Artifact 1

To help our parents and community connect with our new Learning Management System Canvas I created a Canvas 411 page for them which is linked from our district website. This site contains many videos and tutorials created by myself and/or from Canvas directly. Packaged here, in this context gave easy access in a one-stop site.

The link above will give you access to the site I created. I have also shared this site with other school districts during a virtual Canvas conference.

Artifact 2

Conferencing with parents is an essential part of educating children. At MHS, we conference twice a year and hold an annual elective fair that is open to parents and students in the evening. This year, our fall conferences were in person, but as cases spiked, we moved our spring conferences and part of our elective fair to a virtual setting.

On the first night of the elective fair, my colleagues and I invited 8th grade parents and students to Zoom with us to learn about what to expect at the high school. On the second night, the elective fair was in person. I met with parents and students from all grade levels as they considered what courses their children should take.

At the time of the in person fair, we were expected to mask and some parents did not come prepared, so I greeted them and offered them masks. This went well. The link above will give you access to the flyer we sent to the rising 9th graders.

Artifact 3

I am both a member of the Manhattan Kiwanis and the faculty advisor for the MHS chapter of Key Club International. Our Key Club is focused solely on school & community service. This year, our club has sewn masks for the emergency shelter, created toys for the animal shelter, worked with a local pharmacy to provide gifts to school nurses, and worked with school custodians to support their efforts among many other small projects. In the past, we have focused on eliminating the stigma for people who need support for mental health and supporting our local food banks.

Advising this club has taught me a great deal about servant leadership and through the work we do, we are growing future leaders.

The link above is to an article about our recent trip to Wichita to participate in our district convention. Our club took 3rd place for club achievement in the state of Kansas.

Artifact 4

I attended my first site council meeting during this internship. Our principal led the meeting and discussed our ACT data and our state assessment data. Not all of the data was positive and I was impressed at how open he was with the community about where we are at and in answering their questions about how to proceed forward. He brought up the idea of continuing night school into future years with the potential of making it a viable alternative option for students who may find it difficult to attend school during the current schedule.

The community members were well informed, asked intelligent questions, and contributed a lot to the discussion.

Although I have read about and knew about site councils, until this meeting, I had no idea what it would feel like to be at a meeting. As a future leader, I will extend the opportunity to attend to any faculty member who is interested as I think it provides another perspective about how our community is tied closely to our school and they want to be informed and have a voice in how we operate.

The minutes to the meeting I attended have not yet been published, therefore the link above is to our school site council site.