Team WHS

2019-2020 Season 4: Episode 4

Vision of a WHS Graduate:

***The below information will be emailed to all WHS families by mid-week.****

Last fall, prompted by the NEASC accreditation process, Winchester High School began collaborating to craft a vision of the graduate. Composing and adopting our own vision statement is a key component in New England Association of Schools and Colleges ( NEASC) process. The in the NEASC documents, overview for this standard states:

The school provides a safe learning culture that ensures equity and fosters shared values among learners, educators, families, and members of the school community. These shared values drive student learning as well as policy, practice, and decision-making while promoting a spirit of collaboration, shared ownership, pride, leadership, social responsibility, and civic engagement. The school community sets high standards for student learning, fosters a growth mindset, and facilitates continuous school improvement to realize the school’s core values, beliefs about learning, and vision of the graduate.

The process WHS has employed to develop this vision statement has been rigorous. Input was solicited from students, WHS staff, families, school committee members, and community members about what our shared vision of the graduate should include. As educational professionals, we spent multiple faculty meetings last fall brainstorming the qualities that we would like to see in graduates of WHS. At the same time we were constructing these lists, the other groups that constitute the high school community were engaging in similar conversations. In January, the diverse products from all of our efforts were combined and organized into a set of working notes that were passed on to the Vision of the Graduate Committee. This committee, comprised of Judy Hession, Eric Lister, Bob Trakimas, Ipshita Chaklarar, Kathy Grace, Dave Benedetto, Andrew Langlois and Dennis Mahoney, attended several meetings over the second half of the year to frame multiple drafts of this vision statement. Successive drafts were compared to best practices from other districts, and the results were aligned with the WPS Learning Beacons.

The Vision Committee very recently finished an advanced draft of the vision statement that was then shared with the WHS faculty for final approval. Now we would like to share The Vision of a WHS Graduate with you. We hope that you will be able to see the spirit of stakeholder ideas in this statement. Indeed, we have worked hard to incorporate as many of your suggestions as possible into this draft.

In closing, it is important to note that although this work may have been catalyzed by the NEASC accreditation process, the conversations initiated during this process have always been focused on preparing our students for fulfilling lives after WHS. Thank you for your continued support of our WHS students, staff and greater community.

Dennis P. Mahoney and the members of the Vision of a WHS Graduate Committee

Please access our work on the Vision of a WHS Graduate HERE

WHS Staff Spotlight: A special highlight on our own Ms. Judy Hession. This past Wednesday, Ms. Hession was honored by Harvard University for Excellence in Teaching. Only four teachers in Massachusetts receive this award each year, and we know that Ms. Hession is most deserving of this recognition. The ceremony included a breakfast and presentation at The Harvard Club. Ms. Hession has been at WHS since 1970 and is still going strong today! Congratulations to Ms. Hession, and a huge thank you for everything she does and has done at WHS!

WHS LC4 Post Grads Blog: Welcome to the new school year! https://whspgp.blogspot.com/2019/10/welcome-to-new-school-year.html

Travel Training: https://whspgp.blogspot.com/2019/10/travel-training-bowling-and-brickyard.html

New WHS Staff: Say Ciao to Ms. D’Alimonte Chiodini!

And Say “hola” to Mr. Chris Sheehan

WHS Finding Happiness: As part of our focus on SEL at WHS, we were lucky to be able to book known speaker Pam Garramone https://www.pamgarramone.com/ who focuses on using positive psychology. She uses a very scientific approach to happiness and runs workshops for students to participate in as they are learning. Our grade 9 and grade 11 students attended, and we heard a lot of positive feedback. As always, please feel free to continue the conversation!

Autumnal WPS Student Art Exhibition: There are over 80 young artists from grades K-12 being featured in this year’s exhibit at the Winchester Public Library! Works were chosen during the June 2019 Town Day Exhibition by guest juror, Artist/Educator Julie Williams-Krishnan. This exhibit will be on display from October 3 through November 30th.

WHS Goal Setters: Grade 9 students Jalen Le and Jackson Hunter-Lynch are keeping it simple this week and going with a classic goal of studying harder. Grade 9 students Noah Acker and Arjan Biemans spent last week thinking about other people and how to make their world a better place for all! We love it!

What’s going on at WHS?

Ms. Cella made a Mood Meter for her students that is all in Italian. Our American Studies and US History students went to the Edward M. Kennedy Center.

We said adios to our Spanish exchange students.

Ms. Gifford’s Intro to Psychology class performing their “Chocolate Chip Cookie” statistics lab in class. Mrs. Hillstrom’s students enjoying their flexible seating options! And Dr. Geyer + Ms. Hardy’s students review by moving around the room and writing down what they know about a topic so everyone can see it and share their knowledge as well.

We loved seeing Ms. Glenworks STAG students going old school and new school at the same time!

Mr. Rhatigan’s E block Modern Culture + Media, with the support of SRO Perenick, put on an actual tailgate lunch party in our student parking lot during a portion of E Block celebrating the completion of Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer, a memoir chronicling a season in the life of rabid Alabama Crimson Tide football fans. Roll Tide!