October 15th, 2012
Benson Polytechnic High School
Parent Newsletter
Letter from the Principal:
Hello Benson Community:
Please note that we will have an early release on Wednesday, October 17th for staff professional development. Students will be dismissed after lunch at 12:40 p.m. This will take the place of our monthly Wednesday late start. Thursday, October 18th we will have our monthly Thursday late start and school will begin at 10:15 a.m.
You are invited to the PTSA meeting this Tuesday at 7:00 p.m. in the library classroom.
Carol
Recognition
Quinn McCurdy has been named a Commended Student in the 2013 National Merit Scholarship Program. About 34,000 Commended students throughout the nation are being recognized for their exceptional academic promise. Commended students placed among the top five percent of more than 1.5 million students who entered the 2013 competition by taking the 2011 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQ).
Homecoming-October 26
Homecoming week is October 22-26. There will be events and activities all week. The football game on Friday will be played on Buckman Field at 4:00 vs. Jefferson. This will be the first game played at Benson by the varsity football team. Note the time change. There are no bleachers so spectators are encouraged to bring lawn or camping chairs.
Site Council Meeting Minutes
BENSON POLYTECHNIC HIGH SCHOOL SITE COUNCIL
Meeting: October 9th, 2012
Members Present:
Teachers: Jeanette Pelster, Sally Niedermeyer, Rich Weber
Parents: Lisa Wilcke, Bill Herzberg, Puanani Lalakea
Students: Sabrina Mohammed
Alumni/Community: Dale Bajema
Administrators: Carol Campbell, Jeandré Carbone, Barry Phillips
Classified: Miranda Ryan (Career Coordinator)
Introduction: Members introduced themselves including name, association to Benson (parent, teacher, etc.).
Goals for this year: Review and establish Site Council By-Laws, review and monitor the School Improvement Plan, create a 5-year plan for Benson, examine curricular offerings and make recommendations based on current enrollment, review current schedule and problem solve issues such as study halls and open periods.
Review goals with new members.
Participate in High School Re-design review
Share successes with community
Bring visitors to building
Contact/visit other high schools with long range plans in place-Aviation High School in Seattle
Re-institute Tech Time for all freshmen
Add more computer access for students
Explained Tech Time and freshmen academy structure.
Back-to-School Night:
Feedback about format: Liked being able to go to any teacher any time. Need more volunteers to help people find their way. Leadership students could do this.
Five Year Plan
Overview-Lisa and Dale
Lisa did some research on five-year plans. She found some private schools that used the plan for building a foundation. The plan could be linked to our school improvement plan and include things like graduation rate and student achievement. Lisa provided a template for us to begin our work. The template includes SIP goals and other goals.
We have many talented students who would be capable of making plaques or other items to recognize partners.
Dale shared his thoughts on developing a 5 year plan. Who is our audience? Why do we need this plan? Planning should be exciting and should push people to do the work. Usually plans are developed and then filed away. We want to make a plan that is useful and constantly revisited.
Benson needs to be a 21st Century School and ensure students experience relevant education that is up to industry standard.
Puanani will bring some information to the next meeting on a format for creating a five year plan.
All members will bring a draft of a mission statement to the next meeting.
Time line for completion of five-year plan: Completed by January 1, 2013
Dale recommended one prominent goal should be that we improve our academic achievement.
Site Council Chair
Lisa nominated Dale Bajema as site council president. He accepted the nomination and will assume chairperson duties in December.
NEXT MEETING: Tuesday, November 6th, 2012 in the Library Classroom. Time: 4:00 p.m.
Freshmen Field Trip to OMSI-October 17
All freshmen will visit OMSI on the October 17th (PSAT testing day). The focus will be on the exhibit called “Race: Are we so Different?”
This is relevant to our school equity work and an opportunity to address the issue of race in science and social studies curriculum. Since freshmen don’t have a social studies class parts of the curriculum can be implemented in 9th English classes as well as Biology. Students will also visit the Rail Museum which is relevant to the history of Benson and the connection to school and career.
Students must turn in a permission slip to be able to attend these two events.
Here is general information about the exhibit:
http://www.omsi.edu/race
Breakfast
All students can get breakfast free of charge. Breakfast is served from 7:45-8:30. Those students who have late arrival can get breakfast in the cafeteria from 9:30-9:45.
Free and reduced lunch applications have to be filled out every year. The forms are available in the main office.
Upcoming Events
PSAT Test for all Sophomores October 17
Homecoming Week October 22-26
Homecoming Football Game October 26th 4:00 @Buckman Field
Career Center News
Scholarships-information on all scholarships is available in the Career/Counseling Center. For more information contact Miranda Ryan (Career Coordinator): [email protected]. 503-916-5100 Ext. 77261.
Young Arts’ Award Due: October 19
Horatio Alger Due:October 25
CocaCola Due: October 31
Ron Brown
$10,000)Due: November 1
Voice of Democracy($30,000) Due: November 1Foundation for Indiv. Rights in Ed.
Due: November 25
College Visits: All visits are held in the Career/Counseling Center.
10/16 University of Oregon 12:10
10/23 University of Portland 10:00
10/24 Skidmore College 9:30
10/31 ITT Tech Lunch
11/2 Linfield College 8:15
11/13 Oregon State Univ. 9:50
11/15 Willamette University 10:00
Equity
Here is the website for the Pacific Education Group. http://www.pacificeducationalgroup.com/
PEG provides equity training for all PPS staff.
Below is an article by Leonard Pitts, Jr. highlighting the incredible courage of a 14 yr. old Pakistani girl lobbying for women’s access to education.
A Pakistani girl who joined the fight for truth The Oregonian
“Truth crushed to earth will rise again.”
— Martin Luther King Jr. (quoting William Cullen Bryant)
By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Sometimes, oceans are not enough.
Usually, the fact that we are barricaded on both sides by great bodies of water gives us in this country a certain sense of remove from the awful things people with funny names do to one another in strange places on the far side of the globe. But once in a while, the thing is awful enough that you can’t ignore it or pretend that it is less real.
Such is the case with Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl whose shooting last week on a school bus in the Swat Valley sparked headlines and outrage here and around the world. Yousafzai, who at this writing is in critical condition after emergency surgery, has been an Internet activist, agitating for women’s access to education.
The Taliban considers that a capital crime. It claimed responsibility for the men who stopped the bus and boarded it, who asked for Malala by name and, when she was identified, shot her and fled. The group has said that if Malala survives, it will come for her again. It says her death is required under Islamic law.
But make no mistake: Islam is not their religion. It is their excuse.
There are two reasons this story crossed the ocean. The first is that it is appalling. Human garbage does not get much ranker than a man who boards a school bus to kill a child. The second is that it is recognizable, that we see in their mad religious and ideological fundamentalism ghostly shadows of our own.
Granted, the outspoken child in this country is not in particular danger of physical violence from religious or ideological zealots. But the abortion doctor is. The gay couple is. The Muslim American is.
Fundamentalism is fundamentalism wherever it breeds, always the same dark stain of unbending literalism, always the same shrill claim that it guards the one true path to enlightenment, always the same crazed insistence that the one unforgivable crime against faith, the one inexcusable heresy of ideology, is to ask questions.
But where there are no questions, there can be no true answers. And where there is not freedom, there cannot be real faith. How real can faith be if it is not a thing freely held, if it is something required, coerced, enforced?
This is something fundamentalists never understand. They think people can be intimidated or mandated into silence. They think people can be shot or bombed into obedience.
Perhaps, for a while, they can.
But the great man was right: Truth crushed to earth will rise again. And he was right, too, when, in the same speech, he quoted the abolitionist Theodore Parker: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Because there are not bullets enough in all the world to gun down the human will to be free.
So eventually and inevitably, there will always be someone who can neither bend, nor pretend, someone compelled by conscience — and yes, sometimes, faith — to stand and resist. There will always be a Mohamed Bouazizi immolating himself in Tunisia, a Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat in Alabama, a Paul Rusesabagina sheltering people from massacre in Rwanda, an Oskar Schindler hiding Jews from the Nazis in Poland, a nameless man standing before a tank in Tiananmen Square. And a Malala Yousafzai, age 14, defying the Taliban in Pakistan.
In taking their lonely stands, these people birth myths and memories that make us — and generations that come after us — braver than we actually are or would otherwise be. In a word, they inspire. So the irony here is almost poetic. The Taliban was so threatened by the words of a little girl that they tried to kill her.
And in so doing, they ensured that she will never die.
Leonard Pitts Jr. writes for The Miami Herald.
© 2012 OregonLive.com. All rights reserved.
Carol Campbell
Principal
Benson Polytechnic High School
546 NE 12th Avenue
Portland, OR 97232
503-916-5100
Fax 503-916-2690
[email protected]