The Vine October 13, 2017

From the desk of Superintendent Chris Williams

Pioneer Day Parade Tomorrow The 87th Annual Paso Robles Pioneer Day Parade is tomorrow morning at 10 a.m. Be sure to go out and support not only our students, but our entire Paso Robles community!

District Elementary Championships The district elementary championships for cross country and are today at PRHS beginning with a pep rally at 2:30 in the Gil Asa Gym. Volleyball will begin at 3:45 and cross country at 4:00. Thank you to our Bearcat volleyball and cross country athletes and coaches for their help in hosting this event. Best of luck to all of our athletes competing today!

In preparation for today’s championships, Winifred Pifer coaches Wendy Kaspar and Michelle Bektic, took their volleyball players to watch the PRHS volleyball team in action. The girls got a chance to see what skills they would need as they progress through middle and high school. The future Bearcats had a great time watching our current Bearcats defeat Pioneer Valley!

SLO County Elementary Cross Country Championships For the first time ever, elementary students in SLO County will have an opportunity to race against one another to determine the fastest runner in the entire county!

As one of the events in the Paso Robles Half Marathon, the Family Mile is the official SLO County Championships for students ages 6-11.

Sign up by October 20th and use the promo code PRJUSD to get 50% off the registration fee for this race. All students receive a t-shirt and are also entered into a drawing to win a free washer and dryer from Idler’s Home! Go to www.pasohalf.com to register. Special Olympics Athletes Preparing for Competition With the continual growth of our Special Olympics program, we are excited to be hosting local events leading up to the Spring Regional Games at Cuesta College. Staff recently met with Michael Lara, the San Luis Obispo County Region representative for Special Olympics, to join in partnership for the expanded opportunities for our athletes. With the expansion, we will be hosting four local events prior to the Spring Regional games in May. We will also be moving forward in our efforts to create unified teams to promote social inclusion through intentionally planned and implemented activities with general education peers.

We have over 40 Special Olympics athletes this school year (ages 8 -22), with an additional 50 young athletes (ages 3-7) practicing hard with their buddies and developing lifelong friendships. Please join us in cheering on our athletes! 10/27/2017 Paso Robles Sports Club 10:00-12:30 Fall Aquatics Meet 3-5 Elementary/Middle/HS/Adult 11/15/17 War Memorial Stadium 10:30-12:30 Unified Bocce and Soccer Tournament Middle/HS/Adult 3/1/18 Gil Asa Gym @ PRHS 9:30-11:30 Unified and Cheer Tournament HS/Adult 3/20/18 War Memorial Stadium TBD Young Athletes Program Culminating Event Preschool/SDC K/ K-2 Elementary 5/4/18 Cuesta College TBD Spring Regional Games Athletes ages 8-22

Chromebook Distribution The Paso Robles High School Library had a busy week distributing Chromebooks to over 2,100 students. The process was streamlined and took less than fifteen minutes per class! The IT Department created charging stations boxes for classrooms and helped with distribution. To read more about our Chromebook program, please read the article in the Paso Robles Daily News. Over 4,000 students in PRJUSD now have their own devices! Lunch with Your Kid Another successful week of having parents eat lunch with their children! Pictured here are parents and students from Winifred Pifer Elementary and Flamson Middle School. Be sure to check your school site’s calendar for upcoming dates and times!

Bobcats Fill the Boot Students and staff at The Arts Academy at Bauer Speck helped fill two large boots with donations to help burn survivor children attend Champ Camp. The firefighters stopped at the campus as part of the Burn Relay that made its way through SLO County yesterday. The firefighters also taught the students about fire safety.

Pifer Partnerships The Early Learning Academy at Winifred Pifer Elementary is partnering with students from our Independent Skills program and PRHS students in the child development program. The older students work as classroom helpers and the teachers love working with students and young adults who are learning to be teachers!

32 PRHS students assist at Pifer every Thursday for an hour and are learning how to support students in the classrooms and on the playground.

STEAM Lessons Mr. Fairbank’s students at Paso Robles High School have been working on an ecology unit in Honors Science Academy 2 Integrated Science. They performed a bacteria growth lab that was compared to the human population growth. They took data over an eight-day period and graphed the data. They then compared the data to human population over the past 2000 years. They also had fun with a stacking cup activity in which they made associations between ecological terms on each cup with the order they were stacked in.

In Physics and AP Physics, students performed a multi-flash photography lab where they were able to use modern digital as well as film photography to analyze the motion of a projected ball. The students developed the prints in the dark room using an enlarger and red lights.

Mrs. Jaeger’s class at Kermit King Elementary experimented with different items that they thought would make the soda fizz higher. Students hypothesized and then tested their theories and recorded the data.

Miss Rodriguez's 5th grade students at Virginia Peterson Elementary studied the phases of the moon and then had fun creating each phase using Oreo cookies and labeling them correctly with scientific vocabulary.

Ms. McNellis at The Arts Academy at Bauer Speck introduced her 2nd grade students to the three states of matter using a matter rap, an educational game, images, partner discussions, and through the “phenomenon” of a root beer float. Can you identify the three states of matter in a root beer float?

Students in Mr. Ward’s robotics class at Lewis Middle School are building their first robot. A great opportunity for students to dive into introductory engineering!

VAPA 3rd graders in PRJUSD are so excited to begin keyboarding! They are learning how to find each note on the keyboard and learning about note duration and reading music. Here, Senora Ezzell’s class at Georgia Brown Elementary practices finger patterns.

5th grade continues to practice different rhythms with quarter notes, quarter rests, and eighth notes. Senora Vasquez’s class did an amazing job clapping along to a fast- paced rhythm video.

Congratulations to Ms. Bell’s 4th grade class at Virginia Peterson Elementary for excelling in recorder karate! Every student passed both white and yellow belt levels and are practicing for orange. They are the first class to get to that level!

Saturday School Enrichment Winifred Pifer Elementary held its first Saturday School Enrichment of the year and had 27 participants! Students got to spend some time in the computer lab working on their math skills using ST Math. Students were very excited to continue their learning on a Saturday and can’t wait until the next one!

One Cool Earth Corner What will you do with the inside of your pumpkin this year?! Students in grades K-3 at Winifred Pifer Elementary have been taste testing pumpkin seeds this past month! Lots of yums and very few yucks. Roast up those seeds with your kiddos as a healthy snack option that they’ll actually eat. Here is a recipe below. Enjoy! • Preheat oven to 275 degrees F. • Scoop the seeds out of the pumpkin and remove as much pulp (guts) as possible! • Rinse the seeds in a colander, then dry the seeds with a towel. • Spread the seeds over a cookie sheet and sprinkle olive oil and lightly salt (You can add any spices here that you’d like, but students mostly enjoyed lightly salted!) • Cook for 20-25 minutes, but check often so that they do not burn.

This Saturday is our first teacher training at San Gabriel Elementary! It is FREE, and lunch is provided. If you teach 3 of our lessons, there is also a stipend involved!

Looking for a fun and meaningful way to engage in your child’s school? Remember to check out One Cool Earth on Facebook to see when they’ll be hosting community garden workdays at your school: www.facebook.com/onecoolearth or www.onecoolearth.org. From planting to painting signs, there is an activity for everyone! Please contact our FoodCorps AmeriCorps Member, Danica Smith at [email protected] for further opportunities and information. Student Board Presentations We had outstanding student reports at the last board meeting, including our first elementary student presentation! Once a month, students from Paso Robles High School and Liberty High School give reports detailing student life at their respective campuses. Mackenzie Raymond and Taylor Perez from PRHS and Cassandra Walton from Liberty told attendees about upcoming events and activities. Then Miguel Bannister from Kermit King Elementary spoke about all the programs that he enjoys at his school including music. He is learning how to play the bell kit and is looking forward to expanding his knowledge of music and instruments. He is also excited to start playing .

PBIS Rewards

Students in Mrs. Steaffans’ class earned 100 “positive paw tickets” for demonstrating positive behavior at Winifred Pifer Elementary. As a reward, the students chose to have a dance party in their class.

Staff News Congratulations and welcome to the following teachers who will be joining our staff this year:

Jess Perazzo Jess grew up in Southern where she swam and played water polo for Yucaipa High School. She attended Arizona State University on a full-ride scholarship and earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Political Science with a minor in sociology. She completed her mild/moderate Education Specialist Credential at the University of Redlands. Jess was a Special Education Paraprofessional in a self- contained classroom serving students identified as having an emotional disturbance for 2 years. Upon receiving her credential, she taught in an SDC, ED setting for one year. She then began teaching in the Yucaipa-Calimesa Joint Unified School District where she has worked as an itinerant SAI teacher for the past two years serving students in grades K-12. Jess is an active and competitive individual that always prefers to be outside. She can be found camping, backpacking or riding her dirt bike most weekends and never misses an Oakland Raiders game. She has one furry child named Blue and is recently married. Jess is very close with her family and has a sister who lives in SLO.

Sunny Bivin Sunny Bivin is a lifelong learner who earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, then continued her education at National University earning a Master’s of Business Administration. She made a career change and completed her Master’s of Arts in Teaching at National University. She recently completed her Multiple Subject Teaching Credential from Cal State TEACH and began her teaching career as a long-term substitute in first grade at Virginia Peterson. Sunny spent another year teaching a third/fourth grade combination class at Pleasant Valley School. When she isn’t sharing her passion of learning with students, she enjoys being a mom to a freshman Bearcat and a seventh grade Flamson Cougar, including supporting them at many district athletic events and activities. She is dedicated Girl Scout Leader, chaperoning camping trips and teaching leadership skills. In her spare time, she enjoys running, reading, scrapbooking and has recently began learning to sew.