001welcome USD 264 stakeholders family friends parents students and anyone watching on uh YouTube Welcome to Clear Water Clarity volume number 13 for October of 2024 I hope as we get started with this Clarity I hope we're enjoying the cooler weather uh a little bit more moisture and just overall changing uh Seasons into the fall uh and building towards uh getting into a Groove some of the things we're again we're going to continue to review a little bit of all of the things that we do really starts with why wanted to make sure that we explain why are we doing this or why are we asking this to be done and then more specifically what are we doing and then again how are we going to actually achieve this uh so this month when we start
002looking at this we're going to look at um job skills that are needed uh according to the indeed career guide that was published in the May of 2024 so only about five months old and really start talking about some of our strategic plan within goal number two is about how we can Implement uh students centered whole child programming and some of that if we look at it a little bit deeper actually starts talking about some of the post-secondary skills uh that they need to be College Andor career ready so in looking at this these are not necessarily just the top five like in order but these are five of the most important skills um that the indeed career guide said that students would need or just people in general will need as they start looking
003at that next generation of work and some of those was strong work ethic communication skills teamwork skills interpersonal skills and self-management skills so I think a lot of times we get taken back when we start thinking about what are we having to do in schools not only are we having to educate students um and provide them with the content knowledge in math writing science and the like uh but we're also having to develop some of these skills so that when they leave clear water in USD 264 um they're able to be very self-sufficient not only if they're going to college but entering the workforce or at a tech school or even the military and so what are those uh skill sets so a strong work ethic what we are kind of defining that as in
004helping us look at our post-secondary stuff a strong work e ethic is just showing up every day and putting in a dollars uh a dollar's worth of work for a dollar's worth of pay and that's an old saying I think I I know it's been around for a long time it was one I remember my grandpa saying a lot to me is if you show up and you're going to get paid a dollar put in a dollar's worth of work and so part of that is making sure we show up every day so that's why attendance uh is one of our goals at the board has set for us this year and reducing our chronic absenteeism the second one is communication skills and I know as a society we see the lack of face-to-face communication
005as well as um the ability to just communicate effectively uh with people because communication is a two-way street it's not only the person sending the message but it's the person receiving the message as well again this is why we put together a cell phone committee and so we've got three staff members three parents and three students um that will be participating and providing the school administration with some guidelines and some components of what a good cell phone policy is and really the idea of having a cell phone policy is to just give the opportunity to increase communication skills give students the opportunity to communicate with each other on a higher level the next one is teamwork skills and so I think of teamwork skills is when we're really working on that opportunity uh to increase
006our student engagement provide more Hands-On learning and and it's hard to do just doing that by yourself you have to work with someone else and so understanding that opportunity of what strengths and skills do you have what strengths and skills do I have and how are we going to be able to come together and make that work our next one is interpersonal skills and those are some of those just embedded skills uh within us and how we are uh communicating and treating other people are we having empathy uh are we understanding other people's uh situations and providing that and then last self-management skills how do we handle things when we are upset how do we handle adversity how do we respond from uh to things that maybe don't always go our way and at the
007same time how do we handle things when things are going well uh we're doing a really big work this year with our staff uh about called the 20-mile March meaning on good days only March 20 miles and on bad days make sure you march at least 20 miles because in days when it's good sometimes it's real easy to just keep going and keep going and keep going and we and we kind of um slow ourselves down some days on tough days we just don't even want to get out of bed or don't even want to get started and that's part of what we want to teach is not only the ability to regulate ourselves when we're up set but regulate ourselves when things are going well as as well uh how how are we going
008to do some of this so here's some of the things that we've put together to think these are some things we can work on as a partnership not only from the school district standpoint and what we're going to do hopefully in our buildings but also uh some things that we can work on at home so when we're talking about creating a partnership we're talking about the community as a whole um having this opportunity to share and help with some of these skills that we are also going to be able to work on at school so some of it is also modeling um our kids's greatest teacher is what they see uh at home what they see from their role models and so if we were showing up for work they're going to show up for
009school if we're engaging with our peers when we're out in the public and having good conversations with them looking them in the ey shaking hands with them um being engaged then they're going to do that if we as adults are using appropriate social media and email adequate with each other uh when we're sending things or posting things kids are going going to because they're going to just copy and mimic uh what we do if we're able to show empathy for other people's perspectives students are going to be able to do that and if we can show how to regulate our motions in high stress and high tense situations students are going to be able to so how are we going to put some of this together it's a partnership so I'm asking for uh help
010from the community is as you think about being out in the community and being in front of students whether you're at a basketball game whether you're at a football game a volleyball match a wrestling match uh coming to parent parent teacher conferences or just being in the community around some of our students think about some of these skills we're asking them to be able to do and how can you help us by modeling that by showing up to work engaging with peers appropriate social media use empathy for other perspectives and regulating our emotions in high tense situations and then when are we going to do this we're going to really focus this on every day kids coming to school we want to be able to practice these skills within the classroom or within the school
011day doesn't always have to be in every class but we giv kids the opportunity to practice these skills then we want to make sure that one of our board goals is to increase our handon uh learn Hands-On learning and engagement in the classroom so we're going to start building more of those uh opportunities we're going to be starting uh an individual plan of study in the middle school as part of our compliance with ksde and accreditation and students need to start exploring uh the jobs that they are going to want to maybe need some post-secondary training in and in doing that then we can start talking about the skills like showing up to work having empathy for others uh perspectives and being able to um regulate some of those uh tensions when they are facing
012a hard um discussion or hard opportunity and then we want to make sure that we start providing more exploration of those skills needed for their future endeavors and part of that is increasing our internships and externships at the high school so currently we have a work-based learning uh class where students can go into it and they will actually get a a class credit for going out and working and learning some of those skills that they may not be able to do within the uh Traditional High School setting so we're always looking for more Partners uh so if you own a business or run a manage a business and would like to uh see some high school kids come and learn from from you or your business uh please reach out to us we are always
013looking for more of those external Partnerships and engaging with our stakeholders again as we finish and continue to work on for this year we're asking to be one degree more and some of that is also that partnership that we have within the community of how can we model some of these skills we want our students to have and so going to encourage each and one of you every day to think about that opportunity to show up to work to engage with your peers uh have great communication and appropriate social media and email adequate and at the same times how do we uh show empathy for each other and how do we regulate our emotions in high tense situations because we are the ones that are going to be able to continue teaching and again here
014at the school we're going to work on those each and every day we're going to provide students the opportunity to be in those situations and learn how to grow from them and we're just hoping that we can create a partnership within the community um to match those skills again if you want to ever reach out or set up a visit with me here's my contact information again you can reach me by email or you can call the office and set up an opportunity to visit and again if you are a business owner or manage a business and would be able to like to be part of our work-based learning please reach out to me or you can reach out to the high school principal and we'll get things set up again thanks for a great
015opportunity and we'll talk to you guys next month