A Visit With Retired AE Teachers

After teaching for 20 or 30 years, retired teachers wonder what life will have in store for them. It's time to enjoy life and have adventures sometimes in a completely new direction. The following are examples of life continuing to be well lived.


Margo ZanzingerAs a retired person, my family has opened a frozen yogurt shop, Top-A-Lot Yogurt, 738 Water Street, Santa Cruz, CA. Our shop was voted the BEST frozen yogurt shop in Santa Cruz by the people of Santa Cruz in the Good Times news paper for 2011. I have become a Practioner at Innerlight Ministeries in Soquel, CA. I live in a retirement community, right on the ocean. I love to hear from all my teacher friends, so give me a call.

Rita McBride

I have been square dancing for the past 8 years. My dog, Bagel, and I are part of the Ohlone Humane Society's Animal Assisted Therapy Program.

Bagel

Bagel and I visit 2 nursing homes in Fremont as visitors to seniors and we go to the Fremont Library for the Read To A Dog program each month. I also go to Logan graduation ceremonies to see students I had in my kindergarten class years ago.

William Legaspi and Tim Alarcon 2011 Logan Grads with Rita.

ManYee Desandies
ManYee has been semi-retired for the first year of her retirement. She has worked with students three hours a day at Alvarado on the Leveled Literacy Intervention program. Taking walks around the lake with her dog has allowed her to expand her nature photography hobby to include magnificent photos of birds which are published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She continues to explore the joys of technology with her ipad and even gives free ipad lessons to her friends. Her handsome grandson, Jinyao, is the joy of her life.

Joan Logue
Joan lives in a Sun City retirement community and loves it. She loves the golf, the Mac group, and even has her own set of Bocce balls. She is also thrilled with her grandson, Jamie. For the last 8 years she has been the leader of the bereavement group.

Mary Ogden
Mary lives in the beautiful city of Discovery Bay with the wind and the water to enjoy. She lives close to her daughter and her grandchildren and spends a lot of time with them.

Sharon Chambers
I spend my time working on my garden patio, getting my house in order, and writing this blog and a few other blogs. I still love using technology. I also love to spend time with my two lovely granddaughters. Last year we had an adventure with the girls in Nevada City helping their Uncle Josh with his gold mine and swimming in the river.
We also spent a holiday vacation taking care of the girls in Texas while mom and dad were at work. When done, we were exhausted.

Marty Brown
Marty is still Best Friends Forever (BFF) with Debbie Fryman, who is now at Eastin. She often goes over to help Debbie with her classroom.

Intervention: What? Why? How?

What is intervention? Intervention is designed to help students who need help learning to read. The students can range from Kindergarten students to 5th graders who are English language learners. There are a variety of types of intervention that have been used at Alvarado including intervention by the classroom teacher, during class and after school; Reading Recovery; and group before or after school reading classes. Intervention does not take the place of the regular classroom instruction. Intervention is in addition to classroom instruction.

Alvarado has started a new program this year (2010-11) called Leveled Literacy Intervention. It is a supplementary intervention program designed to provide powerful, daily, small-group instruction for the children in the early grades. There can be no more than three students in each group. There are comprehensive lesson plans for three levels from beginning reading in Kindergarten or Grade 1 to beginning reading for Grade 3. Leveled Literacy Intervention is designed to be used with young children who need intensive support to achieve grade-level competency.

This system uses both sight words (memorized words) and phonics. There are hundreds of leveled fiction and non fiction books provided for the students. Students read one book the first day, work on phonics, sight words, and take the book home to read. The second day they reread a previous book, write about the story, and again take home a book.

Mrs. Desandies and Students

Mrs. Desandies a former 3rd grade teacher with many years of experience has been selected to teach these daily 40 minute classes. According to Mrs. Desandies these are the strengths of the system:

1. The books are excellent: interesting, attractive, well-designed on many levels.

2. The literature covers a wide variety of genres (very strong on non-fiction).

3. The program is comprehensive: reading (word work, comprehension, fluency), and writing (letter formation, spelling, conventions, content).

4. The skills are introduced in a very systematic and sequential way, in small increments, and consistently reviewed.

5. Excellent follow-through and spiraling.

6. The daily lesson plan supports extensive reading, discussion, review, and writing in a fast-paced, engaging manner.

7. The small group format maximizes individual growth.

8. The consistency of 5 lessons a week over a long period of time promotes accelerated progress.

9. Early intensive intervention prevents emerging literacy difficulties rather than corrects long-term failures.

10. Continuous assessment pinpoints precise and on-time teaching points for each individual student.

Mrs. Desandies also uses one of her favorite tools to motivate students. Students learn to form letters of the alphabet and build words with the moveable alphabet with her personal ipad.

Congratulations

Cheri Benafield

Congratulations to Cheri Benafield AE's Assistant Principal. Cheri will be the new principal at New Haven Unified's Pioneer Elementary for the year 2010-2011. Cheri has been at AE for about ten years. She came to AE as a Reading Specialist and quickly moved up to Assistant Principal. In 2009 she was awarded administrator of the year for the district. Everyone will miss the warmth and skill Cheri has shown with students, staff, and parents, but all wish her happiness in her new position.

Anita Schumann reading on the lawn to her students for Read Across America.

Congratulations to Anita Schumann Alvarado's 2010 Teacher of the Year. Anita Started as an teacher's aide with Alvarado. She went back to school, received her credential, and began her career as a teacher at Alvarado. She is knowledgeable, skilled, consistent, and a leader of her fellow teachers.

Anita on Halloween

ManYee Desandies: Teacher of the year 2009
Congratulations on your retirement in June, 2010.





Ruth Houseworth: Congratulations on your retirement in June 2010. Thanks for sharing your creativity and skills with AE staff and students.

Joe Sefcheck: Congratulations on your retirement in June 2010. Thanks for all the years of service in New Haven Unified School District.

Staff Photos 2009-2010 or Memories

Tracie Noriega, Principal
Cheri Benefield, Assistant Principal
2009-2010
Click on the photo to enlarge

Jeff Pickering on end of the year on Facebook: year-end assessments, report cards, Ocean Night, pink and blues, cum's, DRAs for far and below basic, NWEA, enter Data Director, finish up Writers Workshop, year-end picnic, field day, "Oceans" field trip, clean out room and walls. I'm forgetting something... Other than that, the rest of the year is pretty kick-back.

Happy Retirement ManYee
Click on the photo to enlarge

The AE Garden

Tammy "Where is our garden?"

Tammy and Bernadette

Margo

Cheryl


Around 1995 the garden was started by 3rd grade teacher Tammy Kafin Taylor. The district donated the land behind the 5th grade classrooms. Tammy obtained parents and volunteers from Americorp to build the raised beds. The ground was rototilled by Diandre Desandies. The first crop was fava beans and there were many many beans. The teachers were asked to adopt a bed for their classroom. The students weed, plant, water, and harvest the crops. Soon many of the 2nd and 3rd grade teachers, ie, Paul Brewer, Paul Hornbrook, Cheryl Konno Speakman, Margo Zanzinger, and Manyee Desandies were all very active in developing the first garden at Alvarado.

As an extension of the garden project, Alvarado received a grant to build the shed as part of the recycling program in the county. The tools, seeds, and wagons were stored in the shed. In an effort to make students and teachers more aware of our impact on the environment, the staff worked on a project to recycle, reduce and reuse paper at AE. Margo Zanzinger made a worm box and used some of the paper to show students how nature can nurture. At first this box was in her room, later it was moved to the garden.

Penny Johnson

As of this date, 2010, third grade teacher Penny Johnson is in charge of the garden. Students are still growing a variety of crops.

The box on the bottom is Margo Zanzinger's worm box used to help students understand the recycle process. The worms found a good home in the garden.

Amazing Art of WOW

Through the 1990's Cathy Hampton and ManYee Desandies continued to develop their internet portal for students. It was kid friendly. Cathy's daughter Julianne Hampton made the above as the initial drawing for the web page. The clouds were added for grade levels and specialized subjects on the hill. They were so kind to put a portal for the media center on the hill. All this was on their own time. They still taught their classes, but at home worked on technology for the students.

Ace was developed as a subject portal.

Samples of Covers of Mrs. Desandies Web Books

Mrs Desandies used the technology in her classroom constantly. Kids loved being in her class even those who at first were not that happy with being in school. Over the years her students made hundreds of books about the subjects they were studying. All were made with kids doing the work. As the 90's progressed many of the books were made on and for the web. Students were encouraged to go online and read the stories from their class and all the other classes she taught.

1990's: The Dot Com Revolution

The 1990's began the dot com revolution in Silicon Valley and in education. New Haven needed people with computer experience in education and business. When Rhonda Neagle left to become the media specialist at James Logan High School, Donna Uyemoto, the personnel director at New Haven, knew Alvarado needed someone to teach the teachers how to use the computers. Sharon Chambers remembers, "In August 1990, Jay Hendee, the district librarian, and Julia Strong looked at my portfolio, interviewed me, and hired me. I was thrilled, but terrified. A teacher told me, Rhonda Neagle, had big shoes. Good Luck trying to fill them. I was now the student's media teacher, manager of a very old 16000 volume library collection, and the technology facilitator."

"Fortunately for me the staff at Alvarado was amazingly supportive. The following year each teacher got their own computer for their classroom. It was on a cart. On Wednesday mornings we had training time until 10 am. No students came to school until 10:30 on Wednesdays. A set of classes were designated for each month in individual rooms for topics such as work processing, Kid Pix, and CD roms etc. Teachers rolled their cart to these rooms for instruction. I recruited teachers with computer experience to teach these classes. Marty Brown, ManYee Desandies, Cathy Hampton, Debbie Fryman all taught many classes. These teachers took charge and designed their own class work. After class each teacher rolled their cart back to their own class. This worked well because teachers had a choice as to what class they wanted. The other reason this worked was the AE staff was basically a really nice group of people. We also had technology training at staff meetings and I had a drop in after school users group where teachers could get help on anything related to technology."

We also had tremendous support from the district for technology. We had district meetings led by visionaries Jay Hendee and Roger Hoyer. These two were some of the first to realize the significance of the use of technology in education. Jay Hendee was the Head Librarian and Roger Hoyer was the director of Educational Technology. The librarian at James Login High School, Rhonda Neagle, also shared their vision. They went to conferences all over the United States to see how we could implement programs in New Haven. They were supported in this endeavor by our Superintendent, Guy Emmanual. The district meetings with teachers were not top down meetings. These were meetings in which everyone could discuss how to use programs and how best to teach the teachers and students to use the programs. As teachers our voices were heard. New Haven developed a reputation among California school districts as one of the leaders in educational technology. Due to the fact that all the district librarians were onboard with the vision, each school had a representative who would move students and teachers forward into the unknown but exciting future of educational technology. We had no idea how technology would look in twenty years, but we were game to do our best to learn how to use it with staff and students. You have to remember in 1990 most teachers did not even know how to use a computer, did not have one in their classroom, and some thought they were just a passing fancy. By 2011 technology went further than any of us could have ever imagined.

In 1995 some teachers were invited to a Summer Institute at Logan on using the internet. Liz Jordan and I developed Kids and Creeks an ecological website. Cathy Hampton and Manyee Desandies began to develop WOW. WOW or Wildcats on the Web was designed to be used by K-5 students. It was the first comprehensive internet website for students in New Haven. Now this website is no longer viable as the software used to develop it is no long available. Things change quickly in the technology world. The links cannot be revised and some of the sites have been cannibalized. However, if you look at WOW you can still see some of the ideas that were used. In 1999 a link for the media center was added.