The City of Monroe will celebrate Arbor Day with the students at Arborwood Elementary Campus on April 29 and plant 14 trees along Riverview Ave. in the process.
The celebration of Arbor Day is especially important in the City of Monroe because (Julius) Sterling Morton, teh founder of Arbor Day, lived in Monroe from 1834 to 1854. To help promote the many beneficial uses of wood, Morton proposed a three planting holiday which is Arbor Day.
To learn more about Arbor Day, please check out the news release which is attached to this posting.
More than 200 students at Monroe Middle School earned all-A's in the recently completed third quarter of this school year. That is roughly one in four students at MMS achieving all-A's. Congratulations. We are proud of you. The list is attached to this posting.
In all, 107 eighth graders earned all A's and 88 seventh graders achieved all A's, too.
They might not be household names in doing commercials like Paul W. Smith and Michael Buffer, but Raisinville Elementary's Cole Mayes and Custer Elementary's Ellie Marchese sure know their "products" and make convincing ad voices for the upcoming kindergarten registration, which is next week at the Riverside Early Learning Center. Click on the accompanying files to hear their public service announcements.
Monroe High School student Natalie Lake will advance to the National Conference of the Health Occupations Students of America (HOSA) competition after earning a bronze medal at the state HOSA competition in Traverse City this past weekend. Natalie took a bronze medal in Nurse Assisting and is invited to the National Conference in Nashville in June. She is the only student from Monroe County to qualify to compete in the National Conference.
Nine projects in Monroe Public Schools’ classrooms have received mini-grants funded by the Education Foundation of Monroe Public Schools. Together, the grants totaled about $4,000.
The Foundation’s mini-grant program is the only one of its kind at a Monroe County school district. A number of the grants deal with technology related projects in the classrooms, helping Monroe Public Schools to be the place where your child succeeds.
Here are the Monroe Public Schools programs which received mini-grants:
Frances Valdez and Melissa Vanderhorst, Custer Elementary, Musical Composition. This grant purchases 30 xylophones for students so the younger students can learn to play a musical instrument, read notes and write their own music.
Lisa Cole-Flegal, Monroe Middle School, Engineering and Producing Mousetrap Cars. In this project, students will research design and engineering of today’s vehicles and then use problem-solving skills to design their own vehicles. Building their own cars, they would race against other students in the MMS hallways. Ten kits will be purchased.
Lisa Worley, Custer Elementary, Primary Comprehension Toolkit. Kits and books to be purchased will help younger elementary students to understand what they view, learn and read, and support students in reading in various types of lessons.
Amanda Iacoangeli and Emily Bundon, Waterloo Elementary, Cross-Curricular Inquiry Project. In this grant, grade-level appropriate text sets will be purchased to engage students as they study world cultures, global problems and teen activism.
Deb Pitcher, Monroe Middle School, Climate Change Solution for Students. In this program, students will have the opportunity to see how they can make small changes to use less energy.
Suzanne Yorkey, Custer Elementary, Bee-Bots. In this project, all Custer students – Young 5s through second grade – will learn how to program computers with a Bee Bot, a colorful robot designed to be used by small children.
Sherry Hunt, Monroe Middle School, Challenger Learning Center. Students will have a chance to visit the Challenger Learning Center of Lake Erie West, comprised of a futuristic space station providing the experience of working in space and a mission control modeled after the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Melissa Bell, Custer Elementary, Let’s Get Custer Kids Coding…and 3D Printing, Too. With this mini-grant, four different games to teach students how to program computers will be purchased along with four 3-D pens which students will use to create 3D designs.
Russell Columbus, Monroe High School, First steps towards implementing the Michigan Science Standards. This mini-grant purchases three miniature computers that can be customized and configured to collect student-needed data so students can engineer solutions to problems in an inquiry-based environment. Two inquiry-based lessons will be developed and reviewed for possible adaptation to other courses.
The next early release day for Monroe Public Schools students will be Wednesday, April 20, but Monroe High School students will go a full day that day.
Excused early that day are all district elementary schools, Monroe Middle School and Orchard Center High School.
Monroe High School students will attend class all day – 7:23 a.m. to 2:12 p.m. -- on April 20 because they need to receive the required number of instructional hours which was reduced due to state-mandated testing.
The next early release is scheduled for May 18 and once again that day, Monroe High School students will attend all day, but all of the other district schools will only have a half-day of class.
By building, here is the early-release schedule for April 20 and May 18.
Orchard Center High School – 10:14 a.m.
Monroe Middle School – 11:09 a.m.
Arborwood North – 11:43 a.m.
Arborwood South – 11:48 a.m.
Custer 1 – 12:14 p.m.
Custer 2 – 12:11 p.m.
Manor – 12:01 p.m.
Raisinville – 12:01 p.m.
Waterloo – 11:46 a.m.
Monroe High School was one of three area high schools that participated in the first-ever virtual book discussion as part of the annual One Book One Community (OBOC) program. Students from Monroe, Bedford and Airport high schools read selected books including All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow in their English Language Arts clases. Aided by the Monroe County Intermediate School District video staff, students from the three schools were able to see and hear each other in different locations and watch a short video.
The students’ discussion centered on themes that included responding to bullying, making the right decisions and recognizing stereotypes.
The OBOC program is in its 10th year. Each March, Monroe County Community College, Monroe County Library, Monroe County Historical Museum and Monroe Public Schools – along with other local organizations – sponsor reading groups, films, author talks and activities for all ags to promote reading. The Anthony Doerr selection has been one of the most popular selections.
When the 2015-2016 school year concludes this June, 10 educators with a combined 264 years teaching at Monroe Public Schools will walk out the door one last time when the bell rings and retire.
The retirements of the 10 teachers and coaches were approved Tuesday night (April 12) by the Monroe Public Schools Board of Education. The board wished all of the teachers well in their retirements and thanked them for the impacts they have had on Monroe Public Schools students over the years.
Retiring at the end of the current school year are: JoAnn Burke, Janet Heck, Edwin (Chuck) Kern, Amy Pace, Debra Pitcher, Nancy Schlosser, Matt Servis, Robert Servis, Steven Simon and Elizabeth Swindeman.
While their schoolmates at Monroe High School are taking various state-required tests next week, seniors at Monroe High School will have various opportunities to make sure they are “career and college ready.” They could earn a $500 scholarship in the process.
“On April 12, the first day of assessments for 9th and 10th graders and state testing for the 11th graders, we are encouraging our seniors to participate in a valuable off-campus opportunity and/or task of their choice to help prepare them for a smooth post-secondary transition,” said Monroe High School Principal Mrs. Sandy Kreps.
Mrs. Kreps and post-secondary planners, Savanah Garcia, Manual Hoskins and Jaclyn Sawasky, developed 20 valuable activities for seniors to consider doing on the day they don’t come to school. They range from job shadowing to a college visit to an appointment with a military recruiter or a job interview.
There are numerous other choices, too. Students also are encouraged to become introspective and identify what they want to do in life after high school and then develop a plan and a timeline to accomplish it. Seniors also are encouraged to submit three job applications and maybe be hired for a summer job before the summer rush, or make a checklist of things to be completed before graduation and then complete three of them.
All of the suggested activities are geared toward making the day away from school a valuable one for the seniors who are now one month away from Career and College Decision Day and two months away from graduation, Mrs. Kreps said.
If a senior fulfills the requirements for a career- and college-ready assignment, they can turn in a completed form to a post-secondary planner by April 15 to be entered to win a $500 scholarship which will be announced on Career and College Decision Day, May 3.
The team of Zac Jenkins, Brendan Hale and team leader Reed Corrin won the Monroe High School 2015-2016 Bridge Competition, which is held under the auspices of MHS Drafting/CAD program which is part of Monroe High’s Career and Technical Education Program. Six Monroe High teams competed for the bridge competition crown.
“Each three-person team developed a presentation showcasing how they designed and built their bridges to include research, testing, data collection, graph calculations, problem solving and working together as a team,” said Mrs. Victoria Sweet, the MHS Drafting/CAD program teacher. “They also tested their bridges to determine which one of the six bridges prepared would be the strongest.”
Judges for the contest came from the Michigan Department of Transportation which has hired a number of Monroe High School graduates over the years to participate in the MDOT paid summer intern program. Monroe High School is Monroe County’s only school that has produced graduates who have interned in the state program.
Mrs. Sweet said the competition was important because participating students learned lifelong skills such as working in a team, communications, problem solving, conflict resolution, diversity and inclusion, and time-management skills, all of which will be important when the students complete their education and begin their careers.