A reminder the this months Department Head meeting will be held Tuesday afternoon at 2:35 in the CCC.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to Job Skills we will not be flipping classes on today or Thursday of this week. The schedule will run 1,2,3,4,9. Thank you.
Thank you to everyone for their flexibility with all of our testing last week. We successfully completed our annual SBIRT testing for all freshmen as well as MCAS Retakes. We also ran a very successful trial run of MCAS 2.0 on Friday afternoon. (This successful trial will allow us to do the testing over 2 school days!) All this in a 4-day week. Well done, everyone!
Patriot Ledger Visit - as I mentioned last week, the Patriot Ledger has a new education reporter. First up on her agenda, "What does vocational education look like in the 21st Century?" She was originally coming on Tuesday, but needed to push it to Wednesday. We will be around with a report and photographer at approximately 9:30 AM.
I have updated the school calendar on the website to reflect last week's snow day. Feel free to print a new copy if you are inclined to do so.
The staff and students going on the service trip to Houston early in April are hosting a Left, Center, Right Night at the Rockland Eagles at 7 PM this Saturday. Cost is $25 with proceeds go to defer the cost of the trip. Please come out and support this group.
The Parent's Association's Cabin Fever will be held on Saturday, April 6th, at Emerald Hall in Abington from 7:00 to 11:00 PM. Tickets are $15 a piece or a table of 10 is $100. Please see me for tickets and support this great organization on their marquee night!
From the desk of the Vocational Coordinators (Keith Boyle, Bob Foley)
FFA: This Wednesday through Friday the students in the Horticulture Program will be attending their first ever Massachusetts FFA State Convention. FFA is the largest youth organization in the United States and on Wednesday night the South Shore Tech FFA Chapter will be officially accepted as the newest FFA Chapter in Massachusetts! Please join us in wishing these students and instructors the best of luck before they leave school Wednesday morning!
Cooperative Education Update: 77 students are participating in the schools co-op program thanks to everyone of you! As of 3/8/19 these students have collectively logged over 17,500 hours on the job and earned a combined income of over $230,000. If you know a junior or senior student who might be interested in co-op please have them visit the Vocational Office to get a head start on their paperwork.
SkillsUSA: There will be a meeting for all program advisors(shop advisors) who have students at this point is attending the SKillsUSA State Competition. A meeting invite has been sent to those instructors.
The goal of the meeting is to make sure each instructor is supported by having everything they need to prepare the students for competition.
Communication: The VEX Robotics Competition taught me a lot on Saturday about a time treasured form of communication. The personal skill of being able to interact with another person verbally. This is an incredible employability skill that cannot be lost.
As part of this competition the teams of students are required to create an alliance with another team. Teams from 11 States were represented at this competition. They were required to meet with other teams, discuss their strong points and weaknesses within the alliance and develop a plan for the greatest competitive edge possible. Sounds like a “self assessment” and development of SMART Goals to me.
Let’s not lose that ever so important ability to talk to one another and our students. So much can be made out of opening a dialogue that is not a text message or email.
VEX Robotics Competition As promised video of our two teams delivering the VIKING VEX to their opponents. The students learned a lot about teamwork and overcoming deficits to develop productivity demonstrated in their team success. Sounds like 21st Century Skill Set development to me. So this was not all about taking X Box to a live level. This combined design skills along with Engineering Skills as well as Mechanical skills developed in our students. Sort of a STEM meets 21st Century Skills.
As promised the videos.
Viking 2 https://youtu.be/brgmc7IVh9A
Viking 1 https://youtu.be/OPtlrC3Yfso