Welcome to our 2014-15 School Year

Welcome to our 2014-15 School Year

We a blasting off this year for our Janssen Way/PBIS focus on making good decisions each and every day.  Our staff has worked extremely hard this summer to get our focus, lessons, and boosters finalized to deliver to our students.  The focus aligns with our school's vision statement:

We have narrowed our target to being respectful and responsible for what you do at school and in the community.  Each morning our students are reminded about our focus and purpose as Janssen students during our all school Morning PAWS.  We share with our students that it is not simply about knowing what to do but to put this knowledge into practice each day.  It is great to see the collective value that the Janssen Way brings into our building, defining our building to best support our students.

In addition to making meaning and practicing our community values,  we are also targeting 'making connections'--teachers and students making connections to support students who may be having moments where they are not engaged and productive.  In other words we want to ensure that our students truly believe they can come to an adult at school when having issues--academic or social.

I am very happy on how we have started our school year and am excited for my staff to continue with making the Janssen Way the enduring fabric of our building.

Sincerely,

Principal N

Great Job to our Janssen Bulldogs Triangle

As I look over SWIS data for the month of April, it is obvious that 10% of all students had at least one minor recorded.  This means that 90% of our students did not have one minor.  Over 400 students and 18 days of schools in the month and only 10% needed a booster to what is the Janssen Way.  Only 1% of our students had two or more minors for the month of April.  This means that 99% of students did a great job practicing the Janssen Way.  What about the 1%?  Yes great kids who simply are making some poor choices this past month.

Why is this happening at Janssen?  TEACHERS, STUDENTS, & PARENTS.  April will be ending tomorrow and our teachers are still holding our students to a high level for practicing our community values. April will be ending tomorrow and our students definitely know what is a poor decision and what is a good decision.  April will be ending tomorrow and our parents understand and continue to promote what we do at school in the community.

As the building's principal, I cannot be more proud of our the Janssen Bulldogs Triangle of Ts, Ss, and Ps.
You Rock!  Woof!  Woof!

Sincerely,
Mr. N

Because outside of school...we also can do the Janssen Way

Sharing with our community:

One of the proponents of PBIS/Janssen Way is sharing what we do with our families--directly and indirectly.  The direct correspondence includes emails, phone calls, all school artifacts, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and 1:1 meetings.  Indirect communication comes with what our students share at parents in the vehicle, at the dinner table, while playing a board game, and putting toys away.

It is great to hear parents share with teachers about the PBIS vocabulary that their students are using in experiences outside the school.  It is great to see our students in the Y-Care program practicing our line and body basics.  It is great to see our students show this level of citizenship in community programs like Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, and rec league sports.

Resiliency and perseverance need to be our reminder and support system.  We are to continue to teach and hold our students accountable for acting as important and productive citizens as school and out of school.  It our responsibility as adults in our community.  Why?  We should want this generation of citizens to have the skill set to lead us when they become productive adults and provide the same conviction to citizenship for their children.

Thank you for you time.

Mr. Nikolaou

The Time of Year 4 Boosters

The time of year for boosters:

Our winter break is over and our students have come back to us with their seasonal high energies.  Their excitement from their break can carryover into school and compete with the normalcy that we have set up from the beginning of the school year in our classroom matrices.  With that said, post winter break times calls for boosters to re-establish our normalcy for good decision making and the daily practice of the Janssen Way...
...and we started with boosters on our first day back from winter break by re-calibrating our students' expectation levels and practices of line basics, body basics, and voice levels during lunch time.  Great job to Mr. Mueller, Mr. Zdanovec, classroom teachers, and noon-hour supervisors on working together to provide our students with lunch room boosters to the Janssen Way.
Why did we target the lunchroom for boosters?  Our SWIS data shows us evidence that our students' behavior for respecting our noon hour supervisors and sustaining appropriate voice levels needed some tweaking.  Through our staff's efforts, we were able to provide timely and purposeful feedback and redirection to our students at a universal level.

We will continue to look at our SWIS data through the year to drive purposeful and timely actions that build our school's capacity in the Janssen Way.

Because at Janssen every day...

Mr. Nikolaou