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Transition Committees

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Summer Playdates | Transportation & Safety | Playground | Garden | Packing | Foreign Language | Fundraising | Communications

Include names of the committees, contact people, what they are for, how to volunteer. Each committee can have its own page on the site to put more detailed information about their activities and status updates.

Find out more! We welcome you to join the committee. Please contact the committee chairs below:

Summer Playdates [Back to Top]

Contact: Mandi Bussell at 520-2617

Eight dates have been set for the summer for playdates at the Harris playground, Tuesdays at 11:30 am and Wednesdays at 6:00 pm. Harris parents will host 4, and Eastside parents will host 4. See the calendar for details. Contact Mandi Bussell at 520-2617 to arrange to represent Eastside as a playdate host at the Harris playground for one of the four Eastside dates.

Transportation & Safety [Back to Top]

Contact: to be announced

Information about this committee here.

Playground [Back to Top]

Contact: to be announced

Information about this committee here.

Garden [Back to Top]

Contact: Sarah Grew, 349-0040

School Garden. See our Garden page for more information.

Packing [Back to Top]

Contacts: Jenny Mauro & Kari Kytola

Information about this committee here.

Foreign Language [Back to Top]

Contact: Michael Wilde

June 5, 2008

Walter Bryant, Principal RE: Integrating Language Instruction
Harris/Eastside Schools
1150 East 29th Avenue
Eugene, OR 97403

Dear Principal Bryant,

Attached are the results of a brainstorming session conducted with parents of Eastside Elementary School regarding integration of a second language into the curriculum of a merged Harris/Eastside.

With the merging of Harris and Eastside Schools in 2008-09, we have a great opportunity to consider growing the curriculum, including integrating second languages (Spanish, Chinese...), hiring bilingual teachers, and building community.

Over the past two months, parents at Eastside have been participating in several brainstorming dialogues about integrating language instruction and future curriculum development.

It is our desire that the transition team members, teachers, and district facilitators consider the attached ideas and comments, as the work begins to develop a shared Harris/Eastside curriculum in the 2009-10 school year.

Continuing Eastside After School Program / Spanish Jon Bilenki, our Spanish teacher, will continue to teach a Spanish class for grades
1-5 during the 2008-09 school year at the Harris/Eastside site on Wednesdays, from 1:40 - 2:40 PM.
As program coordinator, he will handle registration and payment. If you have questions, please contact him at: jbilenki@hotmail.com or 684-6934.

Thank you for your consideration of these ideas and comments.

Michael Wilde
Eastside After School Program Committee
Eastside Parent Group Language Committee

Attachment

Cc: Carol Yahner and Eric Van Houton, co-conveners, Eastside Parent Group
Tom Cramer, parent representative, Eastside Transition Team Jon Bilenki, teacher, Eastside After School Program/Spanish

June 5, 2008 / Harris and Eastside School Merger

BRAINSTORMING: INTEGRATING LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION

With the merging of Harris and Eastside Schools in 2008-09, we have a great opportunity to consider growing the curriculum, including integrating second languages (Spanish, Chinese...), hiring bilingual teachers, and much more. Over the past two months, parents at Eastside have been participating in several brainstorming dialogues about integrating language instruction and future curriculum development.

Parents that have participated in and supported Eastside's After School Program for the last several years, and an Eastside parent group committee were asked to brainstorm language integration. We were looking for ideas, suggestions, and support to advance language instruction and cultural events in this new school community. We were also looking for parents that wanted to work together on advancing these ideas.

To better understand the current Harris demographics, we asked for the current Eugene 4j School District enrollment statistics. Currently, there is a significant Latino population at Harris. We wanted to consider how we might be able to engage these students and families. As well, the district indicated that Harris currently enrolls 41 ELL students, including: 16 receiving pullout services, 11 of those speak Spanish, 4 speak Korean and 1 speaks Mandarin.

Among the Eastside Parent Group committees forming as a part of the transition, language instruction is the only one to date that addresses curriculum development.
At the May 13 parent group meeting, a show of hands (approximately 35 parents in attendance) indicated that there was near unanimous interest/support for language instruction during and/or after school. The committee took this as a mandate.

Here were some take-off points for our brainstorming:

+ continue an after school program in its current format Spanish
+ language and culture delivered in the Eastside project format dual
+ immersion language projects invite Latino community artists,
+ storytellers grant writing parent committee focused on funding
+ language instruction consider other languages, i.e. Mandarin Chinese,
+ German, Latin, Greek how would you implement your idea? funding needs?

Brainstormers:

Marion Diermayer
Liz Phelps
Christine Bethel
Ying Jiang
Jessica Green
Ellie Dominguez
Lori Sauter
Judy Shaw
Mandi Bussell
Sonya Yarbrough

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Continuing Eastside After School Program / Spanish Jon Bilenki, our Spanish teacher, will continue to teach a Spanish class for grades
1-5 during the 2008-09 school year at the Harris/Eastside site on Wednesdays, from 1:40 - 2:40 PM.

As program coordinator, he will handle registration and payment. If you have questions, please contact him at: Jbilenki@hotmail.com or 684-6934.

Thanks to those parents who shared their ideas and thoughts.

¡Muchas gracias!
Shee'yeh Shee'yeh nee.

Michael Wilde
Eastside After School Program Committee Eastside Parent Group Committee June 5, 2008 / Harris and Eastside School Merger

RESULTS OF LANGUAGE INTEGRATION BRAINSTORMING:
Ideas and Comments

1. Thrilled to see Spanish/Latino language and culture as part of Eastside/Harris daily curriculum.

2. Spanish is to be offered effectively, I believe it needs to include daily instruction throughout the
year.

3. Eastside's goal of offering choices to students if the students could choose one of several
languages to study for the year.

4. Spanish should be the first language considered for Eastside's curriculum.

5. Hire Spanish speakers to fill vacant positions, teaching general subjects and providing language
instruction.

6. Be sensitive to where the teachers are with this

7. Only want to give input where it would be appreciated and helpful.

8. Continue an after school program, but wish it met more than once/week; with more students at the
new site, support a larger program again?

9. By having Spanish language and culture delivered in the Eastside project format this would
preserve choice and teach Spanish in a hands-on way (cooking, games, books, art, dances, etc.)

10. Opportunities for exchange with dual immersion language projects; get to know the folks who
would be involved and see what their interests would be; many possibilities here: after school bilingual book/art group, peer tutoring exchange with ELL students, possibly Spanish speaker buddies.

11. Interested in the spoken languages at this age; focus on the languages that are more commonly
spoken among families in our new school/in our community.

12. A lovely multicultural festival where each family did something from one of the cultures? Potential
fundraiser?

13. A language just in a project now and then would not allow for much language retention. It would
really need to be a continuous string of projects.

14. Spanish happening in the way that music and gym do, or maybe having a choice between music
and Spanish.

15. Method of teaching language through stories.

16. Budget for $40/hour available for leading a Spanish-based project, using a fluent Spanish speaker
to incorporate the language and culture with guests and/or parents from the Latino community to share stories, customs. Some possible ideas would be simple skits, cooking typical food, music, games, reading and making books, celebrations, art projects; opportunity for a majority of ELL students, who speak Spanish to be involved.

17. Given the physical structure of the school, it seems one concept that could work would be two learning communities. One could have Spanish or Chinese in the curriculum (or each community could feature one or the other language); maybe one could specialize in technology. Having two learning communities would keep the intimate feel that each school now enjoys, and preserve multi-age learning. If each community draws from kids who started at each school then it wouldn't be an "us and them" kind of thing. Afternoon projects could be shared across the communities to promote connections between all of us and provide an expansive array of choices. I feel strongly that advisee or community circles, or whatever they're called, should remain a part of the program, and just be better prepared ... haven't got a coherent thought about how language fits in there. Maybe Wednesday Workshops could always have one Spanish and one Chinese offering. Or, if we offer more Spanish or Chinese language projects in the afternoon, that could be fun. It should be more possible to do with twice as many kids (and twice as many teachers). I'm just tossing out ideas, not thinking coherently about how a curriculum would work. I also think it would be great to find a way to have David Adee teach projects that bring in music. (I could see a folk dance project, which maybe could count as PE and music and language!)

Fundraising [Back to Top]

Contact: to be announced

Information about this committee here.

Communications [Back to Top]

Contact: Marina Ormes

Information about this committee here.