Faculty Highlights: Week of January 30

• Padre and a group of students wrote, produced and are performing Scent this weekend.  Padre worked with students on the writing, direction and acting in this play which tackles the complicated process of grief.    
• Mr. Eisenbraun and Mrs. O’Connor went to a conference sponsored by the St. Xavier Admissions Office which discussed how to prepare students with special needs for college.  Presenters stressed the importance of teaching students to advocate for themselves as that is what students will have to do in college and the rest of their lives.
• Ms. Matijevic, Coach Antonietti and Coach Hoerster took students to the Opera on Thursday. 
• Mrs. Gomez’s upper-class French students are analyzing French and American cultural similarities and differences.  Students are also mastering common colloquial phrases in class.      
• Ms. Mayhan had students work in pairs to identify the significance of various events during the beginning of globalization – the era of exploration.  Students had to work in pairs to articulate the significance of the developments of Columbus, Cortez, Magellan, Pizarro, Coronado, etc. 
• Coach Timbers had his Technology I students created Excel spreadsheets for sports teams that outline athletes’ salary and breakdown their compensation by month and games played.  He also has students use Excel to calculate each athlete’s taxes.  Students worked diligently as Mr. Timbers walked among the students, helping those that needed it. 
• Thanks to Mr. Haggerty, Mr. Good, Dr. Berry, Mr. Ehrenstrom, Mr. Sobucki, Mrs. Millsap and Mr. Glonek for sharing their best practices for college readiness skill building and the ways they use data to inform instruction.  More importantly, thanks to these teachers for their creativity in thinking about how to prepare our students for college.  Each idea approached the College Readiness Standards similarly to the ways coaches develop athletes.  Each teacher had a strategy for coaching students through the directions and format of the test, set up drills to practice standards, assessed and reassessed students’ proficiency on these standards and relentlessly worked until students met the standard.  This formula works well in teaching students as it does in coaching athletes.      
• Mr. Collier explained the downside of a series electrical circuit by discussing the frustration of trying to decorate for Christmas when one of the bulbs goes out in a circuit-wired string of lights.  Students then used the Smartboard to build a virtual circuit using images provided in the textbook Smartboard applications.  The Smartboard provided students with an effective visual tool.  It even showed a virtual fire when a student miscircuited the electricity.
• Mr. Mota took the Spanish 3 and 4 students to La Fonda, a Columbian restaurant after school on Wednesday.  Students enjoyed the cultural experience and the opportunity to practice their Spanish while eating Latin food. 
• Mr. Glonek and Mr. Minogue took the Environmental Science students to a nuclear power plant where they had a tour and listened to a presentation by one of the employees. 
• Mr. McGrath gave a quiz on Wednesday to his Algebra students and spent Thursday reviewing the concepts with which students most struggled on the quiz.  In Mr. McGrath’s room, assessment is used well formatively, to give students feedback on their progress and give the teacher data to inform his instruction. 
• Coach Kammholz split his Freshmen Physical Education students into teams of two for a badminton tournament.  Teams keep their record as they played in a round-robin format leading up to a class championship.  Students are enjoying exposure to the new sport and the competition.
• Mrs. Pienton is offering sessions on using primary sources in the library for students working on their history fair projects.  Mrs. Pienton helped students use the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Defender Historical Archives.  Many students are using their lunch time to work on these projects in the library.