Resource Teacher Retires

Donna Smith-Harrison and her husband, Sam

After 35 years of teaching, Donna Smith-Harrison is retiring. She has been at Alvarado for 10 years. Her students will greatly miss her. Donna has been a strong influence on many students as she has a very special knowledge and understanding of students with special needs.

Donna Reads the Important Books made by students and staff and Tracie wishes her well.

Carmen, Thora, Karen, Cheri
Best Friends Forever say Farewell

Steve, Rachel................ Sam, Donna, Thora

Donna gave all the staff a good laugh with a list of her top ten reasons for retiring.

Mani, Laurie................ Rachel, Colleen

Anna, Nancy, Jill, Anita, Vince


Congratulations Donna.
Thanks for the many years of service.

To begin her retirement with fun and friends, Donna had lunch with this fabulous group of principals at the Slanted Door in San Francisco.

Karen Saucedo, Cheri Benafield, Donna Smith-Harrison
Tracie Noriega, Carmen Jorgenson

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.

Wonder Women -Teacher And Staff 2011

Two remarkable Wonder Women have been honored for their service to staff and students at Alvarado Elementary. Although this award is for 2011, it is their long and diligent service over a period of years that is recognized. Maureen Tecson is the 2011 Teacher of the Year and Betty Silva is the Classified Staff Person of the Year.

Maureen Tecson, a second grade teacher, is a member of the ILT the Instructional Leadership Team. She is a skilled, collaborative, dedicated, hardworking teacher warrior who cares greatly about every one of her students. In this time of great economic need she has provided direction for many teachers on grants and possible financial resources. She also teaches an after school dance class. She has received grants from the New Haven Schools foundation for her dance class and grants from DonorsChoose for her own classroom. At the end of each year she teaches the staff a dance which is performed in front of the entire school. This event is greatly loved by the students. She is also in charge of the Facebook page for the Alvarado Elementary Parent Teachers Club. Maureen epitomizes the term school spirit by uplifting parents, staff, and students. Congratulations Maureen for Teacher of the Year 2011.

Maureen Tecson

Betty Silva has been a part of the Alvarado family for over 20 years. She has been an aide in almost every grade. During the last few years, Betty began working with special needs students including those with autism. She brings her many years of experience and skill to those students who need it most. She is kind, hardworking, and fun loving. When something needs to be done, Miss Silva offers to help. She has provided after school and before school reading intervention classes and homework help for students. Congratulations Betty on this well deserved award.

.

The Fun Faces of Betty Silva

Staff Photo 2010-2011

Staff Photo 2010-2011
Pam Ruley, Dave Martell, and Kim Pratt not shown

Click on the photo to enlarge

Bust This Test

It's that time of year, testing time. Testing is a stressful time for both students and teachers. It used to be called the STAR test and some still use that name. STAR stands for Standardize Test for Achievement in Reading. However, now students are tested for Reading, Math and Science. Officially it's called the CST, California Standardized Test. Teachers have been getting their students test ready with a variety of strategies. At Alvarado the phrase BUST THIS TEST is used to motivate students to focus and try their best. Students use practice tests and strategies for choosing multiple choice questions.

BUST THIS TEST
Go to bed early
Be on time to school
Focus on the test
Read the title first
Read the questions first then read the passage
When you are done, go back and check your answers

Teachers Keith Guernsey, Jeff Pickering, and David Trier produce a video to reduce student test stress and use it in an assembly to motivate students. Go to the Alvarado Elementary School website to view by clicking on view the movie on the left.

California uses five performance levels to report student achievement on the CSTs:

• Advanced: This category represents a superior performance. Students demonstrate a comprehensive and complex understanding of the knowledge and skills measured by this assessment, at this grade, in this content area.
• Proficient: This category represents a solid performance. Students demonstrate a competent and adequate understanding of the knowledge and skills measured by this assessment, at this grade, in this content area.
• Basic: This category represents a limited performance. Students demonstrate a partial and rudimentary understanding of the knowledge and skills measured by this assessment, at this grade, in this content area.
• Far Below / Below Basic: This category represents a serious lack of performance. Students demonstrate little or a flawed understanding of the knowledge and skills measured by this assessment, at this grade, in this content area.

Library or media

Media

Media is layered to included appropriate literature, technology, internet safety, and library skills . Students check out books and had a skills, literature, or technology lesson every week. The media specialist also ran the media retrevial system known as Synergy during the 1990's. Around 1996 to 1998 students put on a TV school wide show with school news. It was produced by the media specialist but the students did the acting and ran the camera. By 2008 this system was obsolete. When funds were available, author visits were also provided for the students. Patricia Polacco, Caryn Yacowitz, and Marissa Moss were some of the authors. The media specialist also coordinated the yearly Young Author Faire which is no longer in existence in New Haven. The media specialist is a librarian, teacher, and technology mentor for staff, teachers, and students. The media specialists often operated the school wide book fair. The media specialists also trained students from the middle school library to shelve books, do research for new students projects, and help students find information.

As new technology came out it, was often introduced to the students. When Google Earth appeared 4th and 5th graders explored the application for a look at the seven wonders of the world, the oceans, rivers, and countries. Melinda Steffans was the librarian through most of the 1980's. In 1987 Rhonda Neagle became the media specialist. In 1990 through 2008-2009 Sharon Chambers was the media specialist. Alisha Valine became the media specialist in September of 2009.

I-Buddy Internet Safety

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.

Music and Performing Arts

Music in the Library

Laurie Taner

Music involved the preps but also all the after school music programs. For many years all schools were involved in Marching On. Marching On was a performance art program of all schools at James Logan High School to showcase the musical talents of students. The music teachers were required to teach after school choir, but they were paid extra for it. However a tremendous amount of time went into arranging the performances and getting the students ready to perform. Every school was assigned to perform. The bands and recorders played and all the choirs sang. Students who were not in choir or recorders still had music every day and often performed at assemblies at school. Laurie Taner was the Music teacher in the 90's, then came Ivan DeSousa, La Verne Shue Chen, then David Martell in 2008.

La Verne Shue Chen

Ivan DeSousa

Dave Martell

39 Years at Alvarado Come to a Close

Third Grade Teachers Say Goodbye
Click on the photo to enlarge

It was a happy time and sad time for the tightknit group of third grade teachers as they bid farewell to a very dear friend and colleague. After thirty nine years on the Alvarado faculty, Chris Moriuchi leaves to retire to a life of ease and tennis. At her retirement party she shared pictures of her classes for the entire 39 years. She also had a binder of staff pictures for the entire 39 years. It was an impressive collection of memories. It's amazing to think of all the students who have learned from Chris including Derek McNamara, Assistant Superintendent of Personnel for New Haven Unified School district. Mr. McNamara was a student in Chris's fourth grade class.

Congratulations on your retirement. Thanks for all years of sharing your extensive knowledge with the staff and the students.

Alvarado Wildcat Song

Click on the image to enlarge

This is a copy of the Alvarado Wildcat Song which was revised in 2008. It is sung to the tune of California, Here I come.

Zumba FUNdraising by the PTC

Alvarado Staff Enjoys Zumba

Click on the photo to enlarge

The Alvarado Parents Teacher Club hosted a Zumba fundraiser for the school. For the fee of $10 teachers and parents enjoyed an awesome evening getting a healthy and fun workout. Mimi provided the instructions and a parent was the DJ.

Photos provided by Maureen Tecson