Happenings at LHUC

Hello Lake Harriet Upper Campus community.  I apologize for the lengthy silence.  There has been much happening, so here is a quick update. 

We have started a daily announcements video.  A few students were in the office one day asking to make an announcement over the intercom.  Teachers do not appreciate those interruptions, so at my previous school I suggested we record the announcements which allowed teachers to watch them at their convenience.  It was very popular there, so I told the students here we could record the announcements instead.  They were very enthusiastic and agreed to continue making and editing the announcements themselves.  We are currently accepting applications to include more and more students.  You can view the daily announcements by following the link on our homepage: http://lakeharriet.mpls.k12.mn.us/daily_announcements.html

The peer mediation process has started.  Julie Hirsch, our school psychologist, led the group of mediators through two half days of training this pas month.  Thanks to the House of Music for allowing us to use their space for the first training and the Linden Hills Rec center for the second training.  You can learn more about our peer mediation process on the website: http://lakeharriet.mpls.k12.mn.us/peer_mediation

Lake Harriet just finished competing in the first Knowledge Bowl of the season (there are four total).  Our school has three teams who all placed very well - we took the 2nd, 4th and 9th spots out of a field of 60 teams.  Congratulations to all of the students. Thank you to Matt Streit for coaching our teams and Ann Smith for helping out as parent volunteer.

On October 29 we held the first State of the School address.  These meetings have been held at different Minneapolis schools in the past, but this year the district asked all schools to have one.  At the meeting Jan Parrish, Merry Tilleson and I presented the school's achievement data and talked about our plans for helping the school improve.  Parents were able to ask questions at the end of the event.  There was some very useful and interesting conversation at the meeting.  If you want to watch it you can thanks to a parent who volunteered to film it (thanks Chris Gegax).  It (and the slideshow)can be found here: http://lakeharriet.mpls.k12.mn.us/state_of_the_school.html

School tours will be starting soon.  In an effort to make these tours as helpful and professional as possible, two parent volunteers, Rhonda Bonnabeau and Lora Aadalen Joshi helped create a new brochure for the school (both campuses).  Thanks to them and everyone else who has helped prepare for the tour season.

Conferences were successful again this year. We had about 96% of parents attending a conference this fall.

The bookfair was also a success. Thanks to all of the parent volunteers who made it possible.