TAGOS October Newsletter

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.

Michelle Lange, English teacher

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

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.

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

Suggested Skills
By Marianne McGuire

A Math Moment
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.

At the very beginning, we didn't have Project Foundry (which was similar to Headrush, the online place where we would keep track of our projects and log time, etc.). The entire project process was done on paper and kept in a binder. We had a project request form we'd have to fill out after doing a certain amount of preliminary research. After that, we'd have a meeting with our advisor where we'd pitch the idea of our project and tell how it would fit into the curriculum. Once we were approved, we'd continue with our research. We had paper time logs and a paper project rubric we'd have to follow. I don't remember exactly when we started using Project Foundry, but I'm pretty sure it was during or after the second semester when we moved to the "new" TAGOS building.

When we moved to TAGOS' current location on Parker Drive, we only had about half of the space that TAGOS has now. Our space was from the end of the building with the conference room up to where the library is now. At that time, there was no library, and the half of the room that is now affectionately called "Eric & Marianne's side of the room" was not yet renovated and blocked off by a wall. Once that space was opened up, we had a lot more space, and our numbers went up from 35 kids to about 60 kids.

The next thing I'm going to tell you is a well-kept TAGOS secret: underneath almost all of the paint at TAGOS are murals painted by TAGOS students. We had a lot of artistic students in the first few years, and at the time, the adults let us paint murals on the walls as long as we made a project out of it. There was a tiger painted on the wall near Eric's advisory, a sort of rainbow spiral painting on the outside of the library, and several different paintings on the back wall near the door to the kitchen area. TAGOS student murals were some of my favorite parts of TAGOS, and I was sad to see them go in later years.

N : How did you feel when it was time to leave?

A : I had mixed feelings once it was time to move on from TAGOS. I really found a sense of self while going to TAGOS, so it was hard to leave that behind. However, at the same time, I knew it was time for me to move on. High school can't last forever!

Anne Showers-Curtis

N :How was it coming back being a paraprofessional?

A : Coming back to TAGOS as a paraprofessional was an amazing experience for me. When Stephanie asked me if I was interested in the job, I was really excited. I had some reservations because I knew that I was going to be working with some of the same people who were once the highest authority figures in my life, and that was slightly intimidating. However, that feeling didn't last long. I felt immediately accepted and embraced by the whole staff, and working with "the adults" from my high school was really a lot of fun, and I'm happy to call them my friends.

In my role as a paraprofessional, I helped students brainstorm, write, and create products for their projects. I also got to teach Creative Writing and Nature Writing seminars and run a book group. These experiences were not only amazing work experiences, they were also really fun. Working at TAGOS taught me that I have a passion for working with young writers. I feel so privileged to have been able to work with so many talented writers and artists and to have helped them print two publications of student writing and art.

N : How do you feel having the experiences you had while being a student and someone working for the school?

A : I think that coming back to work for TAGOS after having been a student there for three years really gave me a unique perspective. I was able to look at things from the perspective of a student and an educator. I think my biggest strength as an educator at TAGOS came from remembering what I needed as a student and trying to offer those things to our students. I remembered that sometimes as a student at TAGOS, I felt like I should know every next step in every project, and so I didn't often ask for help even when I needed it. As an adult at TAGOS, I remembered that feeling, and made sure to emphasize to students that I was there to help and that it was okay to ask for help. I also remembered being a young writer and wanting a creative writing club or class, and seeing that there were still creative writers at TAGOS led me to creating two seminars and a club for writers at TAGOS. I should also emphasize that I wouldn't have moved forward with these seminars or the club without the strong support I received from my colleagues, for whom I will always be grateful.