Hi Everyone,
This past school year has had some great improvements to both academics and our school culture - the way we teach and reach our students.
For me, MHS is first and foremost about serving our students. This year brought many new challenges. We have been endeavoring to maintain a low failure rate (students failing courses) and students off-track to graduate on time (students should earn at least 6 credits per year to graduate on time and be on track). I'm proud to report that we continue to maintain around a 10% course failure rate and our students on-track to graduate on time continues to be high. In addition, we have earned bronze level recognition for positive behavior intervention and support from the state regional professional development program. Finally, our faculty helped students raise their end of course test scores in every area with only one exception.
An interesting statistic came from a look at ACT results in April. At this point we had received all but the final scores from our seniors. These scores indicated students taking the test several times were very likely to score higher each time. Almost 90% of the students attempting the ACT more than once scored higher on subsequent attempts. We will continue to encourage students to try and if they fail, to try again. I was pleased to see our teachers were successful encouraging so many young people to work hard - it pays.
Finally, I was proud of our senior class of 2013 and their scholarship accomplishments. This class worked hard and earned approximately $100,000 more than the class of 2012. While college selection and other factors come into play when arriving at the final figure for all scholarships awarded, the number is a positive indicator of their success.
I've attached our final board report for 2013 below.
T.
Month/Year: May 2013
Current Enrollment: 660
Free / Reduced Lunch Enrollment: 234/42
Student Services Listing: 68 IEP
Students of the Month: Austin Bise and Haley Auwarter
**Teacher of the Month: January - Ms. Yount, February -Mr. Clow, March - Ms. Silver, April - Ms. Beshears
**see note in Dr. Robinson’s portion of this report on how this is determined
Academics
Ms. Michelle Yount, Biology Club Sponsor: Bio Club planted 7 trees that were donated by the city along the parking lot by the practice field on Monday, May 6th.
Mr. Robert Cotez, Band Instructor: On April 25, ten students represented Mexico High School at the MSHSAA State Music Festival in Columbia. Six of our students qualified for State Medals; Jared Melton (Piano Solo), Lillian Rotte (Vocal solo), Jacob Lauer, Madeleine Prince, Chelsea McCord, and Haley Barnes (Saxophone Quartet) - all these students were awarded an Excellent Rating (2) at state. Also participating in the State Music Festival were Austin Weber, Cassandra Schmidt, Lucas Handlin, and Caleb Quinlan (trombone quartet).
Members of the Mexico High School Band performed the National Anthem at Busch Stadium on May 1, 2013. In 2006, the band was the first-ever high school marching band to perform at the New Busch Stadium, and has performed there for eight straight years, sponsored by Great American Opportunities.
The Mexico High School Jazz Band and Dixie Gray Band performed at the annual Parade of Bands on May 7 to a packed house in the Sports Complex Gym. Members of the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade bands from Mexico Middle School also performed.
The Mexico High School Jazz Band performed at the Mexico Public Safety Awards night on Friday, May 10, at Presser Hall.
Mrs. Sara Given, Speech & Theatre Teacher:
Jordan Henry placed 4th in Radio Speaking at the MSHSAA State Speech Competition. The one act play "Rinse the Blood off My Toga" qualified for State competition and finished 4th in its pool at the competition. Although we did not advance to the final showdown, the ranks were AMAZING! The Jellybean Conspiracy production raised $2,135.50 for our local Special Olympics Team. Loralee Hays, senior, auditioned and was accepted to the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Los Angeles, California.
Ms. Laura Haynes - Art Teacher:
Art In The Park exhibition was held in Gooch gym on Tuesday, May 7th.
Mrs. Jami Willaims - Multi-Media Teacher:
Introduction to Multimedia - The Introduction to Multimedia class was invited by the website www.codehs.com to submit a testimonial about how they utilized the website to learn and write computer programming code. The testimonial by Ms. Williams is currently featured on the testimonial page of the website. Ms. Williams was invited by Brentwood High School in St. Louis, MO to assist their mathematics department in writing a semester long curriculum incorporating multimedia into mathematics using the codehs.com program.
Journalism - Congratulations to Marissa Bradford for being chosen and Editor in Chief and to Sierra Forsee for being chosen Design Editor of the 2013-2014 volume of The Growl.
Publications - Mexico High School has been inducted for the second year in a row to Walsworth's Gallery of Excellence. The Gallery represents the top five percent of all yearbooks printed by Walsworth. The 2012-2013 edition of The Mascot will be made available nationwide as an example of excellence in theme, design, copy and photography. Mexico High School is one of the smallest high schools in the nation to be inducted into The Gallery two years in a row.
Broadcast Journalism - The Bite (The Mexico High School student network) will be featured on the Academy of Scholastic Broadcasting website as one of schools who are making broadcast journalism work well with the current technology in our district. The Studio Tour feature is by invitation only after viewing clips of student work. Mexico's program was selected based on the quality of the work produced. According the Academy of Scholastic Broadcasting founder Dave Davis MHS has "The kind of stuff you expect to see from the multi-million dollar facilities; the kind of work that puts those schools to shame when you compare the facilities. Proof positive that quality has nothing to do with money and equipment and everything to do with commitment, quality standards and teachers who demand the best..."
Administration Team
Dr. Terry Robinson, Principal:
We met our goal to achieve Positive Behavior Intervention and Support Bronze level(level 1) with the hard work of everyone in our building. Valuable leadership from Ms. Patty Swisher and Mr. Ellebracht was key to helping our team stay on track and guide the effort. The team will travel to a statewide networking meeting in June to begin working toward the next level of certification (silver).
We have been planning our last day of school celebration of success assembly and field day/bar-b-q for students; all students may attend if they have finished their finals on the two days prior.
A school wide survey was given to all teachers and the results are being used to guide academic improvement efforts with the instructional leadership team (dept. chairs and key personnel are on this team). The team focuses on the first two questions every professional learning community attempts to answer:
1. What is it we want our students to learn?
(essential skills, objectives, essential learning, standards)
2. How will we know if each student has learned it?
(formative and summative assessment)
Recently the team assisted with planning our past “Find Your Path” night for incoming freshmen and decided the best placement of 6 additional minutes of instructional time for the 2013-14 school year -these minutes will be added to our lunch period to alleviate the effect on split lunch classes. Finally, they contributed to how our online courses should be handled (E2020) in relation to awarding credit. The team will meet at a time to be determined in late July to make instructional decisions for 2013-14, to review EOC and ACT results, and plan for teacher team learning.
ACT - an analysis of senior ACT results (prior to our last free test in April).
125 students had taken the test at least once.
151 students had not tested yet.
Of the 125 students tested, 83 students attempted the ACT two or more times (up to 4 times in a few cases).
74 students or 89% of students raised their scores from 1 to 11 points. This is an indicator additional student effort (perseverance) and MHS preparation are making a positive impacts on college and career readiness results measured by the ACT. We do not have the final results from the last free ACT in April yet.
**We have field-tested a new process to provide customer (student) feedback to our teachers. We have surveyed approximately
15% -20% of the entire student body every month since January 2013 and asked: “Which one of your teachers is working hard to help you learn and deserves to be recognized as teacher of the month?” Students also have to provide one statement why they believe the teacher deserves the recognition. Mr. Anderson, Mr. Ellebracht and Dr. Robinson distribute feedback cards to students randomly each month ( over 100 are collected) and they are then tabulated. The teacher with the highest percentage of positive feedback is named teacher of the month. The teacher receives the best parking space parking pass, a gift card from Dr. Robinson and all teachers receive their feedback cards from students.
Activities/Athletics
Mr. Jeff Anderson – Vice Principal/Activities Director:
Spring Sports Report:
Boys Golf – Brock Lunceford, Alex Bledsoe & Austin Kelsay made the cut at Districts and went to Sectionals on the 6th of May. Austin Kelsay had a wonderful day of golf at Sectionals and qualified for State! State golf is the 13th & 14th of May. Brock was also All-Conference for Golf.
District Track was held here on the 10th of May with Jake Anderson, Jon Anderson, Anne Baker, Karen Baker, Jami Brandow, Colin Cosby, Kamden Ekern, Phoebe Frazer, Malik Holman, Zori Holman, Sean Kelly, Christian McKeown, Alex Shaw, Tori Shaw & DayNeisha Shivers all moving on to Sectionals. Sectional Track will be held in Mexico on the 18th of May.
Baseball, Girls Soccer and Boys Tennis are all competing at the District Level this week.
The Spring Sports reception will be held on May 22nd with Cookies & Punch starting at 6:30.
Dead Week is August 3-11 and the first day of Fall practices will be August 12th.
Guidance and Counseling Team
Guidance office April activities:
Provided EOC training for Teachers at MHS, MEC and MMS.
Assisted with career Path Breakout Sessions
Counselor had several Scholarship committee meetings for Local Scholarships
Phil supervised the ASVAB test, and EOC testing and EOC make up testing
Organized A+ Summer School tutors
Career Path parent night at MHS
Student Presentation at MMS and St. Brendans for 2013-2014 course requests
Supervised the ACT/Aspire Testing
3 college/university visits
8 agency visits
4 military visits
