A few updates from UHS this week:
Building Closed
The main office will be closed next week, as will the guidance office, reopening on January 2, 2019. Please be aware that many of our staff members and administration will be unplugging for the week to spend time with their families, so do not expect messages to be returned immediately. We will do our best to get back in the swing of things after we return from the break.
UHS Podcast
Our December Podcast has been posted on our Anchor Channel: https://anchor.fm/uxbridgehighschool/episodes/Spartan-Podcast-December-21-e2qcfn. The podcast is also available on nine different platforms for listening.
School Council Meeting This Week
At Thursday evening's School Council meeting, we had the pleasure of partnering with Jeannie Hebert, Executive Director/President of the Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce, and Mark Lyons, Consultant with AET Labs and Chamber Board Member, to discuss UHS' role in the Blackstone Valley Ed Hub, which has been an ongoing project and partnership with UHS, local industry, higher education, and the possibility of advanced training for both community members and students. We are quite excited about the opportunities that have already come our students' way through the development of our Innovation Pathways, which work hand-in-hand with the Ed Hub.
In the coming weeks and months, we hope to build more effective programs that enhance collaboration between our school and local industry, which will provide students and families with even more opportunities, particularly as students consider best paths after high school.
Week That Was
Our Weekly "Week That Was" video is posted below:
On behalf of everyone at UHS, we wish everyone a happy and healthy holiday season, a safe and relaxing break, and all the best wishes for 2019!
Warmly,
Michael Rubin, Principal
Friday, December 21, 2018
Thursday, December 20, 2018
UHS Podcast for December 21
Our latest Spartan Podcast is published! Access below or via a number of online options, including Apple Store, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
Monday, December 17, 2018
SAT Resources
Visit our new webpage… UxbridgeSATPrep.com!
- Watch our SAT tutorial videos that focus on real SAT Questions and how to answer them.
- Learn strategies that will make challenging SAT questions easy and make impossible questions possible!
- Get your own detailed score report, so you can figure out how to minimize your weakness and capitalize on your strengths!
The bottom line…
The SAT is a predictable test and YOU CAN improve your score if you practice!
Don’t go into the SAT unprepared…
Visit UxbridgeSATPrep.com and give yourself the edge!
Questions about the SAT, or any of these resources?
Email studentservices@cottersimplified.com or call 802-424-2378
Friday, December 14, 2018
Weekly News and Notes
Greetings,
We have a few updates from UHS this week:
Cell Phones in the Building
While a ubiquitous part of society and certainly adolescent life, there is no question that cell phone use pervades every aspect of many of our students' experiences. In many cases, there are useful aspects to cell phones, but there are times when they become distractions. For example, we have had some situations of late where students have been unable to unplug during the school day, causing distraction and even distress during academic time, which compromises our teachers' ability to instruct and student ability to meet class expectations.
When we find cell phone use to be problematic, we direct teachers to refer students to the office. Our Student Handbook indicates that a second time the phone is brought to the office, the parent or guardian must come to pick it up, and we try to have a conversation about limiting its use. We also have students check their phones at the main office or with a counselor and retrieve at the end of the day. Parents can contact students through the main office. Some unfortunate by-products of distraction can lead students to spend time with counselors or other resources rather than being in class, which causes students to fall further behind, and which then exacerbates the problems further or adds to student challenges.
We have found that the inability of students to unplug is simply causing more stress than necessarily bargained for. If we reach out to keep phones home, please know that we are doing so in the students' and school's best interests. We appreciate your support toward those ends.
Vacation Week
The school office will be closed from December 22-January 2. Students who may need counselors to submit transcripts for early January deadlines should reach out to the appropriate person next week.
Week That Was
Here's our weekly Week That Was video:
Have a great weekend,
Michael Rubin, Principal
We have a few updates from UHS this week:
Cell Phones in the Building
While a ubiquitous part of society and certainly adolescent life, there is no question that cell phone use pervades every aspect of many of our students' experiences. In many cases, there are useful aspects to cell phones, but there are times when they become distractions. For example, we have had some situations of late where students have been unable to unplug during the school day, causing distraction and even distress during academic time, which compromises our teachers' ability to instruct and student ability to meet class expectations.
When we find cell phone use to be problematic, we direct teachers to refer students to the office. Our Student Handbook indicates that a second time the phone is brought to the office, the parent or guardian must come to pick it up, and we try to have a conversation about limiting its use. We also have students check their phones at the main office or with a counselor and retrieve at the end of the day. Parents can contact students through the main office. Some unfortunate by-products of distraction can lead students to spend time with counselors or other resources rather than being in class, which causes students to fall further behind, and which then exacerbates the problems further or adds to student challenges.
We have found that the inability of students to unplug is simply causing more stress than necessarily bargained for. If we reach out to keep phones home, please know that we are doing so in the students' and school's best interests. We appreciate your support toward those ends.
Vacation Week
The school office will be closed from December 22-January 2. Students who may need counselors to submit transcripts for early January deadlines should reach out to the appropriate person next week.
Week That Was
Here's our weekly Week That Was video:
Have a great weekend,
Michael Rubin, Principal
Friday, December 7, 2018
Weekly News and Notes
Good afternoon,
A few bits of news this week from UHS.
Holiday Concert
Thanks to our many talented musicians and the amazing Ms. Penza for a wonderful Holiday Concert on Wednesday night. The entire cast of ensemble members performed tremendously, and, if you missed the concert, you can catch replays of the the event on Uxbridge Cable. We are so very fortunate to have an amazing music department, a committed Friends of Music partnership, and the support of the community, as our stellar musicians played to a packed house!
Booster Club Opportunities
Thank you to everyone who has already signed up to volunteer at the Basketball Concession stand or gate. We still need many more volunteers especially for girls' games. Please help boosters to support Spartan Athletes. Thank you,
Click one of the links below and signup for the date and time you are able to help. Thank you!
Girls' Basketball Concession Stand Signup: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0D4EAAAC28A6FE3-girls
Boys' Basketball Concession Stand Signup: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0D4EAAAC28A6FE3-boys
Progress Reports
Progress reports for quarter two will be online at the end of next week. If there are concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to your child's counselor or to the teachers directly.
Winter Athletics
Winter sports opened up this week, as girls basketball played its first game of the year at Auburn on Thursday; the boys will open up at home on Saturday afternoon, also against Auburn, with the tipoff slated for 2:30 p.m. We also welcome to the coaching staff Casandra Knauer, a teacher at Whitin, who will be our new cheerleading coach, with the program starting practices this week as well!
Finally, about three years ago, our administration presented a comprehensive redesign of our Program of Studies, master schedule, and graduation requirements to the Uxbridge School Committee. The title of that presentation was "Strive for Greatness," and it made recommendations to changes that we believed would enhance the experience of students at UHS. We were tasked with the responsibility and the goal of changing the academic and curricular culture of the high school, and, as our accreditation visit has ended and we anticipate recommendations to guide us over the next several years, our goal remains the same: to "strive for greatness." We are so grateful that we have been able to make so many changes to the program at UHS, and that now we are a place modeling new learning experiences for students around the state. Already, we have been visited by close to a dozen schools, and four more will visit in the next two weeks, eager to capture some elements of teaching and learning at UHS. For that, we are appreciative of the opportunity that we have for our staff and students, that our improvement plans have been supported, and that we continue to have the opportunity to reflect, refine, and redesign the school to which we all aspire.
Yours in black and orange,
Michael Rubin
Principal
A few bits of news this week from UHS.
Holiday Concert
Thanks to our many talented musicians and the amazing Ms. Penza for a wonderful Holiday Concert on Wednesday night. The entire cast of ensemble members performed tremendously, and, if you missed the concert, you can catch replays of the the event on Uxbridge Cable. We are so very fortunate to have an amazing music department, a committed Friends of Music partnership, and the support of the community, as our stellar musicians played to a packed house!
Booster Club Opportunities
Thank you to everyone who has already signed up to volunteer at the Basketball Concession stand or gate. We still need many more volunteers especially for girls' games. Please help boosters to support Spartan Athletes. Thank you,
Click one of the links below and signup for the date and time you are able to help. Thank you!
Girls' Basketball Concession Stand Signup: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0D4EAAAC28A6FE3-girls
Boys' Basketball Concession Stand Signup: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0D4EAAAC28A6FE3-boys
Progress Reports
Progress reports for quarter two will be online at the end of next week. If there are concerns or questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to your child's counselor or to the teachers directly.
Winter Athletics
Winter sports opened up this week, as girls basketball played its first game of the year at Auburn on Thursday; the boys will open up at home on Saturday afternoon, also against Auburn, with the tipoff slated for 2:30 p.m. We also welcome to the coaching staff Casandra Knauer, a teacher at Whitin, who will be our new cheerleading coach, with the program starting practices this week as well!
Finally, about three years ago, our administration presented a comprehensive redesign of our Program of Studies, master schedule, and graduation requirements to the Uxbridge School Committee. The title of that presentation was "Strive for Greatness," and it made recommendations to changes that we believed would enhance the experience of students at UHS. We were tasked with the responsibility and the goal of changing the academic and curricular culture of the high school, and, as our accreditation visit has ended and we anticipate recommendations to guide us over the next several years, our goal remains the same: to "strive for greatness." We are so grateful that we have been able to make so many changes to the program at UHS, and that now we are a place modeling new learning experiences for students around the state. Already, we have been visited by close to a dozen schools, and four more will visit in the next two weeks, eager to capture some elements of teaching and learning at UHS. For that, we are appreciative of the opportunity that we have for our staff and students, that our improvement plans have been supported, and that we continue to have the opportunity to reflect, refine, and redesign the school to which we all aspire.
Yours in black and orange,
Michael Rubin
Principal
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Week That Was, December 6
Here's a look back at the Week That Was at UHS for the Week ending December 6:
https://youtu.be/zYdUU6ySK1U
https://youtu.be/zYdUU6ySK1U
NEASC Visit Concludes
Our ten-year decennial visit concluded on Wednesday, December 5, and we are looking forward to seeing the final report from the visiting team when it is released in the next couple of months. We are grateful for the approach this visiting team took, in terms of its compassionate, thorough, and insightful look at who we are and what our school aspires to be.
The initial feedback from the team has been positive, and, when we receive the final report, we are confident that the recommendations being made will help guide our trajectory toward even higher standards of excellence. We share this in that we acknowledge that no school is perfect, and that we have some work to do in terms of the accreditation standards and our own practices in order to continue to build toward outcomes and opportunities that benefit our students and community alike. Some key takeaways, though, that we do feel confident in sharing now include those comments about this community. Our visiting team chair has been conducting or chairing visits since 1982, and, in that time, he indicated he had never seen a parent panel as excellent as ours; our school culture and climate was described as "the single best thing we have going for us, in that everyone shows up every day, including students, and feels respected, warm, welcome, and safe." The conversations about leadership were humbling, and the resources we have for students to be successful and to support teachers, including our counseling and student service model, help empower teachers in the classroom.
From a recommendation standpoint, we anticipate some challenging goals being set for us, as to how we can leverage the things we have in place to engage in a richer, challenging dialogue about what we want for students, the practices we put in place in class, and ways for students to demonstrate their learning. We kept hearing the term "raise to bar," and we also know that this creates, for us, an opportunity to build synergy between the schools in our district and help drive strategic planning, since the recommendations being made will be felt by students in our school who are just starting in kindergarten or preschool!
In short, we say thank you. We thank the Dream Team Steering Committee of co-chairs Molly Hendrickx and Nicole Yakstis, Michael DiMeglio, Tracy Larkin, and Christine Prior, our administration colleagues, our faculty and staff, our students, our community and our school committee. To paraphrase School Committee Chair Ms. Stark at Wednesday's School Committee meeting, we have the "awesome responsibility" of caring for the students of Uxbridge, and we embrace that task with the diligence that care demands. To have that work validated by a team of peers with neutral lenses from across New England is high praise, and to see those recommendations in writing will only enhance that care and responsibility as we move forward, together.
The presentation we shared with School Committee is linked below. We look forward to communicating the findings publicly later this year!
The initial feedback from the team has been positive, and, when we receive the final report, we are confident that the recommendations being made will help guide our trajectory toward even higher standards of excellence. We share this in that we acknowledge that no school is perfect, and that we have some work to do in terms of the accreditation standards and our own practices in order to continue to build toward outcomes and opportunities that benefit our students and community alike. Some key takeaways, though, that we do feel confident in sharing now include those comments about this community. Our visiting team chair has been conducting or chairing visits since 1982, and, in that time, he indicated he had never seen a parent panel as excellent as ours; our school culture and climate was described as "the single best thing we have going for us, in that everyone shows up every day, including students, and feels respected, warm, welcome, and safe." The conversations about leadership were humbling, and the resources we have for students to be successful and to support teachers, including our counseling and student service model, help empower teachers in the classroom.
From a recommendation standpoint, we anticipate some challenging goals being set for us, as to how we can leverage the things we have in place to engage in a richer, challenging dialogue about what we want for students, the practices we put in place in class, and ways for students to demonstrate their learning. We kept hearing the term "raise to bar," and we also know that this creates, for us, an opportunity to build synergy between the schools in our district and help drive strategic planning, since the recommendations being made will be felt by students in our school who are just starting in kindergarten or preschool!
In short, we say thank you. We thank the Dream Team Steering Committee of co-chairs Molly Hendrickx and Nicole Yakstis, Michael DiMeglio, Tracy Larkin, and Christine Prior, our administration colleagues, our faculty and staff, our students, our community and our school committee. To paraphrase School Committee Chair Ms. Stark at Wednesday's School Committee meeting, we have the "awesome responsibility" of caring for the students of Uxbridge, and we embrace that task with the diligence that care demands. To have that work validated by a team of peers with neutral lenses from across New England is high praise, and to see those recommendations in writing will only enhance that care and responsibility as we move forward, together.
The presentation we shared with School Committee is linked below. We look forward to communicating the findings publicly later this year!
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Opening Remarks to the Visiting Team
Good afternoon,
I am sharing below the remarks I shared with the NEASC visiting committee upon the start of our visit for our accreditation team.Good afternoon.
As principal of Uxbridge High School, it is my privilege to welcome the visiting team from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges to our school and community for what we hope will be a productive, enriching, and inspiring few days of learning with our staff, students, administration, and community. For us, your presence is an opportunity: to validate, to share, to showcase, to reflect, and to open our hearts and minds to feedback and critique.
We welcome you today with the knowledge and respect for what this process means for this community and the sacrifices that you are making to your schools and families, as the time and energy you will spend on our behalf is completely appreciated. We also know that this process can bring up a variety of emotions in communities, particularly in a place like Uxbridge that once had some tumultuousness with respect to some of the NEASC dirty words, like warning and probation. Ten years ago, NEASC created for UHS the lever that defined a building, which created its own challenge in this town. More recently, we have sought to put the conversation about a building in the rear-view mirror and define ourselves less for a building and more as a school. And, so, as we undertook our many projects and initiatives over the past several years, we have done just that- we are a charter and pilot DESE Innovation Pathway school, a member of the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools, a Project Lead the Way model school, and a school where our core values and definition as Spartans can be seen every single day, not just a list of words for your sake, no offense.
Before I introduce some of the folks with whom you will meet and get to know over the next four days together, I want to publicly thank our faculty, staff, administrative team, school committee, and our students and parents for their honesty, their social and academic capital, and their consistent and unwavering commitment to excellence. Vince Lombardi once said that “the achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.” We believe that our school inspires all who step through its doors to create the very best version of themselves that they can - through our vision of a UHS graduate and our sense of mutual commitment to each other. In particular, we thank the staff for their individual contributions: the honest conversation regarding the self-study, for opening their hearts and minds to an evolved staff, as a staff that welcomed 18 new faces this year, just a couple years after having a dozen new faculty members join us. (Yes, we have 130 more students this year than we did last year, and we have 30 people in the building today who were not here when I started in 2015). It is no small task to get all oars rowing in the same direction, but we have transitioned to having five grades here and incorporated those students and colleagues better than I could have ever hoped. This staff, school faculty, and community as a whole has made a commitment to making UHS a great place to learn and work, not just for yesterday and today, but for the learners and community of tomorrow. In so doing, we have defined, adapted, redefined, and modeled our core values every step of the way. We hope that our school’s culture resonates with you after four days, that this staff and this school will inspire you as it has so of our colleagues, so many of our students, our team, and our community at large.
With that, I have some quick introductions, beginning with our diligent, committed, and dedicated steering committee.
Co-chairs Molly Hendrickx and Nicole Yakstis
Assistant Principal Michael DiMeglio
Science Curriculum & Instruction Leader Tracy Larkin
Mathematics Curriculum & Instruction Leader Christine Prior
We have a number of parents and students in the audience:
People from the community
People from our staff
Finally, it is my privilege to introduce our superintendent of schools, Dr. Frank Tiano.
AFTER FRANK/CO-CHAIRS MOLLY/NIKKI/VIDEO:
At this time, we would like to invite the members of our visiting team to join many of our student organizations, faculty members, and community members in the cafeteria. There you will have an opportunity to interact with students, parents, teachers, and others as we open our doors and our community to you.
Our plan would be to conclude the community fair at 1:15 or so, at which time the visiting team will be joining one of two panels. The parent panel will meet across the hall in the library, and the School Committee panel will meet in the main office conference room.
In closing, one of the last bits of advice we gave our students and staff as we broke for the weekend was not to review standards, not to go through cliched definitions, and not to build off jargon. With all due respect to the standards, we told our community to “just be you.” We did not realize exactly what a double entendre that was until one of our teacher’s husbands pointed it out on Friday, so we leave you with that sentiment - that we want everyone here to “be you/U.” We leave it the team to discover what that is really all about, and look forward to sharing our community with you these next few days.
With that, I invite you to the school cafeteria to meet with our student organizations, faculty, and community.
I am sharing below the remarks I shared with the NEASC visiting committee upon the start of our visit for our accreditation team.Good afternoon.
As principal of Uxbridge High School, it is my privilege to welcome the visiting team from the New England Association of Schools and Colleges to our school and community for what we hope will be a productive, enriching, and inspiring few days of learning with our staff, students, administration, and community. For us, your presence is an opportunity: to validate, to share, to showcase, to reflect, and to open our hearts and minds to feedback and critique.
We welcome you today with the knowledge and respect for what this process means for this community and the sacrifices that you are making to your schools and families, as the time and energy you will spend on our behalf is completely appreciated. We also know that this process can bring up a variety of emotions in communities, particularly in a place like Uxbridge that once had some tumultuousness with respect to some of the NEASC dirty words, like warning and probation. Ten years ago, NEASC created for UHS the lever that defined a building, which created its own challenge in this town. More recently, we have sought to put the conversation about a building in the rear-view mirror and define ourselves less for a building and more as a school. And, so, as we undertook our many projects and initiatives over the past several years, we have done just that- we are a charter and pilot DESE Innovation Pathway school, a member of the National Consortium of Secondary STEM Schools, a Project Lead the Way model school, and a school where our core values and definition as Spartans can be seen every single day, not just a list of words for your sake, no offense.
Before I introduce some of the folks with whom you will meet and get to know over the next four days together, I want to publicly thank our faculty, staff, administrative team, school committee, and our students and parents for their honesty, their social and academic capital, and their consistent and unwavering commitment to excellence. Vince Lombardi once said that “the achievements of an organization are the results of the combined effort of each individual.” We believe that our school inspires all who step through its doors to create the very best version of themselves that they can - through our vision of a UHS graduate and our sense of mutual commitment to each other. In particular, we thank the staff for their individual contributions: the honest conversation regarding the self-study, for opening their hearts and minds to an evolved staff, as a staff that welcomed 18 new faces this year, just a couple years after having a dozen new faculty members join us. (Yes, we have 130 more students this year than we did last year, and we have 30 people in the building today who were not here when I started in 2015). It is no small task to get all oars rowing in the same direction, but we have transitioned to having five grades here and incorporated those students and colleagues better than I could have ever hoped. This staff, school faculty, and community as a whole has made a commitment to making UHS a great place to learn and work, not just for yesterday and today, but for the learners and community of tomorrow. In so doing, we have defined, adapted, redefined, and modeled our core values every step of the way. We hope that our school’s culture resonates with you after four days, that this staff and this school will inspire you as it has so of our colleagues, so many of our students, our team, and our community at large.
With that, I have some quick introductions, beginning with our diligent, committed, and dedicated steering committee.
Co-chairs Molly Hendrickx and Nicole Yakstis
Assistant Principal Michael DiMeglio
Science Curriculum & Instruction Leader Tracy Larkin
Mathematics Curriculum & Instruction Leader Christine Prior
We have a number of parents and students in the audience:
People from the community
People from our staff
Finally, it is my privilege to introduce our superintendent of schools, Dr. Frank Tiano.
AFTER FRANK/CO-CHAIRS MOLLY/NIKKI/VIDEO:
At this time, we would like to invite the members of our visiting team to join many of our student organizations, faculty members, and community members in the cafeteria. There you will have an opportunity to interact with students, parents, teachers, and others as we open our doors and our community to you.
Our plan would be to conclude the community fair at 1:15 or so, at which time the visiting team will be joining one of two panels. The parent panel will meet across the hall in the library, and the School Committee panel will meet in the main office conference room.
In closing, one of the last bits of advice we gave our students and staff as we broke for the weekend was not to review standards, not to go through cliched definitions, and not to build off jargon. With all due respect to the standards, we told our community to “just be you.” We did not realize exactly what a double entendre that was until one of our teacher’s husbands pointed it out on Friday, so we leave you with that sentiment - that we want everyone here to “be you/U.” We leave it the team to discover what that is really all about, and look forward to sharing our community with you these next few days.
With that, I invite you to the school cafeteria to meet with our student organizations, faculty, and community.
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