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Palos Verdes teacher gives thoughts

April 11th, 2012

I recently received an email that gives a good perspective on teachers and their stance on district fund allocation. This thread is admittedly slanted, and only reflects one person’s point of view. Nonetheless, I find it thought-provoking. Please feel free to email info@studyhut.com if you would like to propose a rebuttal. I will post the best response:

Today we spoke about students needing to keep track of their own grades in the last 7-9 weeks of school here since teachers are not posting now as a way to get attention to the 180 days of school issue and to try to convince the school board that teachers who haven’t gotten a raise in some years deserve one. You may know that when money was ultra tight, we teachers agreed to cut our own (and more importantly the students’) work schedule as a way to furlough our salaries and keep the district solvent. [And we know you all chipped in more than your share as well to PEF and I do the same for my kids in MBUSD]. Anyway, it’s an allocation of district revenue issue that everyone should be weighing in on, and teachers are financially stressed and as inflation raises everyone’s cost of living, it is getting more and more difficult to live on a reduced work schedule. Not to mention, should we as a society, be reducing our educational calendar as the rest of the globe certainly is not decreasing theirs? If you disagree with me, I certainly would respect your differing viewpoint, and welcome you to share it with me. But, for better or worse right now, we need to be extra vigilante of our own school performance and stay on top of our homework and prepare for exams. There are only 7 weeks to Memorial Day (including this week) and then final exams are the week after a severely truncated Memorial week (with Monday off and 2 senior project minimum days for students).

Palos Verdes AVID car wash

November 2nd, 2011

We did it! Wow! Another great PV AVID car wash. Standing Ovation!

Cars Washed: 260

Teachers in attendance: Ms. Huber, Mr. Kuykendall, Ms. Parkinson, Mr. Heffernan, Dr. Stephany and more……

Teachers who sold car wash tickets: Ms. Damon, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Cormier, Ms. Kuhn, Mr. Chudy, Ms. Parkinson, Mr. Broughton, Ms. Reichert, Mr. Morales and again, probably other sellers.

The grand total of sales is yet to be determined. We will get back to you on that, but rest assured, it was well into the thousands. After all, most of you bought $50 in tickets as part of your AVID dues in the beginning of the year and then there were additional sales (a couple to a few thousand dollars worth in the past two weeks alone by the aforementioned teachers).

Where does the money go: By far, AVID’s biggest expense (and worth every penny) is to our fabulous tutors. While they individually do not make a lot, they collectively are expensive since they’re here 2 or 3 days a week from 8AM to 2PM.

The money is also used to for teacher tutors in January and June. In addition, it is used for classroom supplies and to defer some costs so that it either does not get passed down to you (after all you already paid for it with your dues and car wash) or so that AVID can pick up some of the cost to make something more affordable for everyone. Some expenses include Taco Man lunch in January, chaperone gift cards to thank teachers who spend their day on an AVID trip, site team lunches, AVID T-shirt (coming next week I believe), teacher conference fees and more.

Bottom line is all of the money goes back to the program! And we teachers really appreciate not having to worry about money the entire year and we can do the things we want to do with the students in and out of the classroom. So, THANK YOU ALL!

Thank you tutors Niccole, Brittany, MJ, Justin, and Study Hut for your help and presence.

Also a special shout out Live for 205 for covering and promoting the AVID Car Wash.

AVID working through summer

July 6th, 2011

SP here. I am really looking forward to my lunch meeting today with all of the rad teachers from the Palos Verdes High School AVID program. Each year during the summer, these awesome teachers (Egan, Whalen, Morales) get together to reflect on the past year. They ask questions like:

What went right?

What could we have done better?

What activities to we need to make more room for?

Which activities and ideas could be eliminated all together?

Certainly the questions and ideas that get bounced around go
much more in depth than these “Level 1” questions (some students are snickering at this), but in actuality, sometimes it is just this casual approach that gets us to the gems.

We are all working together to make sure that the AVID experience is excellent for all students at all levels. We need to make sure that we are meeting the statewide expectations for the program and the curriculum, and we also need to make sure that the goals we set for the students are achieved, and that the activities we decide on and the curriculum we endorse has a direct, positive impact on those goals. Most importantly, we are all looking forward to another amazing AVID year come Fall.

PSAT tutoring at PV High

February 14th, 2011

Spring semester is underway at Palos Verdes High School, and for sophomores in the AVID program, this means exposure to a whole new style of testing. As many of us know, the SAT is a very different type of test. Likewise, the PSAT is meant to serve as preliminary exposure to this different testing style for 10th grade students. For most sophomores, the PSAT is the first test they have ever seen in which there is a penalty for guessing incorrectly.

On a typical exam in history class or biology, a student is encouraged to answer each and every question to the best of his or her abilities. Any question the student is unsure about should be guessed at using strategies such as elimination. The same is not true of the SAT and the PSAT – on these tests, students must determine their own confidence level on a given problem, and must answer two questions:

– Is this question worth spending time considering?
– Can I eliminate one or more answers with certainty?

The truth is that most students have tremendous difficulty with answering these questions, which is why so many students need training for the SAT.

PV High AVID students have a huge advantage, then, because they are exposed to this style of test at an earlier age. It gives students more time to adjust to the style and become acclimated to the scoring system. Moreover, these students receive this training for free, as a perk of being part of such a prestigious program, and because of the excellent relationship between Study Hut Tutoring and the Palos Verdes High School AVID program. It is no wonder than dozens of students are turned away from the program each year, and it should come as no surprise that the application process for 8th graders is so competitive.