From charles.johns at d214.org Fri Aug 31 14:06:15 2007 From: charles.johns at d214.org (Charles Johns) Date: Fri Aug 31 14:59:05 2007 Subject: [RMHS] Mustang Update: We're off and running. Message-ID: Greetings everyone, I thank returning readers and welcome new readers to the list serve. It has been the most bizarre start to a school year in my entire education experience. Responding to last Thursday's storm was quite remarkable. We had hundreds of students on campus when we made the decision to send everyone into our storm shelter areas. I am deeply grateful for the assistance of staff who stayed to help and the wonderful cooperation from our students. Our basement is normally not air conditioned so it was already hot and muggy when we packed it full of students seeking protection from the storm. Despite the conditions, the students were absolutely wonderful. Interestingly, we had lost power for a short period of time on Wednesday morning, the first day of school, for an unspecified reason. The power went off when it would have been difficult to cancel school and then, fortunately, came back on with a little less than an hour to go before school started. Despite difficult weekends at hope without power and with considerable clean up work, our students started this week in good spirits. A large part of our attendance area was without power and I'm sure we have a plenty of weary students. What perfect timing for a 3-day weekend! If you haven't had a chance to see it, there's a nice article about the robotics team in today's Daily Herald. Our team won a major tournament over the summer. Additionally, there was an article on Wednesday ranking our football team first in the state in our class of schools. These stories are both wonderful and really boost our school spirit. Rolling Meadows students won several awards in the Goodman Foundation's "Why I Choose to Be Drug Free" essay/video contest. The contest was designed to provide an opportunity for students to receive positive publicity and a reward for making good choices. The contest puts a positive twist on the topic of substance abuse by highlighting students who don't use drugs. Awards will be presented Sept. 10th at a luncheon at Navy Pier. Essay Winner: 1st place: Amanda Muszynski- $250.00 2nd place: Tim Bukowski- $100.00 Runners up: Claire Chipchak- $25.00 gift card Jimmy Colloton- $25.00 gift card Video Winner: 1st place: Andrew Hill & Kevin Karam- $250.00 Finally, I wanted to share successes of our newly revamped Freshman Induction Program. This summer, a group of staff worked on a plan to use 4 seminar blocks to better acquaint freshman with Rolling Meadows High School. These programs promoted school spirit, participation in the co-curricular programs, explained school rules, and included former RMHS student Abe Jones as a motivational speaker. Preliminary feedback has been very positive. The faculty of Kelly Tobecksen, Liz Brandl, Joanne Bratta, Mary Elin Barnish, Leticia Sosa, Amanda Sieron and Alan Wahlert have devised the programs and organized the assistance of junior and senior mentors. The faculty has organized the assistance of over 110 juniors and seniors who functioned as mentors for the first week and during the seminar presentations. The mentors, now called the "Mighty Mustang Mentors", did a phenomenal job of taking the freshmen on tours through the building and explaining how to have a successful start to the high school. As I circulated through the building on the first day of school, I had the wonderful experience of seeing juniors and seniors working with somewhat fearful freshmen. The mentors were truly committed to ensuring a good start and the freshmen were obviously quite grateful. It was a great way to start the new school year. We will continue this program and will look for sophomores and juniors this spring that can be mentors for next year. If you no longer want to be a member of this list serve, please follow the directions at the bottom of this message. Thank you for reading, have a safe weekend. Charles Johns, Ph.D. Principal Rolling Meadows High School 847.718.5600 Please note that my new email address is: charles.johns@d214.org All e-mail correspondence to and from this address is subject to the Acceptable Use Policies of District 214, which may result in monitoring and disclosure to third parties, including law enforcement. Any views or opinions presented in this e-mail are solely those of the author and might not represent those of Township High School District 214.