Principal’s Update: On Monday we will be visited by our “Gold Ribbon School” validation team. I have spent the past few days reviewing our data and getting it into a format that is easy for the team to read and digest. It has been a powerful reminder to me how great our kids are and how fortunate I am to get to work with amazing educators and a caring staff. This time of year gets very busy with curriculum, preparing our incoming students for next year, interviewing, reviewing, planning for next year, and the day to day operations of running the school. It is easy for me to get lost in the problem of the moment or the “next big task” and lose sight of how great we really have it here. Stopping to reflect on the school culture we have created, the work we have done in providing students with restorative discipline and building relationships has been invigorating. It is easy to take for granted the level of talk in our classrooms because everyone is doing it in every class. Looking at our achievement data and visiting classrooms allows me to see our teachers using their knowledge of their students to connect with them and help them to achieve mastery instead of memory. Organizing our sports schedules and club schedules is hectic and often times overwhelming work, so it is easy to miss the fact that we have 228 individual students who have participated in sports already this year when we and we haven’t started track and field yet…a sport that had 116 athletes last year. We’ve added 3 new clubs this year and almost doubled the number of students who participated in Mock Trial. Our students are connected and involved and, as a result, they are thriving. Stepping back has allowed me to remember that this is deliberate and we do all of these things because they are great for kids which makes this an amazing place to be everyday- both as a student and as a staff member! Wall of Fame: Each week teachers nominate students who exemplify scholarship and citizenship and their names are added to the “Wall of Fame” for the week. Congratulations to this week’s Wall of Fame Students! We appreciate your hard work and your great attitude: Trinity Slattery, Gianna Wemple, Sabrina Garcia, Anthony Noyola, Brianna Johnson, Carlos Trinidad, Luke Ernstrom, Danae Rodriguez, Victoria Amaya, Ashely Picaso Ramirez, Sydney Yeager, Rozlyn Jones, Anessa Alvarado, McKenna Cassidy, Samantha Ross, Cevina Manzano, Brennan LePage, Isabelle Preston, Stella McSween, Ian Hammons, April Englemeir, Camryn Kay, Daniel Candelas, Chaz Johnson, Alexandra Prodanov, Rachel Wood, Ivy Schmitt, Nathaniel Coyne, Jesus Vargas Cardenas, Allison Ryan If a student’s name appears on here more than once or for more than one week, it means that student is doing great things in several classes. The Lancer Lines…March 24, 2017 Laguna Middle School John Calandro, Principal 11050 Los Osos Valley Road San Luis Obispo, CA 93405 805-596-4055 Mark Your Calendars for Tiger Fest Tiger Fest, SLO High School’s annual Open House event for all students and their families will be Wednesday, April 12. Incoming 9th grade students and their parents will meet with the leadership team at 5:30 PM in the new gym for a brief introduction and orientation. Current students and parents should plan to arrive at 6:00 PM to visit with staff and tour our campus. We will also host an ASB club evening for all students who plan on attending or who currently attend our school.
Transcript
Principal’s Update: On Monday we will be visited by our “Gold Ribbon School” validation team. I have spent the past few
days reviewing our data and getting it into a format that is easy for the team to read and digest. It has
been a powerful reminder to me how great our kids are and how fortunate I am to get to work with
amazing educators and a caring staff. This time of year gets very busy with curriculum, preparing our
incoming students for next year, interviewing, reviewing, planning for next year, and the day to day
operations of running the school. It is easy for me to get lost in the problem of the moment or the “next
big task” and lose sight of how great we really have it here. Stopping to reflect on the school culture we
have created, the work we have done in providing students with restorative discipline and building
relationships has been invigorating.
It is easy to take for granted the level of talk in our classrooms because everyone is doing it in every
class. Looking at our achievement data and visiting classrooms allows me to see our teachers using their
knowledge of their students to connect with them and help them to achieve mastery instead of memory.
Organizing our sports schedules and club schedules is hectic and often times overwhelming work, so it is
easy to miss the fact that we have 228 individual students who have participated in sports already this
year when we and we haven’t started track and field yet…a sport that had 116 athletes last year. We’ve
added 3 new clubs this year and almost doubled the number of students who participated in Mock Trial.
Our students are connected and involved and, as a result, they are thriving. Stepping back has allowed
me to remember that this is deliberate and we do all of these things because they are great for kids which
makes this an amazing place to be everyday- both as a student and as a staff member!
Wall of Fame: Each week teachers nominate students who exemplify scholarship and citizenship and their names are
added to the “Wall of Fame” for the week. Congratulations to this week’s Wall of Fame Students! We
appreciate your hard work and your great attitude:
Trinity Slattery, Gianna Wemple, Sabrina Garcia, Anthony Noyola, Brianna Johnson, Carlos
Trinidad, Luke Ernstrom, Danae Rodriguez, Victoria Amaya, Ashely Picaso Ramirez, Sydney
Brennan LePage, Isabelle Preston, Stella McSween, Ian Hammons, April Englemeir, Camryn
Kay, Daniel Candelas, Chaz Johnson, Alexandra Prodanov, Rachel Wood, Ivy Schmitt,
Nathaniel Coyne, Jesus Vargas Cardenas, Allison Ryan
If a student’s name appears on here more than once or for more than one week, it means that student is
doing great things in several classes.
The Lancer Lines…March 24, 2017 Laguna Middle School John Calandro, Principal
11050 Los Osos Valley Road San Luis Obispo, CA 93405 805-596-4055
Mark Your Calendars for Tiger Fest Tiger Fest, SLO High School’s annual Open House event for all students and their families will be Wednesday, April 12. Incoming 9th grade students and their parents will meet with the leadership team at 5:30 PM in the new gym for a brief introduction and orientation. Current students and parents should plan to arrive at 6:00 PM to visit with staff and tour our campus. We will also host an ASB club evening for all students who plan on attending or who currently attend our school.
Yesterday was a HUGE sports day with all our spring sports running on the same day. We had 7th and 8th grade boys and girls soccer, boys 7th and 8th grade volleyball, and our coed
wrestling team had their first official meet at Morro Bay High school against LOMS. It’s
amazing to see so many of our students involved in athletics right now. Approximately 200 of
our 740 students have participated in school-based athletics. When you add in all of the
students who have participated in our intramurals (such as March Madness and volleyball) we
have almost one out of every 3 students at Laguna jumping into a sport!
Mrs. August-Evans computer classes build a digital portfolio. Michaela has built a beautiful
portfolio where she adds information about what she has done in her classes and records her
activities throughout the year.
Schoolwide Academic Vocabulary Our schoolwide vocabulary is taught on Mondays in home base and used throughout the week in
all of our classes. Use these around the dinner table next week and see how many your student
recognizes! Next week’s words are:
affirmative (adjective) positive
discrimination (noun) different treatment of a particular group of people based on prejudice
aspect (noun) a part of something; a characteristic
retain (verb) to keep; to hold in place
relevant (adjective) closely connected or related to something
Around School (Continued):
Intramural basketball For the last two weeks, Homebase teams have been playing
intramural basketball at lunch to see who would win the Laguna March Madness. We owe
a big thank you to our P.E. teachers for first setting up lunch time volleyball and now the
Laguna March Madness. All of the teams were super competitive and there were some
really close games. In the end Mr. Morrow’s Class won for 8th grade and Mrs. Ferrell’s
class won for 7th grade! Great job!
Champions for 7th grade: Mrs. Ferrell’s B Team
Chase Kubinski, Sevan Kurkeyerian, Jacob Zakaria, Sam O’Sullivan, Alex Warden,
Gavin Righetti, Luke Holland, Jack Tsau and Luca Marino
Champions for 8th grade: Mr. Morrow’s Team
Paolo Piurque, Maddy Baird, Lilah May, Colby, Love, Elvis Caronona, Henry
Gonzalez, Slate Gonzalez, Mulenga Malama, Alvin Parayno, Alvin Parayno, Carlos
Trinidad, Eli Lynch and Melanie Castillo
Choir News. On Thursday of this week our Laguna Chorus participated in the Central
Coast Choral Festival hosted by Vocal Arts Ensemble at the Cal Poly Performing Arts
Center. The Choir presented three pieces for the judges - Professor Lori Marie Rios,
College of the Canyons and Professor Lou de la Rose, West Valley College - and received
high ratings of an "A" and "A-" respectively. The judges had wonderful feedback for the
choir and praised them on their professionalism, mature tone quality, and over musicality
in their performance. Laguna is so proud of our chorus and the great representation of our
school that they took out into our community!
Congratulations to Dylan Reiss whose film “Luke” won best SLO county film in the SLO
International Film Festival. Check out his film by clicking here! Or copy and paste this
into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6uwAe9DKxU
Educators in the news! Congratulations to Mila Vujovich-La Barre on receiving the Susan Dressler
Educational Leadership Award. Her nominator Allan Cooper lauded Mrs. Vujovich-
LaBarre as “… a visionary community service leader who has taken on leadership roles to
combat drug use, provide positive alternatives for teens, promote volunteerism, and
advocate for smart growth and quality of life on the Central Coast.”
We’re starting a new segment in our Newsletter written by our yearbook students. Students
have been interviewing staff members on our campus so our readers can get to know our staff
better. We hope you enjoy this new segment!
Five Questions With Mr. Edmondson -Written By Grace Rubio and Landon Nelson
During the past week, two Yearbooks students interviewed Gary Edmondson,
the school custodian. They asked him a few questions about both himself and
his job, giving an insight on the life of one of Laguna’s most admirable staff
members.
The first question was “What’s your favorite thing about Laguna?”,
which he answered by saying that most of the staff and students were hospitable and pleasant.
The second question was “What was your favorite thing to do when you were a kid?”. Gary
responded with “I liked to ride my bike and I would dig holes in the vacant lot”.
The third question was “What’s your favorite thing about being a custodian?”. “A steady
paycheck,” is what he answered with.
The fourth question was “What do you like to do in your free time?” Gary described
photography, biking, and fishing as some of his interests outside of school.
The fifth and final question was “What is the strangest thing you’ve ever encountered at
Laguna?” He proceeded to tell a short story about how a few years ago, he saw a man walking
his dog on the roof of the school at ten o’clock at night and had to call the police to remove him
from the premise.
If you would like to get to know Gary a little better, he is always on school campus, helping
fellow students and staff members.
Five Questions with Mrs. Morgen -Skyler Muir and Claire Notley
Mrs. Morgan is an administrative assistant here at Laguna Middle School. She
has been working here for about 6 years, and we decided to sit down with her
and ask her a few questions. Here were some of her answers she gave us:
Mrs. Morgen told us how much she loves working with our cooperative
and respectful staff. Mrs. Morgen said that she loves the staff and their teamwork.
Her favorite thing about working with the students at Laguna is when she sees how students
evolve over the years of them being here. Mrs.Morgen has worked with people all her life and
liked counseling, but she never dreamed of becoming a teacher. When she was in school, her
favorite subject was biology. Mrs.Morgen loves biology because she enjoys being in nature and
had a very good professor. She loves working at Laguna and has some really great memories.
Her favorite memory at Laguna was when a student came in that was having a rough time, and
struggled through middle school. After a few years he came back and told her that she was a very
influential person and he had joined the Marines. Mrs.Morgen loves Laguna and all of our staff!
Rummage Sale for a Cause!: Hey Laguna Lancers! It’s Coco Steel and April Engelmeier from the leadership class. We wanted to
inform you about the upcoming rummage sale that will take place at Laguna Middle School. All of
the proceeds will go to the Starfish foundation. This organization raises money for people in Africa,
who are less fortunate than many of us, to get an education. The rummage sale will be held on
Saturday, April 8th in the Laguna Middle school parking lot.
We are welcoming any contributions of items that are still in good condition. Some examples of things
you can donate are: Furniture (couches, dressers, etc), clothing, household items, home decor, etc. We
would really appreciate your help in providing items to be sold, as it’s going towards a good cause. If
you would like to contribute anything, please contact Ms. Ahearn at [email protected] .
Donations will be accepted on Friday, April 7th from 3:30-5:00 in the school cafeteria.
Thank you!
Parent volunteers needed to help with cow eye dissection in 8th grade science! Mr. Cossey, Mrs. Jones, and Mrs. Hoffman are looking for parents to help with the cow eye
dissection in 8th grade science class. The dissection will take place on Thursday, April
13th. Parents are needed to help supervise students during the dissection. No dissection experience
is necessary. No science background is necessary. Volunteers do not have to touch/dissect the cow
eye or assist with dissection clean up. Parents can volunteer for an entire day, part of a day, a
specific class period, or part of a class period. Any volunteer help is greatly appreciated.
Please use the link below to sign up to volunteer in Mr. Cossey's class, Mrs. Jones's class, or Mrs.
Hoffman's class. Thank you in advance for helping out on this memorable day in science class!
Volunteers, please sign in as a visitor at the front office when you arrive.
