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

Because at Janssen, everyday...

...we DO the Janssen Way!

Our students orate this catch phrase each Monday morning at Morning Paws.  The purpose is to build ownership with our students on the Janssen Way.  It is not about simply know what to do or not to do, but to make the decision and act on making positive choices.  The weekly reminder is purposeful.  We want to continue to keep the DOING at the forefront of the students' day.  When we see the positive choices when then acknowledge.  The acknowledging makes the students feel successful.  When the students feel successful they are more motivated.  When they are more motivated they DO more.  When the DO more they own the DOING.  When they own the DOING, they see a purpose to why it is important to DO.

This approach is only successful because our staff has ownership in PBIS.   They see the successes in 90% of our students and see purpose for continuing to own the integration of PBIS in their classrooms with fidelity.

What about the remaining 10%?  We have great kids who make poor choices sometimes--not purposefully, but more impulsively.  We are working through PBIS Tiers II and III to provide generalized support for a small group within the 10% of students through a process called Check In-Check Out (CICO).  Our small group of students check in with their learning coach throughout the day.  This process provides us information to better anticipate students' needs and provides students with a set of expectations for them to practice throughout the day.  We are in the initial practices for CICO, but our committed small group of staff members are continuously refining the process to positively impact this small group of students.

Great job to all our adults practicing PBIS--The Janssen Way.

Sincerely,

Mr. N

Extra Extra Read All About It...

Dear Reader:

"Extra, extra...read all about it:  Janssen Elementary is in their 3rd year of implementing PBIS-aka The Janssen Way.  And...we started our year off with such a WOOOOF!!! from our staff and students.  We began our year with an all school assembly that we called our Boarding Ceremony.  Our staff was decked out in a Hawaiian cruise wear theme and cruise music was playing throughout the school.  Each grade level represented a cruise ship ready to embark on fantastic voyage where as a school we revisit/teach our expected community values of honesty, kindness, respect, and responsibility.

[Chorus] "...because at Janssen every day...we DO the Janssen Way!"

Two weeks later, our cruise ships returned from their voyages of knowing, making meaning, and practicing our community values and docked themselves in a second all school assembly.  Here, each grade level shared their learning through writing samples about the Janssen Way.

We are four weeks into the school year and you can clearly see our students routinely and purposefully practicing the Janssen Way.  Kudos to our entire staff for facilitating our students learning in citizenship.
At Janssen, we a have a staff that sees the value in PBIS and continually push each other to support our students into practicing the Janssen Way.

To another great start to our school year...thank you all!!!

Bon Voyage
"Captain" Nikolaou :-)

Dear Janssen Readers:

I have added a poem written by one of our third grade students about teachers.  This revealed to me an example the value-laden impact our Janssen Way has on students.

Enjoy:

A Poem about Teachers

Each teacher is unique,

Each one has something in common:

One:  to teach us to stay active,

One:  to teach us to be musicians,

One:  to help us with reading and math, 

One:  to teach us with something truly amazing--The Janssen Bulldog Way.

Also thank you for making this year great!

Thank you,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

Two thoughts I wish to share with you...

We are in our last week of school and our Morning Paws think and reflect is on how to practice The Janssen Way during the summer in our homes, neighborhoods, and communities.  The Janssen Way does not need to be limited during the school day or within the school year.  Our staff does a fantastic job connecting the good decision making skills we expect in our school to the lives our children live outside their school.

We are finishing our second  year of The Janssen Way off the PBIS initiative in our state and we have had great experiences with what we have taught our students and what they are practicing.  The challenge for next year is sustainability and ownership.  At a minimum we need to sustain our level of implementation that we currently have and allow students to own their decision making experiences and continue to find value in the practice instead of simply teaching them how to behave and rewarding them with dog bones.  Our staff believes each of our students can make good decisions, we simply need to encourage, support, and reteach them through out the year.

In conclusion, PBIS/The Janssen Way has strengthened our building culture for our students and staff.  The impact of what we do is based on what our students do, WOOF!!!

Your Principal
Mr. Nikolaou

Booster Time

Dear Reader:

This week we began our last 8 weeks of the 2012-13 school year.  Our staff have been communicating with each other  about targeting 'booster lessons' for our students.  Boosters are indiscriminate amount of learning opportunities (based on strengths and needs) to have students practice, reflect, and refine their actions around the Janssen Way.
Quarter 4 and the anticipation it brings for students about the upcoming summer is an excellent opportunity to provide our students with booster lessons.  We are very excited about finishing the year strong.  Woof!  Woof!

Sincerely,
Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

We are currently on Spring Break for the week, but I still wanted to share with some data we have collected related to our practices of the Janssen Way--for it sets the stage for the remainder of the year. Since the start of the school year until the end of March, 95% our students have received 0-1 office referrals.  Office referrals take place based on the severity of the behavior or its frequency. This is positively phenomenal--an example of the fidelity in which our staff members integrate the Janssen Way into their daily routines.   I also believe our daily messages during Morning Paws contributes to the high percentage of students making good choices during the day.  Last week for example we target honesty throughout the week--our students were prompted each day about how and why it is important to honest.
We have a great incentive for our students this month.  The more dog bones they receive the closer to reaching the target.  I cannot give you the specifics at this time, but it does include all students who do not receive any office referrals for the month of April.  This all school event's purpose is to acknowledge to our students the thousands of good decisions they make at Janssen School.
Upon our return from Spring Break, 8 weeks of school remain.  Our staff recognize the challenges for students during this time of the year and are committed just like the start of the school to acknowledge good decisions and reteach and prompt for making good decisions.  Developing and practicing citizenship skills for  each of our students continues to be very important to our school.

Sincerely,
Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

I begin this blog by posing a question for parents to reflect on:  How is your child practicing the Janssen Way outside of school?  Each day we integrate the principles of the Janssen Way (our community values:  honesty, kindness, respect, and responsibility) in everything we do and work hard to have our students make connections to why it is important to practice the Janssen Way at school.  Our hope with such a daily focus is for our students to practice making good decisions and making meaning for themselves on the importance behind why we do the Janssen Way.  In other words, we want our students to find value in the Janssen Way.  The question posed to parents at the start of this newsletter is to have them reflect on whether our students are transferring their understanding of the Janssen Way by practicing our community values outside of school—for example:  at home, in the neighborhood, or at the grocery store. 

We continue to learn from our experiences and refine our practices in order to make the Janssen Way more meaningful for our students.  We additionally welcome parent feedback to improve on what we do around the Janssen Way.  For more information on the Janssen Way, please go to our school’s webpage and link to “The Janssen Way” tab or contact your child’s teacher.  We do great things at Janssen and want parents to be a part of our experiences.

Sincerely,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

This month our Janssen Way-PBIS group want to make connections to what we do at Janssen around PBIS with parents.  Sharing Kindness Hearts is the venue for making the connection with our families.  As families fill out the paper hearts with words of kindness, we will be displaying them on our lunch room windows for several weeks.  Kindness is one of our 4 Community Values for our district.  It is so important for our students to see acts of kindness each and every.  The experiences between parents and their children provides multiple exposures to acts of kindness.  By having these paper hearts displayed in our lunchroom over the next few weeks adds to these experiences.

I want to thank our Janssen Staff for pushing these experiences out to our families and our families for contributing to these experiences.  These actions serve as another example of building capacity as a Janssen Community.

Sincerely,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

Every Thursday at our Morning Paws we sing our school song.  Our school song aligns with our district's Community Values and our commitment to the Janssen Way.  Below are the words to our school song:


We've got kindness, honesty,
Respect, responsibility, (clap)
We're the Janssen Bulldogs (woof!)

We are bright, we are strong,
We are friends the whole day long (clap, clap)
We're the Janssen Bulldogs (woof!)

We love to learn we like to give,
We use our strengths for how we live (clap, clap)
We're the Janssen Bulldogs (woof!)

We are positive and fun.
We use teamwork to be one (clap, clap)
We're the Janssen Bulldogs. (YEAH!)



When our student body sings this song in our small gym to start our day...simply awesome!

Sincerely,
Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

In wanting for our students and staff to practice our Janssen Way with fidelity, we realize that we need to provide boosters--timely re-teaching opportunities.  These boosters allow for our school to re-acclimate the concepts and beliefs of the Janssen Way to each other resulting in a re-vitalizing or re-energizing of our school culture--similarly to how we start the school year.  With the start of second semester, we will provide based on the data we collect learning boosters for our students.  What makes these boosters successful is the buy-in from our staff.  Our staff has seen directly how the Janssen Way has changed our school culture and wants for our students to be successful each and every day.  Providing  boosters is just a natural way of thinking for us.

Sincerely,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

I wish each Janssen Family a happy 2013 and welcome our students back from our winter break.  As we welcome our students back, we are cognizant to give each classroom a Janssen Way booster to re-acclimate them to our Body and Line Basics and remind them about our voice levels through the building.  What is so exciting about coming back from winter break is...once again working with our students.  Our teachers' energy cells have been refueled, and they ready to continue to engage and challenge our students into meeting and/or exceeding our learning proficiency levels.
Our Morning Paws 'sets the stage' for our students each day.  Today is a bit more special based on teachers and students seeing each other for the first time in a week and a half.  I saw so many happy and cheerful faces today at Morning Paws--staff and students.  It is so GREAT to be a part of a GREAT school with such GREAT people.

Happy 2013!

Sincerely,

Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

The opportunities for teaching and reteaching the Janssen Way is not only to set or re-establish our norms and expectations in a timely manner but also to approach happenstance in a similar way.  This past weekend we experienced our first 'snow storm' of the year.  Our first snowfalls are a great opportunity to remind our students about bringing their snow pants and snow shoes, walk and not run on the sidewalks, and be very careful when crossing and the crosswalks.  Sharing these reminders with students is all about building their competence to the Janssen Way by wanting them to be responsible and safe.  Out teachers will revisit these practices with our students throughout the week.

Our Morning Paws reflection for the week is:  "What goes around comes around"...i.e. if we are to say thank you to some one who helps us they too will say thank you the next time you help them.

Sincerely,
Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:

Last week we held an all school assembly in honor of our students--more specifically to recognize our students for practicing our Janssen Way.   We took the time to acknowledge the efforts that our students put into the Janssen Way each and every day at school.  We showed them video samples of our How To Videos on the Janssen Way.  Our students were simply awesome in how respectful they were when adults presented and throughout the video clips.  Over 415 students in our large gym with no need to redirect or pause.

For me what was equally rewarding was the effect the assembly had on our staff.  Our staff were just as appreciative of the event, the recognition to our students, and the video clips.  As they were sitting with their students, I saw our staff's smiles and heard their laughter/applause in unison with our students'.  

Our Janssen Way has, is, and will continue to make a positive impact on our students, staff, and parents.  We believe it and see it, daily.  You too can see this impact...so if you can, pop in to see our Morning Paws or volunteer in your child's classroom.

Thank you,
Mr. Nikolaou

Dear Reader:
Our Janssen Way approach is only geared to the learning of our students.  Our staff members are continuously building their competency to best direct, guide, and facilitate student learning.  For our staff members at this time in the school year, the Classroom Matrix, is at the center of their learning.  The past week, came together for a training session--led by fellow staff members.  The premise for this training aligns with PBIS and the 4:1 ratio--4 acknowledgements:1 consequences.  Our facilitators did a fantastic job explaining a set of reward contingencies:  dependent, independent, and interdependent.  More importantly, our facilitators provided the setting to our remaining staff for them to make meaning through small group discussions on the intended learning.  Teachers' Classroom Matrices are formative processes that are being tweaked and boosted during the year.  With our staff members wanting to building their learning and understanding around the Classroom Matrix is another example of our commitment to grow as learners to better serve our students.
Mr. Nikolaou

I want to share two experiences that I believe our PBIS program has impacted the learning of our students to transfer their learning in community functions.  The first experience was during our all school Veterans' Day Program.  Our students easily transferred their understanding of being respectful when our veterans went through their ceremonial steps, including the rifle sequence outside at the end of the ceremony.  They were able to make meaning of the significance of being respectful throughout the program.  The second experience was during our Family Fun Night, during the selection of the prizes.  Our students practiced our body basics to the tee, just like they practice during our Morning Paws.  I am so proud of the students practice of the Janssen Way, especially in a social setting where the idea of winning prizes was so special to them.

Sincerely,
Mr. Nikolaou

As we continue to strengthen our culture on The Janssen Way, we look for multiple ways students learn (Gardner) to reach ultimately each child in them understanding and practicing The Janssen Way.   In an elementary school setting, providing spatial/visual stimuli for students provides them multiple direct and indirect opportunities to make meaning of The Jansssen Way.  This approach to learning is complimented by interpersonal learning in the classroom and intrapersonal learning during our Morning Paws.  We also integrated kinesthetic learning for our students during our Bulldog Olympics in September.  These are just some examples on how our staff is working together to build The Janssen Way culture.  I have attached our newest display (targeting spatial/visual learning)--located on the corner of Janssen Way and Paws Parkway (pic.twitter.com%2FieY5BO4z ) in our building.  Here is your link: pic.twitter.com%2FVOz2asgn.

Principal Nikolaou