BECOME A MEMBER! Sign up for TIE services now and start your international school career

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

The Sullivans School Opens Parent University

By Steve Parker
06-Oct-15
The Sullivans School Opens Parent University


Yokosuka Navy Base, Japan - Teachers and administrators at The Sullivans School on board Commander, Fleet Activities Yokosuka (CFAY) opened their first Parent University on Thursday, Sept. 29. The first time school was held to teach parents about the new College and Career Ready (C&CR) curriculum standards adopted in mathematics this year by the Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) worldwide school system.
The Parent University was held after school in the upper cafeteria of the school. Principal Daisy Weddle and several faculty members made a short presentation about C&CR standards to an interested crowd of approximately 30 Sullivans Parents. The presentation included a Power Point, a video about the C&CR, answered questions, and gave parents a taste of a typical C&CR math problem solving standard. Parents were shown how the C&CR standards strive to direct students’ mathematical thinking towards 3 key shifts; focus, coherence and rigor. The new standards also push the students’ thinking towards the conceptual, procedural and finally, real world applications of their newly learned skills. The new standards include hands on activities in nearly every lesson.
As expected, parents had lots of questions and were curious about the “new math” methods their children were telling them about each day after school. Shawn Bogen, Sullivans’ school nurse, whose twin daughters, Claire and Chloe are in 5th grade said, “I listened closely when my daughters taught me how to find the volume of a cube after the third week of school this year, They had a small discussion about their methods and I was impressed with the vocabulary terms they used.” Weddle also stated that the Sullivans had already planned for more Parent Universities to be presented as this transition year unfolds. In closing, parents were asked to write additional questions on notes and place them on a Parking lot board where the questions would be collected and answered in future parent newsletters.
Children were also present at the family friendly gathering and Jada Shaw, a 4th grade student from Ms. Jennifer Stevens class said, when asked about her new math classes, “I really like the multiplication sentences and now we are learning how to break them apart.”
________________________________________________________________________
The first organized schools for the children of U.S. military personnel serving in the Pacific were established in 1946 during post-World War II reconstruction. Throughout the decades, DoDEA schools evolved to become a comprehensive and high-performing K-12 school system solely dedicated to educating the children of America's heroes. Today, DoDEA Pacific's 48 schools serve nearly 23,000 military-connected children of U.S. Service members and civilian support personnel stationed throughout the Pacific theater. The DoDEA Pacific teaching, administrative and school support team includes more than 3,000 full-time professionals. The schools are geographically organized into four districts: Guam, Japan, Okinawa and South Korea. The Sullivans School is the largest school in DoDEA with a student body of approximately 1,200 in grades K-5.




Please fill out the form below if you would like to post a comment on this article:








Comments

There are currently no comments posted. Please post one via the form above.

MORE FROM

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Elevate Student Voice & Choice in Diverse Learning Settings
By Lindsay Kuhl, Jane Russell Valezy, & Esther Bettney
May 2021

Increasing Student Autonomy Through Time and Place
By Tim Johnson & Tony Winch
May 2021