Issue: #66

February
2016

In This Issue

Teen Mental Wellness

Featured Article

The Burlingame School District Gets Set to Open 21st Century Tech-ready Classroom Building

Parent Education Night at Hillsdale High

To Highlight Mental Wellness for Teens

It comes as no surprise that parents, teachers and counselors have seen a spike in stress, anxiety and depression among today's teens and preteens. In response to this phenomenon, StarVista, the San Mateo County Office of Education, the San Mateo Union High School District (SMUHSD) and the County of San Mateo Health System are joining together to present "Navigating the Tides of Adolescence," an evening panel discussion for parents on the challenges facing teens and strategies for coping.

The event, free of charge to the public and simultaneously translated in Spanish and

Mandarin, will be held on February 29, 2016 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. at Hillsdale High School in San Mateo. Panelists will include Dr. Steven Adelsheim, Stanford child psychologist;Kathleen Blanchard, a parent at Gunn High School, Julie Lythcott-Haims,author of How to Raise an Adult and former freshman dean at Stanford University; and a student at Mercy High School who has successfully dealt with mental health issues.

Topics that will be discussed include: components that contribute to a teen's autonomy and decision making; social stigma, suicide prevention and academic stress; strategies to promote a balanced lifestyle; local resources for education, prevention, intervention and crisis response. A team from Mills High School will film the event and post the video on YouTube in March.

"We know that when students are not in a good place in terms of their mental health they are going to suffer as students," notes Dr. Kevin Skelly, SMUHSD superintendent. "This is a topic that is important to us and to parents."

"StarVista and the panelists are committed and passionate about reaching out to parents to help them understand what's happening in our culture and community, and how to rise up and make things better," adds Stephanie Weisner, Director of Wellness and Recovery Services at StarVista. "We want parents to feel welcome and comfortable talking about mental health and mental wellness."

A similar event held in the fall at Sacred Heart Preparatory School in Atherton was well received and the organizers wanted to offer it again and reach out to parents in the northern part of San Mateo County. Publicity has gone out to middle and high schools in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. Seating is limited and parents are advised to preregister online.

County STEM Fair Builds Excitement Around Science and Technology

More students than ever before are expected to participate at the 28th annual San Mateo County STEM Fair, hosted by the San Mateo County Office of Education and held at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos February 28-March 1, with the awards ceremony on March 8. Sponsors include Oracle, Gilead and the Hiller Aviation Museum.

With projects

as diverse as "Identifying How Routers Affect Plants," "Future Fabrics: Using Carbon Nanotube-Coated Cotton to Create Efficient Wearable Heaters," and "Does Password Complexity Increase With Age?" the event promises to have something to capture everyone's interest.

In past years some of the STEM Fair events have been held at the San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE). But with more than 400 students in grades 6-12 and 60 judges in attendance this year, STEM Center staff decided to move the entire event this year to the Hiller Aviation Museum.

Judges have been recruited from throughout the county and include scientists, technology professionals, teachers and community volunteers. The judging system will be more "free form" this year, according to Doron Markus, Science and Engineering Coordinator at SMCOE's STEM Center, and similar to the judging process at the California State STEM fair. Students who win awards will have the option to compete at the San Francisco Bay Area STEM Fair (for grades 7-12) or the state STEM fair (for grades 6-12).

Students will check in and set up their projects on February 28 and judging will take place on February 29. Parents and siblings are invited to climb up to the mezzanine level of the Hiller Aviation Museum, where they can visit science stations set up just for them, participate in a maker space and try out flight simulators, as well as have a great view of the STEM Fair from above.

The public is invited to the Open House on March 1 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. and the awards ceremony on March 8 from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. For more details, check the STEM Fair website.

Big Lift Grantees Share Success

Highlights and Challenges

The four school district grantees in the first Big Lift cohort came together on January 29, 2016 at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) to share their successes, strengths and challenges since receiving a combined total of $4.4 million in grants last May. They compared notes on all their promising efforts to improve third-grade reading outcomes.

Representatives

SVCF's Jessica Mihaly with Dr.John King, Acting Secretary of Education at the U.S. Department of Education.

from the grantee districts--La Honda Pescadero Unified, South San Francisco Unified, Jefferson Elementary School District and the Cabrillo Unified School District and their community partners--as well as Silicon Valley Community Foundation and San Mateo County Office of Education staff were on hand to participate in the discussion.

Grantees shared their successes in increasing access to preschool for families in their districts, hiring ECE specialists to assist with training, and creating parent engagement opportunities. They spoke of their challenges in hiring qualified staff, adding adequate facilities and finding time for staff collaboration to discuss best practices. School district representatives also updated the group on their efforts to collaborate and coordinate their Big Lift work with community partners.

Jessica Mihaly, Initiative Officer for PreK-3rd Grade and The Big Lift at the SVCF, and SVCF staff gave updates on "behind the scenes" work of The Big Lift Core Team, and progress on choosing an evaluation tool and data collection strategy. Participants learned about the Be Strong Families Parent Cafe family engagement strategy and The Big Lift's work with Hands On Bay Area to recruit and match volunteers eager to help with grantee programs.

Mihaly also announced plans for the first Big Lift Inspiring Summers program. With an investment of $3.75 million it will serve the four school district grantees and provide full-day educational programs for 2,750 children this coming summer and expand in subsequent summers. Literacy and STEM instruction will be provided by the San Mateo County Library, the Bay Area Discovery Museum's Center for Childhood Creativity and BELL, a nonprofit providing high-quality evidence-based summer programs.

The Big Lift plans to expand its reach and will announce the next RFP at the end of February to add an additional one to three communities as grantees beginning in July 2016. Check The Big Lift website soon for details.

SMCOE Environmental Education Design Challenge Draws a Crowd

When teachers, students, principals, superintendents, school board members, scientists and environmentalists gathered at the San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE) on February 9, 2016 to re-imagine environmental education, Superintendent Anne Campbell welcomed them and warned that it would not be "a sit-on-your-rear type day." And was she ever right.

With the help

Environmental Design Challenge participants created prototypes for their solutions out of scrap materials.

of Dr. Maureen Carroll and Lisa Rowland of Lime Design Associates, a design thinking consulting firm, and Rebecca Vyduna and her SMCOE STEM Center team, participants engaged in a series of "get up out of your chair" design thinking exercises, with the aim of cultivating innovative mindsets, unleashing creativity and developing empathy, all with the focus of how to move environmental education forward in San Mateo County.

Small diverse groups of teachers, administrators, students and community members worked together on ethnographic interviews and practiced going beneath the surface to understand what their interviewees were feeling as well as saying. They crafted needs statements and built off each other's ideas. And they built crazy-looking prototypes with pipe cleaners, paper clips, construction paper and found objects to illustrate design solutions. Once the prototypes were complete, STEM Center staff filmed participants describing their creations--the problem they were addressing and the solution symbolized by the prototype.

The goal was to think about how SMCOE can enhance and support environmental education beyond the successful Outdoor Education program, to connect environmental education with technology and innovative work happening in Silicon Valley.

"This day was all part of an ongoing process to re-imagine environmental education," notes Deputy Superintendent Dr. Gary Waddell. "We want to embrace divergent thinking. Ideas have bubbled up that we might never have thought of without all these people in the room. There's still a lot of work to be done but we will build on the ideas that surfaced in today's session."

Burlingame School District Takes 21st Century Digital Direction

The new "tech forward" humanities building at Burlingame Intermediate School is just weeks away from completion and Burlingame School District staff were proud to show off its digital 21st century readiness on a recent hard hat tour.

The building, outfitted with wireless capacity, LED screens and white boards throughout, will house 12 light and airy classrooms, many with indoor and

(l. to r.) Burlingame Superintendent Maggie MacIsaac; Tim Ryan,Director of Facilities; David Griffin, Information Systems Support Specialist; and Ashley Sullivan, Technology Integration Specialist; tour the new 21st century classroom building at Burlingame Intermediate School.

outdoor learning spaces, skylights, removable walls and small breakout rooms. Apple TVs will allow students to project their work from their digital devices onto walls. Movable benches and stools in the hallways and common areas will provide spaces for students to easily congregate and work together.

"As student work goes digital, simply tacking papers on bulletin boards is less of an option," notes Tim Ryan, Director of Facilities. "You need lots of big walls for projecting student work."

"Having this space will allow us to move forward with our technology plan and the digital skills we want all our students to have," adds Superintendent Maggie MacIsaac.

"This new building is all about giving students, teachers and classes the ability to collaborate and create," says Ashley Sullivan, Technology Integration Specialist for the district. On any given day she moves from school to school, classroom to classroom, providing resources and support for teachers. No day is typical, she says, as she tries to meet the needs of teachers who have different comfort levels and experience with technology.

Throughout the district, gone are the days of sending students to the tech lab. Now with the availability of digital tools and online resources, it's all about integrating technology into the curriculum and every classroom. Sixth graders, each with their own Chromebook, are working with Amplify Science, a new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) research-based digital curriculum developed in partnership with the UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science that engages students with real scientific problems to be solved. Third-graders are working on blogs, art classes are creating stop-motion videos and social studies classes are creating digital maps, charting the journeys of the explorers. Students at many grade levels use Google documents and Google Classroom.

"We're on a path to meet our goals of creating digital citizens and critical thinkers for the 21st century," notes MacIsaac with a smile.

Check Us Out on Facebook

The San Mateo County Office of Education (SMCOE) now has a page on Facebook. We'll be providing frequent upd facebook logo

ates on SMCOE events and education news of interest, adding groups of interest, and linking to other education organizations. Check us out and "like" us today on Facebook!

About the San Mateo County Office of Education

The San Mateo County Office of Education provides a variety of instructional, business and consulting services to the County's 23 public school districts, charter schools, the Community College District and County Office of Education staff.

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