Newtown High School Blog

The Newtown High School Counseling staff will now be sending transcripts and college materials electronically with the help of a Naviance Webinar.

Instead of writing out and stamping envelopes as in the past, students will now have their transcripts, report cards and school profile sent electronically for a nominal $2. fee per application.

The new and exciting process will be further explained to all seniors on Tuesday September 7th at 7pm at the Senior College Workshop in the Auditorium.

“We’re all really excited to move to electronic filing and transcripts.  It’s going to be so beneficial for our students,” School Counselor Jeffrey Tolson said.

Twenty-eight members of the high school faculty, representing nearly every department and the administration, participated in two days of training that will help us to systematically share instructional practices to help students achieve at higher levels.  It was directly tied to making effective use of the release time that has been incorporated into this year’s calendar.

The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) is the organization that determines the accreditation status of secondary schools and colleges throughout the Northeast.  Most people are familiar with the visits that each school gets every ten years and the reports that are filed between those visits (updates at two and five years), but many are unaware that teachers from our school participate in evaluations of other schools. Read the rest of this entry »

From April 12, 2010 to April 17, 2010,  Newtown High School Assistant Principal Scott Clayton was in Washington D.C. with the Connecticut cohort of the Education Policy Fellowship Program (http://epfp.iel.org/), which is the main satellite program of the Institute of Educational Leadership (IEL).  There were approximately 250 school administrators, university professors, elected officials, and faculty from the U.S. Army War College also in attendance.  Read the rest of this entry »

Newtown High School Assistant Principal Scott Clayton attended “The Politics of School” national conference at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA. The event was sponsored by the Institute for Educational Leadership (IEL), which is a Washington D.C. based organization with satellite programs across the U.S. The state affiliates sponsor experienced educational leaders in the Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP), of which Mr. Clayton is a member. Read the rest of this entry »

Mr. Pescarmona attended a College Board Workshop on Advanced Placement Psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Boston on December 4, 2009. It was a wonderful opportunity to converse with colleagues, receive updated curriculum information, test preparation strategies, relevant activities, and evaluation information for a new textbook.

For three days this fall, five of our teachers attended state-sponsored training at Western Connecticut State University to become cooperating teachers for education students and mentors to new teachers. Tim DeJulio and Maura Mancini of the Science department, Cathy Hall of the Math department, and Kristin English and Jacqui Kaplan of the English department all attended the training on November 16 and 17, 2009 and December 11, 2009. The training was part of the state’s new beginning teacher education and certification model, TEAM (to replace the BEST program). The teachers learned about the new beginning teacher mentoring program, the new learning modules for beginning teachers, and the requirements and protocols for taking on a student teacher. They participated in activities that helped them remember the pressures of being a new teacher, showed them how to effectively evaluate student teachers, and prepared them for the role of coach and mentor for new teachers. All five teachers found the training informative and exciting, and are pleased at the prospect of giving back to their profession.

Staff at the high school have been learning the language of The Ladder of Inference.  The model, initially developed by Christopher Argyris and subsequently presented by Peter Senge, maps how we move from observable data to actions and how the process can be short-circuited by beliefs that we hold (which affects which data we choose to select from that which we observe).  Learn more here.

Newtown High School teachers Jolene Thompson, Maura Mancini, Laura Battisti, Kathy Swift, and Jay Daly, worked with Assistant Principal Jaime Rivera (far left) to develop materials to use with teachers to learn the ins and outs of the new student information system, Powerschool.  (Laura McLean, absent from the photograph, will also be one of the teacher trainers)

Josh Engler, Isabel Gleason, Matt Hoeffel, & Monica Tedla joined Superintendent Janet Robinson and Principal Chip Dumais at a week-long workshop with Peter Senge as part of the Society for Organizational Learning’s Education Partnership. Read the rest of this entry »

Five teachers from Newtown High School’s History Department spent three days in Gettysburg, PA touring the 27 square miles of battlefield from the Civil War. Read the rest of this entry »

Mr. George Bachman, greenhouse manager and instructor for NHS Greenery Plant Science in Action attended the 33rd Annual Student Career Days at the California Polytechnic Institute, Pomona. It was sponsored by the Professional Landscaper’s Network (PLANET) and attended by over 850 students of horticulture, plant science and agriculture. Sixty universities, community colleges and high schools from around the U.S. were represented along with faculty, industry sponsors, and recruiters. Read the rest of this entry »

On November 7th four teachers from NHS’s English Department traveled to the banks of the Hudson River in New York to become students at Bard College’s Institute for Writing and Thinking. Mrs. Hanna, Mr. Keylock, Mrs. Miller, and Dr. Toby spent an intense day Read the rest of this entry »