Staying current on High School goings on

SHHS Art Department on FacebookWith apologies to all those noble people who do not use Facebook, I wanted to highlight a great Facebook page: SHHS Art Department.  It has photographs of student art, competitions for students to enter, and details about must-see events in the local art scene.  You should Like the Page if your child is involved in any way in the Art Department, but also if you want to get a sense of the High School itself — it’s fantastic window into a great school.  But more broadly, web pages like the Art Department’s will increasingly be a great way to know what your kid might be up to in school even if he/she is not especially communicative at home about anything.  For a fairly comprehensive listing of webpages (departments, teams, clubs, etc.), please visit the Links page (above menu), though many are not updated and some are for students only.

On the topic of Facebook … non-users might want to know that some of the class-specific organizing is done via Facebook Pages and Groups, so if you have this feeling that you’re missing out on important news all the time, that might be why (there may be other explanations, of course).

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High School needs update, badly

If you know of a student who uses Wikipedia, the entry for Strath Haven High School needs to be updated.  For example, it says Colin Campbell is the Principal, it doesn’t seem to link to High School website in Information section, and it could use some more photographs (Camera Clubs?).  People considering a move to the District scrutinize information on local schools, so it’s good to present the school in the best light possible, and a fussed-over Wikipedia entry would be great.  So, if you know of a student or a class that might be interested in fussing…please send them this post.

Strath Haven High School wikipedia

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100 blog followers

100 blog followersJust a minor milestone for the SHHS Home and School Association website: we now have 100 followers (and, apparently, they are amazing people).  Combined with the 82 Facebook fans, that’s … a start.  Hopefully, the remaining 90% of parents are checking in on site occasionally.

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Teacher Appreciation Week (May 6-10)

Teacher Appreciation WeekParents appreciate teachers every day, of course, but just in case you needed an excuse to send them a thanks, we wanted to remind you (a bit late) that this week is Teacher Appreciation Week. You can find their emails in the Grade Portal, via the online directory, and on their web pages.

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Principal to speak at final HSA mtg on May 9th

At the May 9th Home and School Association meeting, Dr Yannacone will share her end-of-the-year report as well as look ahead to the coming year. It’s a nice way to tie up the annual cycle and begin to look at what’s on the horizon for high school and the District.  This is the final meeting of the school year. PLEASE COME!!

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The download on downloads

Just a geeky parenting tip. Skip if you’re not into such things.

Teachers post a variety of text documents, presentations, and spreadsheets on their course pages for your child to download at night, and your child is probably better than you at getting and manipulating these files. But not always — sometimes teachers will post files that not all kids can open, and sometimes that kid is yours. Teachers do this because school computers are pre-loaded with software that the school has purchased, and thus teachers might be unaware that parents have to buy software (e.g., see cost of Microsoft Office for sale on Amazon). So when your child is trying to download something from a course web page and they can’t easily open it, just get your kid to ask the teacher for a PDF version, which is vastly preferred for sharing documents (file size smaller, virus free, better for visually impaired students, etc.). Alternatively, they could ask the teacher to provide a link on their course page to software that can easily convert the files, and to alert parents to this link. E.g., teacher could link to Open Office (free, can open Microsoft Office documents) or Google Drive (that also has ability to convert). So have the “software talk” with your kid if you are unsure of any of this.

word-problem

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Staff Appreciation Luncheon would appreciate some help

teacher-appreciation-lunchIn case you didn’t know, the Home and School Association throws an appreciation party each Spring for the High School staff, and part of the process is hitting up parents for food donations and for help on the day itself, May 3rd.  (You know where this is going…right?)  Our SAL chair, Anne Campanella, has set up a SignUpGenius page to facilitate contributions, and if you have ducked your duties so far, please give it a click — the page is broken down by grade level.  For example, if you have a senior, you sign up to drop off a dessert before 8 am on May 3rd. When signing up, you can leave a note about what you’re planning to bring, or even a comment about how nice it is for Anne to organize this event (or both).  If you are not sure which grade your child is in, just sign up for a dessert…those parents have senioritis, and we’d love to get all the slots filled ASAP.  Thanks, parents!

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