TAGOS Leadership Academy
Newsletter
October 2020 Volume 3 Issue 10
October 2020 Volume 3 Issue 10
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Welcome to the 2020-2021 school year!We are so excited to be back at school and working with our TAGOS scholars and their families. We are grateful for the opportunity to ignite a spark in your children that encourages them to mix their interests/passions with their academics as they develop their projects. There will be a total of six projects due this year, three each semester. Please continue to check in with your child’s advisor and look at the Headrush account to ensure that project(s) are on track and course expectations are met. We want students to move forward with the credits they need to advance to the next grade level and/or graduate with their cohort.
What is new at TAGOS this year? The structure has changed a little bit to allow for more personalized learning plans and guidance from our staff. This new approach should increase flexibility and allow our students greater success with their project process and their math and English classes. In addition, we have a new English teacher. Her name is Michelle Lange, and she has been teaching for over 25 years, some of which were at Parker High School. She desires to help our students develop their reading and writing skills. Finally, Marianne McGuire and Kim Helgestad have been hired to serve as our Deans of Students. Both of them are passionate about serving students, inspiring passion in learning, and maintaining high expectations. You can find out more information about the TAGOS staff here.
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Michelle Lange, English teacherLoading...
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We want you!Parents and community members are encouraged to participate and become involved at our school. Currently we are actively recruiting board members. Please reach out to me if you are interested in being on the TAGOS board. We are looking for people who have the following:
public relations
strategic planning
fundraising experience.
Being on the board is a great way to get involved and make a difference in the lives of all students and staff at TAGOS.
Our main goal at TAGOS Leadership Academy is to provide the highest quality education possible in a safe and nurturing learning environment. I am positive that together, we can make TAGOS a school of excellence where your child will flourish. My door is always open to you. Educating students through project-based learning is our business and our passion. Your child is important to us, and we are dedicated to showing up every day and giving them our best. Please call, text, or email me if you have any questions or concerns. Be sure to check your E-mail, TAGOS and district websites, and social media pages regularly.
Serving you,
Patricia Hernandez
Principal of TAGOS Leadership Academy
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The Deans’ Note
By Kim Helgestad and Marianne McGuire
The 2020-2021 school year is off to a great start! We are very proud of our TAGOS students, their positive attitudes, and their willingness to keep safe. We couldn’t ask for a better group of students! We are in the 3rd week of our personal projects. Students have chosen topics such as: The History of Medicine, Code-Switching, Gender Identity and Healthcare, Population Control, Neurological Disorders, and Factory Pollution. With the implementation of our new Afterschool Homework Club, students have been able to stay caught up on their work and are conducting deeper levels of research.
By Kim Helgestad and Marianne McGuire
The 2020-2021 school year is off to a great start! We are very proud of our TAGOS students, their positive attitudes, and their willingness to keep safe. We couldn’t ask for a better group of students! We are in the 3rd week of our personal projects. Students have chosen topics such as: The History of Medicine, Code-Switching, Gender Identity and Healthcare, Population Control, Neurological Disorders, and Factory Pollution. With the implementation of our new Afterschool Homework Club, students have been able to stay caught up on their work and are conducting deeper levels of research.
Organization is a skill learned through ongoing practice. Students who are more organized are more likely to have a higher self-esteem, do better in school, and have less frustration and stress. With Project Based Learning, organization is even more important because students need to be organized in order to carry out their research projects. The following article offers 7 tips on how to help students become more organized:
ORGANIZATION TIPS FOR SCHOOL—HOW TO GET YOUR CHILD ORGANIZED
A Math Moment
from Eric Skrzypchak
from Eric Skrzypchak
Math for 2020-2021. We will again have math classes for math, but we will continue to implement a new program to help increase our students' discourse about math. This new program is Discovery Education Math Techbook, and we will increase our discourse as a whole group and talk about math more consistently. I will model this with our students through my seminars. Our middle school students will use the same curriculum as in the other middle schools, which is Open Up. Grades again will be posted in Infinite Campus, and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. Please ask your students how they like their math classes and what they are doing in their classes. Ask them if they are being invited to talk about math more frequently.
What's New?
by Chloe Levy
Taking the steps towards new initiatives and achievements is new advisor, Michelle Lange. She is the new English teacher and advisor at TAGOS and has brought many smiles to the community. She is hard-working, willing to learn and adapt, and just overall finding new and exciting ways to bring more happiness and opportunities to TAGOS. Something new to TAGOS this year that Michelle and student Chloe Levy brings to the table is podcasts! Thanks to a grant funded by the Janesville Education Foundation, TAGOS will get Podcast equipment so that students can use it for their projects! Michelle and Chloe have come up with the idea together and turned it into a reality! We appreciate Michelle becoming a new member of the TAGOS family, and we can't wait to see what's in store next!
Thank you, JEF!
An Interview with Ann Showers-Curtis, a former TAGOS student!
by Andrew Walquist
Anne Showers-Curtis: Anne is a former student from TAGOS Leadership academy and someone who even came back to work from TAGOS as a paraprofessional. We asked her some questions about how it was being a student and someone coming back to work for TAGOS.
Newsletter (N):How was it going to Tagos?
Anne (A) : Going to TAGOS was great for the most part! Being a part of the first group of 35 students to attend the school was really cool because we were there from the beginning and got to see a lot of the trial and error of building TAGOS' project process. Because during the first year there were only 35 students, we all knew each other really well by the end of the year, and it felt a lot like a family. We were also involved in some of the school decision-making and that was an awesome opportunity. It was a lot like seeing democracy in action because we voted on almost every decision. I went to TAGOS for three years, but being a part of the first year of TAGOS was really something special.
N :What was it like?
A : Going to TAGOS in its first three years was really interesting! For the first semester, we weren't in the current TAGOS building -- that building was still being renovated, so we were downtown on the corner of Main Street and Racine Street in the same building as WIC. We had a few offices, a big open room, and a "kitchen" area which was more like a break room than an actual kitchen. It had a fridge and a microwave, but not an oven. At that time, there were only three adults: Al Lindau, the founder, Dean of Students and advisor, Jon Woloshin, another advisor, and Val Maxon, who, as you know, is still there. Every morning in the warmer months, we'd circle up outside in a big open space in the parking lot and check in as a school, and then we'd go inside and circle up with our individual advisories. In advisory circle, we would check in on where everyone was on their projects and make daily goals, and check in on those goals at end-of-the-day advisory. Those daily check-ins were so useful to me as a student because even though I could be a self-starter, it was sometimes hard to figure out where to go next, and brainstorming with my advisor and/or advisory was really useful.
When we were in that building, we were a lot more involved in the community. Because we were downtown, we were really close to a lot of places. We walked to GM for what was probably one of their final tours, we walked to the library pretty often for research either with or with, we took the city bus to the Humane Society to tour and learn about volunteering there, and we walked down to what was at the time M&I bank on Main Street to learn about banking. Making these community connections was really useful because we were learning, we were getting ideas for potential projects, and we were networking, which could be useful in finding live sources for future projects.
Newsletter (N):How was it going to Tagos?
Anne (A) : Going to TAGOS was great for the most part! Being a part of the first group of 35 students to attend the school was really cool because we were there from the beginning and got to see a lot of the trial and error of building TAGOS' project process. Because during the first year there were only 35 students, we all knew each other really well by the end of the year, and it felt a lot like a family. We were also involved in some of the school decision-making and that was an awesome opportunity. It was a lot like seeing democracy in action because we voted on almost every decision. I went to TAGOS for three years, but being a part of the first year of TAGOS was really something special.
N :What was it like?
A : Going to TAGOS in its first three years was really interesting! For the first semester, we weren't in the current TAGOS building -- that building was still being renovated, so we were downtown on the corner of Main Street and Racine Street in the same building as WIC. We had a few offices, a big open room, and a "kitchen" area which was more like a break room than an actual kitchen. It had a fridge and a microwave, but not an oven. At that time, there were only three adults: Al Lindau, the founder, Dean of Students and advisor, Jon Woloshin, another advisor, and Val Maxon, who, as you know, is still there. Every morning in the warmer months, we'd circle up outside in a big open space in the parking lot and check in as a school, and then we'd go inside and circle up with our individual advisories. In advisory circle, we would check in on where everyone was on their projects and make daily goals, and check in on those goals at end-of-the-day advisory. Those daily check-ins were so useful to me as a student because even though I could be a self-starter, it was sometimes hard to figure out where to go next, and brainstorming with my advisor and/or advisory was really useful.
When we were in that building, we were a lot more involved in the community. Because we were downtown, we were really close to a lot of places. We walked to GM for what was probably one of their final tours, we walked to the library pretty often for research either with or with, we took the city bus to the Humane Society to tour and learn about volunteering there, and we walked down to what was at the time M&I bank on Main Street to learn about banking. Making these community connections was really useful because we were learning, we were getting ideas for potential projects, and we were networking, which could be useful in finding live sources for future projects.