Comstock Middle
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2750 West Steele Lane
Santa Rosa, CA  95403
707-890-3885
fax:  707-890-3888

Comstock "Crusader" mascot controversy

9/8/2017

2 Comments

 
The "crusader" mascot has been controversial because of the violent role the actual crusaders played in history.   We have discussed changing the mascot in the future and we meet with many different opinions.  
    Many people have an attachment to it because it is a part of the history of this Northwest Santa Rosa school.  People who claim Comstock as their alma mater do not want us to change it.   
    We have softened it by using the "crusader" term in a more peaceful context:  crusading for knowledge, for peace, for achievement.  One of our logos calls us to go on a "quest for knowledge"  Many people crusade for positive things, so we can broaden the context.
     We have entertained some other possible changes, such as the Comstock Monarchs to honor our work in building a butterfly habitat.  However, this is something for us to consider down the road.  A change in mascot will need to be funded:  new uniforms, and signage.   In the meantime, we will continue to pacify the "crusader".  See below for a picture of our new costume:  Cornelius, the crusader for peace and justice.
 
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The Tracks We Leave

7/25/2017

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We will be known forever by the tracks we leave.
-Lakota Indians
 
I stepped softly on this shaken soil.
Eyes opened
Heart listening.
 
Who cracked this ground?
I wanted to know.
 
I asked many around me.
 
Some blamed me, even though I had just arrived.
Some blamed them, even though they knew them not.
Some lamented that they were just not good enough.
Some asked to join me in my quest.
 
Slowly,
month by month,
​year by year
we watered,
planted seeds.
Those who wanted someone to blame
left.
 
Now we see the buds coming through richer soil
We will continue to plant. 
 
© Laura Hendrickson  2017
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Rock Star Teacher Academy Reflections:  Year One

6/15/2016

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In my third year as principal at Comstock Middle School,  I had been able to cull and develop the faculty I wanted to move the school forward.  A collaborative and innovative culture was beginning to develop.  This was quite an achievement for a school and staff that had been through declining enrollment, threatened closures, white flight, and program improvement.  The teachers who remained had a strong commitment to the school.  After the first two years as principal, we increased enrollment by nearly 100 students so we were also able to hire new and fresh teachers to join the team.  Teachers who were not able to adapt to this more invigorated culture chose (some with a gentle nudge) to leave.  
 
In my previous position as Coordinator of Professional Development at the Santa Rosa City Schools district office, I developed a model classroom facilitator program.  This program highlighted four secondary teachers with exemplary classroom skills as model teachers.  They opened up their classrooms to others who wanted to observe them.  We identified areas of need and teachers observed, debriefed and determined their next steps along with the model teachers and myself.  It was a formalized version of peer coaching and the many teachers in the district who partook in this mentoring, definitely improved their practice.  I, as the district coach, was able to observe them before and after and continue to provide support for their growth.  
 
I wanted to develop a similar model of peer coaching at Comstock.  I had released three teachers for a period each day who could be the ongoing coaches, so that they could lend a supportive, non-evaluative hand.  Next I needed the classrooms to observe.
 
All of the teachers had some aspect of their practice that stood out as exemplary.  My leadership team and I wanted to encourage all teachers to open up their classrooms by identifying a specific skill they would be willing to share.  For example,  “Joe” was great at a sequential lesson delivery that provided many avenues of engagement; “Sarah” was an expert at incorporating technology; “Marie” could explain difficult concepts, check for understanding, re-explain in a different way so that many students could understand, and so forth.  The leadership team and I developed a spreadsheet with everyone’s name on it, a column for “area of expertise”, another column for best times to visit, and a plan to discuss it first by department and then sign up at our faculty meeting.  We called the program our Teacher Rockstar Academy.  Our leadership students created a logo which we used on tee-shirts for all our staff proclaiming “I am a Comstock Rockstar Teacher”.  We also identified specific types of classroom practice we wanted to reinforce that would address rigor, student engagement, and that would also support 21st century learning skills.
 
It was a surprise to me that the program failed.  It failed because our teachers did not know what they were good at.  They were reluctant to sign up to be observed; they felt self-conscious about claiming to be experts at anything, even though clearly they were.  They also felt uncomfortable about entering into another teacher’s domain.  One competent veteran teacher basically said that after all the years of program improvement and being told what she was doing wrong, she had no idea of what she was doing right.  
 
I realized then that my school had a ways to go to build a safe, supportive collaborative culture where it counts:  in the classroom delivering lessons to students.  Teachers were comfortable collaborating on lesson design, but the peer coaching model would need to be cultivated.  I also realized that my leadership team was relieved that we didn’t move forward since many of them were uncomfortable as well, but wanted to support my idea.  
 
My next step was to look at research into teacher self-esteem, how to build it, etc.  I found almost nothing that addressed this; most educational research was about student self-esteem.  My coaches and I then began to research the best qualities of teaching and how to develop them while supporting the individual personality and style of each person.  We firmly believe that the “art” of teaching is the teacher-student relationship and that we want to nurture that in our staff.  In addition, we also believe in the “science” of good instructional practices.  Our team spent last year gathering this information.  We will begin a peer-coaching model using the TOSAs next year, identifying key areas of focus by department to support each teacher individually.  

All of us benefited from this experience in that we began the dialogue on peer coaching and opened up more receptivity to the concept.   

Next year we will further develop this by focusing on lesson delivery.  We are delving into the Gradual Release of Responsibility method for our protocol.

​ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gradual_release_of_responsibility

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Comcast selects Comstock for their annual campus beautification effort.  

5/2/2016

29 Comments

 
The Comstock community got a big lift on Saturday, April 30.  Over 200 volunteers from Comcast descended on us with soil, plants, paint, food, energy and ideas for our first campus beautification day in many years.  Half our staff, many students and families joined in.  The campus looks so beautiful!!! Here are some initial photos with more to follow.  We feel truly blessed!
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Attending ACSA Legislative Action Day

4/5/2016

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Nearly 400 ACSA (Association for California School Administrators) members were in Sacramento on April 4, 2016 for the association’s annual Legislative Action Day.  I was able to meet with our local state senator, Mike McGuire to discuss these points with him.  I also invited him to visit Comstock at his earliest convenience.  
State Vice President for Legislative Action Linda Kaminski welcomed the grassroots education leader lobbyists to an early morning briefing with former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and Capitol Advisors President Kevin Gordon. The pair instructed them on best practices for meeting with legislators.
Following the briefing, ACSA presented its Friend of Public Education Award to Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, for her stalwart support of students and the future of California Schools.
Beginning at 10 a.m. and going until late afternoon, ACSA region teams met with Senate and Assembly members to advocate for a slate of specific positions, including early childhood education, accountability, the teacher shortage and state funding for schools.
Following are details of the issues ACSA members will be discussing with legislators and other policymakers.  More detailed information can be find on the ACSA website:  www.acsa.org  
Transitional Kindergarten
The governor’s budget proposes to consolidate Transitional Kindergarten, California State Preschool Program, and the Quality Rating and Improvement funds into one early education block grant with the goal of benefiting at-risk and low-income preschoolers. The proposal combines the existing Proposition 98 funding for these programs into a $1.7 billion block grant.
ACSA cannot support the inclusion of the Transitional Kindergarten program funding as part of the proposed Early Education Block Grant. ACSA believes that maintaining the existing age-based Transitional Kindergarten program existing under current law, including the ADA funding model, is imperative. The association is concerned that the governor’s proposal will lock in districts’ funding allocations permanently, without any consideration for additional growth in funding to meet local demand and the higher costs of services.
Accountability

ACSA believes the fundamental purpose of an accountability system must be to stimulate, support, and recognize high achievement, as well as close achievement gaps among all students and student groups.

There is a need to develop a multifaceted accountability system with a dynamic framework that includes identifying quality education, improving classroom instruction and a reliable body of research and data than can be used to strengthen the system. An accountability system should also be developed that focuses at the local level and a support structure that fosters continuous improvement.
Teacher shortage
The teacher and substitute teacher shortage has many challenging facets and obstacles to it, including the credentialing pipeline, teacher retention, compensation challenges, fostering positive school site culture and retirement-related attrition. Within those issues come smaller, more challenging issues like the diversity of the teacher pool, developing special education teachers and the cost to the individual of credentialing.

While ACSA knows that the teacher shortage is a very dynamic and fluid issue and we have only touched on some of the topics, the association has chosen to focus on one specific aspect in an effort to provide a stop gap at the site level.
In the past six months, the discussion in Sacramento on the teacher shortage has shown both incredible depth and breadth. The number of interest groups weighing in and contributing to the conversation has been remarkable. ACSA has joined efforts with Assembly member Olsen to select an extension of the timeline for substitute permits as an achievable goal in the short term.
AB 2336 would extend the current timeline of eligibility on emergency substitute teaching permits for special education classrooms. Current law restricts a substitute permit holder from working consistently in a classroom for no more than 20 days with a special education students. This bill would extend the 20-day permit to 40 days. Please note this is not an effort to reduce substitute or teacher quality, but an effort to keep substitutes in place when the situation demands it.

Budget
ACSA applauds the governor and the Legislature for investing in public education and the commitment to the Local Control Funding Formula. ACSA is supportive of the $2.8 billion provided to continue the implementation of LCFF. Students are directly being benefited from the acceleration of LCFF funding to get districts to reach their LCFF targets sooner than 2020-21.
ACSA supports the $1.2 billion appropriation in one-time discretionary funding, noting that the funding is meant to offset a district’s remaining mandate reimbursements – all school districts, county offices of education and charter schools are anticipated to receive $214 per ADA even if they do not have outstanding mandates owed to them.
However, there are higher expectations for California students that come with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, new levels of accountability through the Local Control and Accountability Plan and the Every Student Succeeds Act, as well as new assessments through the Smarter Balanced Assessment Collaborative. All of these reforms need to be coupled with the necessary financial resources and supports to ensure that achievement gaps are closed and every student graduates career and college ready.
The existing LCFF funding is a down payment and an investment in California’s students – who are the future of this state and will help to keep California competitive. Additional funding for public education will be used to take existing pilots to scale across all of your school sites.
The investments generated from Proposition 30 have assisted in maintaining existing programs, but the initiative to preserve education funding must be extended to ensure that the additional investments needed in the classroom can be achieved.
Neither Proposition 30 nor LCFF addressed the fundamental problem of insufficient funding for public education. Neither do they provide a long-term solution to California’s funding needs. Proposition 30 is a step in the right direction to invest in California’s students, and a future conversation will need to be held on how to provide stable and sufficient funding for public education.
In order to increase student achievement and support a competitive workforce, a larger financial investment needs to occur to provide robust and challenging classroom environment for all students.
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To our 8th grade students moving on to High School...

4/1/2016

29 Comments

 
Yearbook message from Principal Hendrickson. 

Congratulations on your completion of middle school and your entry into high school!  I hope you are proud of your achievements here at Comstock Middle School, and are looking forward to developing yourselves as learners and people who can make a great contribution to our community.  We send you off with high hopes that you will use your unique capabilities to improve our world.  It is with this in mind that we developed Comstock into what it is today: a school striving to be a leader in 21st century learning.

You are the class that developed a new school with us.  You saw us add many new electives to the school such as band, performing arts, digital storytelling, and Project Make.  You helped us usher in new culture building activities such as Community Building Days, “Chill Skills”, Safe School Ambassadors, The Boys& Girls Club, student clubs and student government.   Many of you ran for office for the first time in a number of years. Some of you created videos, prepared for renaissance rallies, served on our student senate, sang in the choir, built garden beds, cooked delicious food, created beautiful art, wrote novels, developed your math skills on ALEKS, did science experiments, developed Google presentations in History, played on our athletic teams, played soccer on teams that were undefeated and more.   All of you worked to build your knowledge to the best of your ability.  Thank you for all of your efforts!  No matter what ups and downs we faced together over these past two years, we will always be a community and you will always be part of the Comstock family.  We truly respect you and are honored that we had a chance to share time with you in such a wonderful learning environment.  You are the treasures of our hearts.  

It is with deep respect that I, representing all the staff at Comstock, say to you:  well, done!  I hope you leave here without regrets.  Take every success you had here as wind beneath your wings to help you fly. Take every failure as a lesson to be learned towards future success.  We will always believe in you, and we will always be your friend.
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Comstock Make Program wins SSU's Jack London Award for Program Innovation

5/8/2014

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We are honored to win the award for our Project Make camp and Elective.  Check out the video to get an idea of the program.  We offer a free camp to students in grades 5-8 in the summer and an elective during the year with our Science teacher and Maker extraordinaire, John Lundblad.  Our Art Teacher, Dawn Thomas runs the elective as well.
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Comstock attends CUE's first Santa Rosa Mixer

4/21/2014

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Teachers Alie Dido, Sasha Oster and I taking a "selfie" with Sergio Villegas, director of North Bay CUE (Computer Using Educators).  We met for some wine and discussion on how to use technology to enhance student learning.  Educators from around the Santa
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Thank you, School's Plus

4/16/2014

13 Comments

 
School's plus is Santa Rosa's foundation to support athletics and the arts in Santa Rosa City Schools.  Each middle school received a check for $12,000 for our programs.  Wow!  Tha
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Google Hang-out with Jeff Rivera, Author of "No Matter What"

4/16/2014

2 Comments

 
8th grade English students were honored to connect with author Jeff Rivera.  He contacted our school while researching his book.  Our students were willing to "beta test" the book before it went to the editor.  8th grade English teachers worked with Jeff via email, Google hang-out, and facebook, to devise lessons that helped the author get feedback for publishing, and helped our students work directly with an author in the formation of characters, plot-line, text edits and more.  It all culminated with a meeting with Jeff in his home in Costa Rica and our students in Santa Rosa via Google hang-out.  Here's a picture of Jeff on th
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