Hoover Staff:

I hope you all had an amazing Thanksgiving break and enjoyed some well deserved rest and relaxation. Our family was in NY and had a very nice time.

We have three more weeks until winter break ….yeah !!!  Seriously, you all are doing an amazing job at supporting all of our Hoover students in wonderful ways  this year. I will continue to share all the great data as it comes out. We will also continue more in-depth data analysis at our ILT, SSC, ELA, Math, AOIT Team meetings, Governance and staff meetings.

As we always constantly reflect on our practice, we will be making some school wide modifications (after the Thanksgiving break) to continue supporting your work in the classroom and raise the bar for our students. Here are a few of my focus areas as we come back:

1. We will be implementing our Attendance Intervention Council (starting immediately). This team will meet with the families of our most habitually tardy/truant students. We showed great growth last year with this plan and look forward to having in-depth conversations with the families about supporting a culture of success at Hoover.

1. While the numbers of 1^st period tardy student continue to decline, it is not good enough. We have implementing several other consequences for habitually showing up tardy to school. These students will be assigned lunch detention and/or after school detention. Habitual tardiness and truants will be assigned Sat School. These students will be getting daily wakeup calls (from me) and get a ride to attend Saturday school.

1. Embedded Support tardiness: we will be automatically locking these tardy student out and will automatically assign them same day lunch detention and well as develop a plan for support.

 

1. The district auto dialer calls going home to inform parents of late or truant issues will become much more directive. It is critical that parents know what the implications for missing class are. All of our Hoover students now have way too much loose –with our College Avenue Compact, it is critical for our families and communities know what is at stake.

 

1. Celebrations: We will continue to get better at celebrating student success. Last week we passed out the iPods and other prizes to student who represent the finest at Hoover. Please continue to share ideas you have in this area.

***I am a strong believer that we need to do both at 110% if we are truly change the Culture of Success !!!

Also, I have made some modification to our Hoover Principal Blog to help support some professional reading and continued professional dialogue. I have also added an area for staff resources and these should be up in the next few days. I believe that you will enjoy these first few articles posted.

1. Chuck Podhorsky – Hoover High Principal’s Blog:

https://cpodhorsky.edublogs.org/

As you know, we also have a twitter account to help keep our student, parents and community informed. Please feel free to post this information for all you students and families.

1. 2.     Twitter -Hoover High School@DrP_HooverHigh

http://twitter.com/DrP_HooverHigh

 

 

1. 3.     Hoover High Website (Teacher site- Chuck’s Site)

http://www.sandi.net/78832099162456633/site/default.asp

1. Surveymonkey – we utilize this tool on a regular basis to help get feedback and make mid course modifications as we continue to reflect and do the best job we can for our students. This current survey will continue to remain open and we will discuss the confidential result at our public forums. Please share these links with students and families. We will also be bringing some students in to get a better voice form them –regarding ways to build a Culture of Success.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Hoover_High_6_week_check_in_2010

Cheers,

Chuck 🙂

Chuck Podhorsky, Ed. D.

Principal – Hoover High School

Phone: 619-283-6281 x2104

Fax: 619-280-5837

Hoover High School (Future Distinguished School)–

Doing “Whatever It Takes” to help all students succeed!!!

cpodhorsky@sandi.net

http://lessonstudy.net/

Hoover Staff:

I wanted to send a quick “Cardinal Kudos” to the entire 10^th grade English teaching and support team !!!

As you know, the Hoover English department has been working for the past 3 years with our colleagues from the SDSU Rhetoric and Writing department (Liane Bryson and Cali Linfor). The Hoover English teachers have focused on the skills and content to insure a successful transition for all of our Hoover College Avenue Compact students (no remediation and successful coursework when they enter SDSU).

At the 10^th grade ELA planning meeting yesterday, the teachers examined the results from their Summative #1 assessment. They also worked on the intervention plan for the students who scored “Basic and Below Basic”….awesome job !!!

(Below is a graph of the results from the ELA Summative #1 assessment — all 10^th grade students)

Hoover Senior High

  

69% of the students at Proficient and Advanced —Wow !!! 

 A huge congratulations to all of the 10^th grade ELA teachers and students.

I know many more of the Hoover academic departments will be administering their Summative Assessment #1 soon and I look forward to more Cardinal Kudos.

Please keep up the great work and support for our students as we prepare them for College and Career.

Cheers,

Chuck 🙂