Great Happenings in the East Grand School District the week of Sept. 27.
• Under the BEST Grant we will be redesigning our entryways and office spaces at Fraser Valley and the Middle School. If you would like to be a part of an advisory team to help with the design, go to www.egsd.org and click on the “Design Advisory Group” box to apply.
• As our schools continue to grow and change, we are looking to give our “State of the District” presentation to any group that desires to hear it. If you would like a 20-minute presentation please contact the district office and we will get a time set up.
• On Sept. 19, Granby Preschool took a walking field trip to the Granby Community Gardens. While we were there, preschoolers identified and harvested carrots, potatoes, peas, lettuce, strawberries and kale. We played at the Morales playground and then rode the bus back to the school. Granby Preschool would like to thank parents who volunteered on our field trip, the Granby Community Gardens, and Mike Thompson for our bus ride.
• We had a big surprise at MPHS on Monday. Our tour guide from Costa Rica, Marco Fallas, came to MPHS to visit us. He has been guiding our MPHS students in Costa Rica for over 10 years. He came and spoke to classes and we shared the Costa Rica trip video together over lunch with last year’s trip participants. This is the very first time he has ever been to our valley. It was very special for all of us.
• Thanks to our local officers who take the time to visit our schools, interact and sometimes even play games with our students.
• On Tuesday, AnnaLiese Jenson, Keelan Thomas, and Chris Orear attended the Grand Innovation summit on Energy at the Headwaters Center in Winter Park. As the president, vice president and secretary of the club, these students rubbed elbows with some of the entrepreneurial leaders in the county. The experience represents one of the goals of this student-created club: establishing a network of mentors in Grand county.
President AnnaLiese represented the club well as she asked the panel what message could they give to students to encourage graduates to return to the area and participate in the local economy. After the panel discussion, the students were able to discuss this message with several attendees.
“This was a great way to learn how to connect with new people and understand the innovative ideas that are happening in the county,” as Chris Orear explained.
The first meeting of the Entrepreneurship Club will see 22 students who are interested in learning about entrepreneurship, mentorship, fundraising, and finding opportunity.
• Every semester Judge Mary Hoak and Judge Nicholas Catanzarite visit Mr. Wilson’s Civics’ class. To prepare for this visit, students examine four different cases that have been decided by one of the judges. The students then present how they would rule on each case using the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights and state laws as their evidence. This experience provides students with an opportunity to learn about the rule of law, and get some insight into how the justice system works.
• Thank you to the kind soap fairy. Having a nice hand soap to use in the bathrooms is such a luxury. It makes my day. Thanks for making FVE awesome.
• This year students at MPHS were introduced to a renewed focus: “At Middle Park High School we RISE to Learning and Long-term Flourishing,” with RISE standing for respect, integrity, safety and effort. This was the outcome of a combined effort by the MPHS Faculty Leadership team to create a focus that would guide all that is done at MPHS.
Students were then challenged to create a poster that will be utilized to represent this focus and they rose to the challenge, many of which entered submissions as part of their Career & Technical Education (CTE) programs. Over 25 students submitted entries to the contest and those submissions were narrowed down by administration to three finalists — Bianca Ruiz, Krista Conrad, and Sarah Periolat.
All submissions, including those of the finalists, were displayed during the MPHS Open House with parents encouraged to vote for their favorite. All MPHS staff and students were then emailed a link to a Google form where they could anonymously vote for their favorite. The results are in and we are very excited to announce that junior Krista Conrad created the winning entry.
Not only will Krista’s poster be printed and displayed throughout MPHS, but she also wins a Polaroid Pic-300 Camera. Congratulations to Krista and thank you to all the students that submitted their creative designs.
• Fifth-graders at Fraser Valley Elementary are studying great leaders from the recent past. The scholars are reading books about and discussing Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, Amelia Earhart, and Jackie Robinson. Students are learning about and identifying the values of good leaders, past and present.
Their unit will end with a project based learning assignment where they research a leader of their own choosing. We also posed the following question: “Who is a leader that you admire in your life? What leadership qualities do they have and how have they influenced your life?”
• A big thank you to the Smoke House in Winter Park for donating some old restaurant equipment that yielded many square feet of aluminum and stainless steel for the welding classes.
• The Granby Elementary fifth-grade class went on a mountain biking field trip for PE this Tuesday at Snow Mountain Ranch. This challenge by choice event was truly a community effort allowing students to explore and improve their riding skills, build their self-esteem and experience the joy of a lifelong physical activity that is abundant in our community.
Students spent much of their time on single track trails, ranging from beginner to intermediate and they even received coaching on the skills course and pump track. This was a great opportunity for our students to try something new and many of them are requesting to mountain bike again. A special thank you to many community members, including Snow Mountain Ranch, Bill Pierce, Mary Ann Degginger, Sally Brassill, Odd Bersvendsen, Chris Olivier from Two Pines Supply, Jeff Stahl, our parent volunteers and the GES/EGSD Staff.
• Middle Park ninth-grade English students and a familiar local face are coming together to create a win-win learning experience for everyone. Paraprofessional Lance Maggart, formerly a reporter for Sky-Hi News, shared best practices for conducting an interview with ninth-grade students last week.
Mr. Maggart gave students tips on how best to prepare for and interview someone. As part of a “coming-of-age” themed unit, students are interviewing someone about their coming-of-age story. Collaborating in teams, students will turn the interview into a transcript, write a narrative, and finally create a visual representation of their narrative to present to classmates.
This was a particularly exciting opportunity for a win-win situation in the classroom. Mr. Maggart is working as a paraprofessional at Middle Park High School to gain experience to pursue a career as an educator. Instead of just doing a slide presentation, Maggart used the opportunity to create an engaging lesson for students including writing interview questions for a famous person, watching one of the most iconic interviews in history, and participating in a mock interview. Students enjoyed the opportunity to learn from someone with real-life experience interviewing and Mr. Maggart got teaching experience in a real-life classroom.
• Middle Park has its first e-sports team, and their first match is this week. It is very exciting as we have a large number of students participating in this new club.
• The Middle Park Mountain Biking team hosted races at Granby Ranch last Sunday. Middle Park got fifth out of 14 teams in our division. But most importantly, we won the spirit award. The riders all dedicated the race to Casey Myers and organized the flash mob dance to The Hustle. Top finishers were (JB girls) Ella Wiser, 7th place; (soph girls) Sofia Olsson, 6th place; (freshman boys) Gray Barker, 9th place and (varsity boys) Kimo Sullivan, 24th place.
Frank Reeves is the superintendent of East Grand School District.