaults to these motions because they are comfortable and natural. However, Dr. Coriaty explains, in order to maximize power, spin, and accuracy, different grips and timing must occur, or a player will simply be average for the rest of their lives.
Dr. Coriaty goes on to tell the story of a match his son played in last week, in which the boy was attempting to play with the correct service motion, grip, and stance. Down significantly to his opponent, Dr. C's son asked his coach if he could switch back to the serve he liked since he kept double-faulting all the time. "No," his coach said. "If you go back to what you're comfortable with, you'll never learn the correct way to serve."
That's a metaphor for rigor and struggle in the classroom. Nobody learns if they just keep doing the same thing. Learning, by definition, is the replacement of old knowledge with new knowledge. Inherently, it should be uncomfortable.
Of course, there are many ways to communicate the value of struggling to parents and students alike. And on Back To School Night, in Mr. Coriaty's room, he used a personal example from the world of tennis to drive the message home.
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Chromebooks Are Everywhere:
With 8 Chromebook Carts On Campus, Nearly 1,000 Students Turn Their Assignments In Online
 Right now @ Los Al, we have more than 300 Chromebooks servicing close to 1,000 students every day!!!
Mossy Kennedy, Brandon Hart, Leslie Weber, Bart Smith, Jessica Riegert, Pauline Grimshaw, Stacy Meider, Jessica Hart, Erin Erice... these are all the names of teachers working with a cart of 40 chromebooks in their class as we speak.
As we officially begin to educate a generation of students that are "digital natives" (that is, born after the internet was created), we're learning that their worlds have very little to do with paper, pen, encyclopedias, or even handwriting. The world our students know is one of e-books, email, digital storage, and Photoshop. If we don't transfer our knowledge into a format that makes sense for them, we'll lose our ability to excite, engage, and excel them towards prosperous futures.
Chromebooks support the notion of being online for everything. In the world of Google, everything centers around Gmail and Google Docs. If you can create your document there, you can share it with anyone, instantly collaborate, and turn it in to a teacher at the end of the period with a click of a button.
This, quite simply, is how students learn. But chromebooks aren't for everyone. It's a lot more complicated than assigning students to a computer, and being on your merry way. There are tons of management protocols that need to be put in place in order for chromebooks to be worth your, and your student's, while.
So, if you're interested in getting a set... or maybe a set of iPads... email Dan Bennett (dbennett@losal.org) to learn more about the commitment you'd be making in housing a chromebook cart in your room.
It's benefits are endless, but it takes a willingness to learn and fail in order for chromebook carts to make sense for you.
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The Importance Of Student Work:
Meaningful Displays Of Creativity & Rigor Go Long Ways In The Classroom
Above, students write their "life story in six words." This is Ms. Yoshiara-Ha's introduction to THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA for 9th graders. More importantly, though, this task highlights Hemingway's writing modality and creates an opportunity for students to appreciate how difficult it is to brief and poignant with their words. All of the work on display in Ms. Yoshihara-Ha's classroom spotlights the particular literary text the class is working on at the time. One insightful response to the Hemingway task is in the top left corner of the picture above: "Sorry, I can't. I have homework."
 Know what shape #17 will be?If you do, you get extra credit! In Ms. Weis' Algebra Lab, she displays a different kind of student work to start the class: thinking. On display at the start of every period is a difficult pattern recognition assignment in which students are tasked to have a discussion with each other about what precise shape & color combination should be coming up next. The "puzzle pieces" are aligned to the days of the calendar month, and a new piece gets put up at the beginning of each learning day. What's on display here is the thinking and rigor of the task in and of itself. The best part of documenting the month's progress is that students can see at which point they started to recognize the pattern, and why. (Just to give you an example of how layered this task is, things like "even v. odd," "weekday v. weekend," "holiday v. non-holiday," "prime v. non-prime number," and so much more are are all factors in the pattern's repetition.)
 And then there's digital work. This kind of 21st century student production lends itself to multiple methods for publication and display. In Mr. Solis' Media Arts class, he tasks students with creating projects that highlight depth of knowledge across multiple platforms. Students are fortunate in that they all have digital storage lockers in which to save their work. In regards to display, students use common social media platforms like Tumblr, Instagram, and YouTube, as well as school GOOGLE DRIVE accounts which are easy to share and manage with peers and instructors.
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Stanford @ Los Al:
How Mr. Celestin & Professor James Campbell Are Collaborating In AP US History
That's Mr. Celestin telling his students that they're all going to Stanford this semester... virtually.
Ask any teacher if they'd like to have a Stanford professor visit their class and co-teach their students, and the answer will probably be "Of course!"
This is exactly what Mr. Celestin and Edgar E. Robinson Professor in United States History James T. Campbell will be doing this year for students in Mr. Celestin's AP US History course.
A champion of collaboration, Mr. Celestin said, "This is one of the most exciting opportunities for students I have ever been a part of in my thirty-plus years of teaching..." There's no doubt that having Professor Campbell SKYPE into class to answer students' questions about particular topics and units the class is covering will only enhance learning. Just for high-schoolers to have access to someone with the amount of experience and research Professor Campbell comes with is rare in a secondary school setting.
 Mr. Celestin isn't just stopping with Stanford and Professor Campbell, though. The Los Al veteran has reached out to a number of schools across the country, and is in works to set-up real-time collaboration opportunities with professors from a number of prestigious universities --- Harvard and Princeton included. It's all part of the 21st century skills teachers are trying to build in a new generation of students. The days of reading a textbook and gleaning all that you can from a single source are gone; students will be required to collaborate and pool resources in order to draw con-clusions, both, in school and at home.
Fortuntately for Mr. Celestin's AP US History students this year, they'll be collaborating with one of the nation's finest.
What an incredible opportunity :)
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The WHAT & The HOW:
A Story Of Instructional Networking Across Schools --- Oak & Los Al
That's Mr. Mendrin (left), he's a science teacher at Oak Middle School, but in this shot he blends right in with the students of Ms. Currie's Chemistry class.
When teachers go on ROUNDS, they instantly transform into learners eager to soak up all that they can from the experience of being in somebody else's classroom. This is precisely what Kathy Currie and Tiffani Orozco envisioned when they planned an informal version of Instructional Networking between the two Science Departments at Oak Middle School and Los Alamitos High.
What they couldn't predict, though, was the depth of conversation during moments of debrief. Where conversations between teachers would start off aligning WHAT high school students are learning to WHAT middle school teachers are teaching, they would quickly morph into colleagues sharing strategies for HOW they engage learners, introduce rigor, support struggling students, and more.
 Conversations like the one pictured to the left between Rob Main and Mike Stembridge narrowed in on the similarities and differences in teaching students at different grade levels. Teachers quickly valued how important it is to have a 6-12 perspective on content and skill.
Going forward, Los Al science teachers are hopeful of an opportunity to visit Oak, and learn from the experience of being in the classrooms of teachers who send us the well-prepared science students we're fortunate to work with...
And don't forget, LOS AL's first cycle of INSTRUCTIONAL ROUNDS is taking place next Monday, September 30th during Periods 1/2, 3/4, or 5/6. If you haven't contacted Ms. Currie to reserve a space and a substitute (you'd only be out 1-2 periods depending on your conference) do so today at kcurrie@losal.org.
Remember, there's no better professional development than being in the classroom of a colleague!
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Don't Miss A Los Al Hockey Game!
Every Saturday Night @ Anaheim Ice, All Fall Long
From now on, if you need a picture from any of these
Monday Morning Memos, Just find us on FLICKR
The pics there are high quality, easy to access,
and always downloadable.
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Los Alamitos High School
3591 Cerritos Ave.
Los Alamitos, CA 90720
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