CALENDAR

What’s NEW at Front Range Classical Ballet?

• Classes by appointment and sign-up only. • Class sizes limited • Masks required for all classes except for medical exemptions • Private and Semi-private lessons available • Zoom private, semi-private and group lessons available

FOR YOUR SAFETY

• High-touch surfaces disinfected between classes • In-studio air purifier running • Open studio air flow, weather permitting.

VISIT FRCBALLET.COM TO REGISTER!

School Kickoff Community Celebration

The School Kickoff Community Celebration is coming back strong this year with an in-person event Saturday, August 7, from 10am to 1pm, at Island Grove Regional Park.

There will be some modifications to the event because of COVID-19, and these may change as the event approaches based on recommendations from health officials. Right now, it looks like the event will go on, in-person.

The School Kickoff Community Celebration will include:

• 5,000 backpacks filled with school supplies, to be given out to District 6 students. • A free sack lunch for children ages birth through 18 years old • Free sports physicals • School and sports registration • More than 50 community booths featuring information and resources

We ask that District 6 employees direct families who need backpacks, school supplies and other resources to this event.

In July, volunteers can begin signing up to help with the School Kickoff Community Celebration. Look for more information soon!

If you have any questions about the event, contact Theresa Myers at tmyers@ greeleyschools.org.

DISTRICT 6 STUDENTS PLACE IN CARING FOR OUR WATERSHEDS CONTEST

Six of the seven finalists for this year’s Caring for Our Watersheds stewardship program were from District 6, collectively winning more than $9,000 to fund their conservation projects.

Caring for Our Watersheds is an international program, open to students living in the Big Thompson and Cache la Poudre watersheds. Students submit a grant proposal answering the question, “What can you do to improve your watershed?” Students research their local watershed and identify an environmental concern and come up with a realistic solution.

The Colorado contest is hosted by the Poudre Learning Center. Due to COVID-19, the final competition and ceremony was hosted remotely this year.

Here are this year’s winners, their school, their project, their teacher and the amount of funding they received for their project:

• Saria Mowrer, Greeley Central High

School, “Bracelets for Bats,” teacher Liz

Mock-Murphy, $1,000 award • Kimberly Gonzalez Jimenez, Greeley

Central High School, “Our Blooming

Watershed,” teacher Liz Mock-Murphy, $900 award • Juan Reveles Hernandez, Northridge

High School, “Education for the Younger

Generation,” teacher

Dr. Yajaira Fuentes-Tauber, $800 award • Brookelynn Hernandez and Helena Rangel,

Greeley West High School, “Mother

Native,” teacher Corrine Yahn, $600 award • Pamela Perez, Northridge High School,

“The Pandas Choice,” teacher Dr. Yajaira

Fuentes-Tauber, $500 award • Yaritza Morfin, Northridge High School,

“Cutlery Can Be Decomposable?” teacher

Dr. Yajaira Fuentes-Tauber, $450 award.

Congratulations to all these amazing students!

STEPPING STONES TO HONOR STUDENTS AND THEIR ARTWORK

Teachers at Billie Martinez Elementary School and the District 6 grounds crew joined to help create stepping stones in front of Billie Martinez Elementary School.

Students in the school painted rocks that were placed in cement for the stepping stones. Every year, first graders will add a stone to the path.

What a creative way to beautify the school and showcase student art!

Clean out your closet for cash

We pay cash on-the-spot for women’s fashion

970-223-6636

4519 S. College | Fort Collins

Call or visit our website to learn more ClothesMentor.com/fort-collins

Celebrating Eco Week

Although they didn’t make the traditional treks to the mountains, PSD students still got their hands dirty and dug into outdoor learning during alternative 2021 Eco Week activities.

Eco Week is an outdoor experience that elementary students anticipate with excitement as they enter fifth grade. In previous years, many schools chose to head to the Rocky Mountains to engage students in outdoor education and many firsts: their first time away from home, their first time camping and, for this generation, potentially their first experience without a digital connection.

Outdoor education provides opportunities for students to develop positive relationships with the environment, others and themselves through interaction with the natural world. These relationships renew the well-being and sustainability of students, society and our environment. Eco Week engages students in practical and active learning experiences in natural environments and settings typically beyond the school classroom.

“Because this is the first year our fifth-graders haven’t gone anywhere for Eco Week, I was nervous about how things were going to turn out,” says Adrienne Stienle, fifth-grade teacher at Johnson Elementary. “I was happily surprised that our Eco Week went better than expected! The kids enjoyed going over to Westfield Park to identify leaves, needles and Eco Systems and the biggest hit was the predator/prey games we played at the end of each day.”

This year’s fifth graders had a unique opportunity to appreciate the environment and observe their natural habitats with a greater emphasis on their local surroundings. Northern Colorado Building Environmental Education Together (NoCO BEET), a collaboration of community partners, teamed up with PSD to support environmental outdoor education activities for our fifth-grade students.

Local experts virtually joined classrooms to explore and engage in a multitude of topics aligned with the Colorado State Academic Standards while infusing interdisciplinary skills. Personal skills were emphasized through activities such as nature hikes, team-building projects, water ecology studies, observation skills, creative expression and journaling, geology, astronomy, life zone studies and more.

Although PSD students missed the mountains during Eco Week 2021, the heart of Eco Week was still captured throughout our community.

“Eco Week is a rite of passage for fifth-graders. Not only does learning about nature and ecology promote future stewardship of our environment, but the activities also encourage connections and relationships between students as well as with their teachers,” says Leslie Hass, fifth-grade teacher at Bennett Elementary.

“There are valuable lessons about taking personal risks and stepping out of your comfort zone to deal with challenges. Even though students didn’t get the traditional Eco Week experience this year, we are happy that we could do some activities that get at the heart of what Eco Week is all about, and hopefully give these students some positive memories as they wrap up their time in elementary school.”

MOUNTAIN SCHOOLS GET KITCHENS

Students at Poudre School District mountain schools have been enjoying school meals this year thanks to new commercial kitchens that were installed at the schools last summer, just in time for the start of the 2020-21 school year. Previously, students brought their lunches from home to Livermore, Red Feather Lakes and Stove Prairie elementary schools. https://www. psdschools.org/News/kitchens- mountainschools

GLOBAL LEADERSHIP CLASS RAISES FUNDS TO SUPPORT OTHER STUDENTS

With the help of Lincoln Middle School’s parent teacher organization, the Global Leadership class completed a service project aimed at raising money to create a laundry room on the school’s campus for families in need. https:// www.psdschools.org/News/LincolnLaundryRoom

SCHOOL OF CHOICE

If you missed the first period of consideration for School of Choice, the second period is now open. Families have a wide array of wonderful PSD schools to choose from. Visit the school options webpage on the PSD website to learn more.

Register online at olr.psdschools. org. Even if you opt to send your child to a school outside your neighborhood through School Choice, you must still register your child at your neighborhood school.

MEALS

Thanks to an extension of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s school district reimbursement program, PSD will once again offer free meals to any enrolled PSD student during the 2021-22 school year.

VIRTUAL OPTION

For the 2021-22 school year, Poudre Global Academy Virtual will replace Poudre School District Virtual (PSDV), the district’s current 100 percent online option that sunsets at the end of this school year. PGA Virtual is one of two tracks—the existing hybrid and 100 percent online—offered through Poudre Global Academy. Families may apply now, during the School of Choice second-consideration application period. For more PGAV information, visit PGAV’s website.

EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Know a preschooler who could benefit from going to school in PSD and connecting with professional, compassionate educators? To learn about the application process and more, visit the Early Childhood Education web page.

KINDERGARTEN REGISTRATION AVAILABLE ONLINE

Register online at olr.psdschools.org. Even if you opt to send your child to a school outside your neighborhood through School Choice, you must still register your child at your neighborhood school.

PARAPROFESSIONAL HONORED WITH SPECIAL GRADUATION CEREMONY

A self-described high school dropout, Krista Fuller is now getting her bachelor’s in education at Colorado State University. Fuller is a paraprofessional at Livermore Elementary, whose community recently came together to celebrate her well-earned achievement. https://www.psdschools.org/News/ Livermore-Para-Graduate

Spotlight on Kimberly Tymkowych

Kim Tymkowych isn’t sure when she realized it was her destiny to be an educator, but she thinks growing up across the street from an elementary school may have had something to do with it. As a child, she would stay after school and help the teachers, but it wasn’t until she went to college, at the University of Northern Colorado, years later, that she figured out what she wanted to do.

“My path just kind of went that way,” she says. Now, after spending six years in classrooms teaching third and fourth grades, being an instructional coach for three years, working with eight different principals and being a principal for eight years, first at Centennial and then at Winona Elementary, Kim is more passionate than ever about what she does, and especially the school and staff she leads.

When Kim became the principal at Winona, the school had been placed on a Turnaround Plan through the state, meaning that the school was not making adequate progress on achievement and growth. As a result, the Colorado Department of Education did a diagnostic review to find the strengths and areas of growth for the school, and to give the staff some goals to work toward.

“I knew it was a struggling school, and I took the job hoping it would push me as a professional and allow me to utilize some of my background,” Kim says. “The diagnostic was like a road map to guide us in the direction that we needed to go.”

Kim says the first step was making sure all the staff was working together toward some common goals, which eventually led to their mission statement. “Every kid, every day,” Kim says. “That’s what we created as a staff. It reminds us that our work is making sure that we’re providing a safe and predictable environment for every kid, every day.”

At a school like Winona, where over 65 percent of the families qualify for free and reduced meals, and with a mobility rate (percentage of families moving in or out of the school each year) of 25 percent, this means not only providing an education, but often helping with other needs as well.

“Emotional support, clothing, food,” Kim explains. “We meet our students where they’re at when they come through the door.”

With a student population around 300, and a staff of 43 adults, there is a lot of collaboration and teamwork involved in helping students succeed, including staff members getting to

know families well so everyone can work together.

“We can look at so many individual success stories within our population. Our goal is to help them to know there are many ways to grow, and it’s not just about the academics,” Kim says. “We want to help them feel loved at school, increase their self-esteem and awareness of how to advocate for themselves. There are definitely some challenges and barriers along the way, but we work together to overcome them. This process takes time, but we have made tremendous progress already, especially in our school culture.”

Even with all the big strides Winona has made as a school, Kim says there is still a lot of work to do. “I want to see our staff turnover decrease, as well as the academic growth and achievement meet and eventually exceed our state scores,” she says.

Kim says it typically takes three to five years to see growth in the areas identified in a Turnaround Plan, but the Winona community has been working hard to create change. “A big piece of our work is making sure everyone is a part of that work,” Kim says. This means building relationships amongst students and their teachers, something staff at Winona has worked very hard at doing. In a recent survey, Kim said that 98 percent of the students at Winona report feeling respected by their teachers.

“Our kids will show us respect and work alongside us more if they feel respected,” she says. “We’re trying to teach the kids to expect respect as well.”

Kim believes this starts with building community at the school. “We want to focus on what our school is like on the inside, but also what it looks like from the outside,” Kim says.

Recently, students at Winona raised money to have a heart for the City of Loveland’s City with HeART project installed in front of the school. Students also created the design on the heart and the school’s Art Club helped the professional artist to paint it.