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December 14, 2007
Printable version
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See You at Follies Next Wednesday!!
Upcoming Events 12-14-2007
ALL SCHOOL EVENTS:
• December 19–Follies
• December 20–January 6–Winter Break - School Closed, No childcare
Click here for a downloadable calendar of events for December.
Click here for a downloadable calendar of events for January 2008.
Click here for a downloadable 2007-2008 School Year Calendar
Announcements 12-14-2007
Ordering School Pictures
This is the week for Ordering Holiday Prints!
Holiday Cut Off Dates*
Product Type First Class Mail Priority Mail FedEx Overnight
Standard prints 12/12/2007 12/17/2007 12/19/2007
This years school photos have been a great success. This is just a quick reminder that the photography site will not be up permanently. It is important to place your holiday order as soon as possible to avoid any last minute delays. http://photographicproof.com/projects/presidio-hill-school
Average order time for prints and specialty items takes approximately 4 to 6 business days. Specialty items added for the holiday season include, Calendars, Photo Mouse Pad, Photo Puzzle, Key Tag, Refrigerator Magnet, Apron, Tote-bag, Coasters, Luggage tag, Photo Button. Please contact Michael Angelo directly if you have any questions about ordering: http://photographicproof.com/contact
FOLLIES
December 19, 2007 7:00 PM Herbst Theater
Follies is almost here. You should have gotten your invitation in the mail. Get your reply card to Martin to pre-order tickets. Download a reply card by clicking here if you need a new one. Click here to download information about parking and transit. Click here to download a map of parking sites. Click here to download information about kid-friendly restaurants near the Herbst Theater.
AFTER-SCHOOL ON FOLLIES DAY: In preparation for Follies, after-school will close at 5pm on December 19, 2007. Families will incur late fees after 5pm. We encourage parents to pick their children up as early as possible so they may get some rest and eat dinner before their call times.
Financial Assistance packets have been mailed. If you have not received one
and would like to please contact Amy.
Amy_Pearson@presidiohill.org 751-9318 x104
PHS Cookbook!
Get your holiday shopping done and drop off your kids -- all at the same time! Pick up copies of the PHS Cookbook, What San Francisco Families Eat! at next week's Friday coffee/talk (Dec. 14). You can always purchase copies of the book at any time from Martin at the front desk. It makes an exceptional gift while also supporting our school!
Email: We have been experiencing some difficulties with our email. Please let us know if you are having difficulties sending or receiving email to/from PHS email addresses. Thanks.
High School Placement 12-14-2007
Ann Meissner Jennifer Franklin (Seventh Grade Humanities Teacher)
As the year and the admissions process comes to a close, we wanted to give you a final reminder of some important dates. Independent applications are due on January 10, 2008. Your complete application packets must be postmarked by this date.
Teachers and advisors are in the process of completing high school recommendations. Ann will edit all recommendations and mail them along with the seventh grade transcript during the winter break. First semester of eighth grade transcripts will be sent at the end of the first semester.
Lowell’s required admissions test is on Saturday, January 5th, 8:00 a.m. and Wednesday, January 9th, 6:00 p.m. You must indicate on your application which test date you are selecting.
The Catholic Schools placement test is in early January. If your child will need accommodations for the test make sure you have made the necessary arrangements.
A few families have yet to give us their prioritized list of schools. We use the prioritized list to help make sure families are on the right track and that the schools selected are a good match for students. Occasionally, a school will contact us when they are down to the final decisions and choosing between several students for one spot. It helps the school to have a sense of how likely the student is to accept the spot if offered to them. This is also true if a school begins to work with their wait list.
Congratulations in advance for getting through the arduous high school admissions process. While we know this is an inherently stressful process, we hope it has also been fun and enlightening. If you have last minute questions or concerns, feel free to contact us before the 19th. Happy Holidays and best of luck.
Ann and Jennifer
From the Student Council 12-14-2007
The student council is off to a great year. As many of you know we have already held a dance and we are now in the process of putting together a second one. The money that we earn from these dances will be used for another student council project: the yearbook. The yearbook committee is gathering pictures and working to make the best PHS yearbook ever. Student council has also taken up the job of setting up a community service project.
We have decided to go to the SPCA and help by cleaning up and taking care of the facilities. So far it has been an active and fun-filled year. But our best days are yet to come! Once Follies settles down we hope to refocus our efforts and look back to the goals we made at the beginning of the year.
TMO, Student Council President
Save the Date: Art for Kids' Sake 2008
News from the Office of Philanthropy
It's the Season!
Dear PHS Families and Friends,
It is that time of year when we celebrate with our families and friends and look back on the year with gratitude and appreciation for all our blessings.
In this holiday season we ask that you keep Art for Kids Sake Auction in mind while you are out shopping at your favorite stores, dining with friends, partaking in your company’s holiday celebration or escaping to your favorite holiday getaway.
Help us solicit Auction items like certificates and goods from local merchants, restaurants, spas, hotels, inns, etc.
You can help us reach out to these merchants and businesses by taking an AFKS Donation form and Solicitation letter and handing it to them directly.
Or leave the Donation Form and Solicitation letter and you can follow up with a phone call. Or ask for the Owner’s or Manager’s card and relay the information to the AFKS Solicitations Committee and we will gladly follow up.
Both AFKS Donation forms and Solicitation letters are available at the PHS AFKS table in the front lobby area.
If you have any questions or need more information, you check out the Art for Kids Sake page on the PHS website: www.presidiohill.org/AFKS
The AFKS webpage will give you the skinny on What to do? What to ask for? How to ask? What to do with your forms? Etc.
So mark your calendars and dust off your dancing shoes for Art for Kids Sake Auction is stepping out to ARTrageous 1920’s on March 29th 2008 Saturday from 6:30pm till they turn down the lights.
Your help and participation are key to the success and continuation of Art for Kids Sake Auction. We are look forward to putting together another red hot fun filled Auction night for our PHS family and community to enjoy.
We wish you all happy holidays and harmony for the new year!
Cheers,
Grace Angel Dawn Gross
AFKS 2008 Auction Chair AFKS 2008 Auction Co-Chair
From the Director 12-14-2007
What We Give…
Last night seven of the most recent alumni from PHS got together for December’s Dialogue Circle that focused on how the school prepared them for high school. We did a very similar evening last year, but we didn’t have 9th graders as our target group; we had all high school sophomores, juniors, and seniors. This year, we had six 9th graders and one 10th grader. The students were at a range of schools from public to private to parochial: Drew, Lowell, Convent, San Francisco School of the Arts, Sacred Heart Prep, and Urban. The audience was composed of parents of fifth through eighth graders, with four eighth grade boys thrown in for good measure.
What we all learned (again) is how articulate and open-hearted our alums are. They think very well on their feet, passionately speaking about their old school. They did not candy-coat anything, yet understood in a deep way the ways in which PHS prepared them to fully participate in their current schools. They said their recent past experience of Presidio Hill School served them well, particularly in Humanities and writing. They talked about the connection that they had with each other, which spilled over to all of their relationships, notably with teachers at their high schools. This was a difference that they saw in themselves as opposed to many of their peers. They also highlighted their successes across the board in school, mentioning that even the students who did not come to the Dialogue Circle (because they were studying for exams) were doing quite well academically. They said that high school was definitely a step up, but in all areas, they were ready for just about all of the challenges they faced.
When the topic turned to matters of why they chose their current schools, one young woman from Lowell talked about choosing her school because it wasn’t “manufactured diversity,” as she found in many private schools that she applied to last year. She said she chose Lowell, which is seventy percent Asian, because it is a public school that based its decision to admit her on merit (a student has to test to get into Lowell) rather than on some criteria that she didn’t quite understand. While this may sound like a tweak against diversity, I don’t believe that she meant it that way because she reiterated later in the evening that she was able to navigate all of the different social circles at her school, including and especially different ethnic and social groups that she found at Lowell, because PHS taught her how to be relevant in a multicultural world.
At the end of the conversation, I was struck by how powerfully confident and self-assured every student seemed to be, academically, emotionally, and socially. Even if there seemed to be glitches programmatically at times at PHS, over the years by and large the program has gotten tremendously stronger because it is our intent to keep working on how kids learn and how they are relevant in the world they will one day lead. Most importantly, our students are ready to give and to give back because of the gift of PHS.
Give to the Annual Fund
During this holiday season, remember to give generously to our annual fund. Not only is it a tax write-off for individuals and companies, but the annual fund also supports our teachers, students, and program. Another important reason to give to PHS is that it amplifies to possible outside funders that Presidio Hill School generously supports its own mission, teachers, and students.
Curriculum Spotlight: Middle School Math
When will I need this in real life?
Students have asked me this question every year for the past 9 years, often as a not-so-subtle message that the topic at hand is boring and useless. For example, this question commonly arises when the 8th graders learn how to factor quadratic trinomials or the 7th graders find the area of trapezoids. During these moments early in my career I found myself with my hands tied behind my back because frankly, I have never used those particular skills outside the math classroom.
With a topic such as fractions I would say, you could scale up a cupcake recipe during your next baking party. Or, your area skills could come in handy while retiling your kitchen floor. Fluency in mathematics enables you to shop wisely, operate within a budget, and save and earn money. You can calculate risk and have an objective means of comparing options. When I felt desperate, I looked to Vegas. Should you hit on 17 if the dealer is showing a Jack? Mathematics can answer that question.
There are countless ways mathematics weaves itself into our daily lives and, as such, fluency, or lack thereof, in the language of mathematics can either help or hinder with those activities. However, most students roll their eyes when I respond with talk of cupcake recipes and budgets. Most students do what most adults do in situations such as these. They ask someone they trust to answer the question for them. They seek help from a maven.
So if we aren’t going to have baking parties, and have mavens who can advise us, why should students learn how to factor polynomials? I can think of several reasons. First, even though individual topics may not be important or of immediate use, cumulatively, the topics provide a mastery of mathematics. For many of us, training in mathematical thinking is as natural as asking a seventh grade boy to sit quietly for 50 minutes. It takes a Herculean effort and the patience of a Monk, but the effort invested towards training the mind in this way eventually pays off. Students begin to analyze situations mathematically, communicate their ideas through numbers and graphs, and use math as a tool to problem solve. This tool then complements other cognitive areas such as those for writing, sports, music, and the visual arts.
On a practical level, having a mastery of mathematics opens doors to higher education and future career opportunities. Nearly all colleges, including the small liberal arts colleges, want to see 3-4 years of rigorous high school mathematics coursework. So even if you want to be a writer, you might get into a better writing program with a solid grasp of mathematics. Middle school students are such pragmatists that often this last reason is the most satisfying for them. Rather than list the myriad ways one could use fractions to scale up or down recipes or calculate tax and tip, I tell them mathematics opens doors. When students ask these days, I usually respond with, “You will likely never use this skill outside this classroom, but mastering it will open new doors of opportunity.”
Dennis Kim, Middle School Math Teacher