August 16, 1996
Volume 1.9
We recommend that students have a sturdy backpack. Summit will supply agenda notebooks for keeping track of assignments. Other supplies:
Several teachers will request that you acquire additional supplies for their classes. Calculator specifications will be provided by your math teacher.
We are required to advise you that students may be required to purchase supplies for certain classes and that fees may be charged for field trips relevant to Summit's curriculum.
Students report at 8:00 AM to the school auditorium. A picnic lunch will be provided by Summit from 12:20 to 2:30 PM. Parents pick up students between 2:30 and 3:05 PM. Please carpool.
8:00 - 9:00 Welcome (in auditorium): Summit Principal, Chair of Board of Directors, Southern Hills Principal, Summit faculty, Summit staff. School discipline. Overview of morning's activities.
9:00 - 9:15 Orientation packets: pick up at alphabetical tables in cafeteria.
9:15 - 10:00 Meet a teacher: Alphabetical groups of 20 to preassigned rooms for questions about individual class schedules, bell schedule, discipline policy, student handbook, locker assignment and combination, map of campus and traffic patterns, mini-schedule (see 10:40 below).
10:00 - 10:30 Tour of Summit: administrative offices, math building, English building, foreign language building, science classroom, social studies classrooms, writing lab and computer lab, science lab, sick room, library, lockers (try out combination), art room, cafeteria, music room, auditorium, gym and locker rooms, teachers' offices.
10:40 - 12:20 Mini-schedule: 10-minute periods with 5 minutes passing.
12:20 - 2:30 Picnic lunch provided by Summit (hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, soft drinks) or bring your own. Outdoor games.
2:30 - 3:05 Parents pick up students.
Period Times
1 8:00 AM to 8:50 AM
2 8:55 AM to 9:45 AM
3 9:50 AM to 10:40 AM
Lunch 10:45 AM to 11:20 AM
4 11:25 AM to 12:15 PM
5 12:20 PM to 1:10 PM
Nutrition
Break 1:10 PM to 1:15 PM
6 1:20 PM to 2:10 PM
7 2:15 PM to 3:05 PM
Note that there is a 5-minute passing time between each class period, before and after lunch, and after nutrition break.
Summit encourages students to carpool. Here are some alternatives for parent drivers:
1. Drop off students earlier than 8:00 AM. Traffic will be heaviest from 7:50 to 8:00 AM. Southern Hills' hours of operation will be from 8:10 AM to 2:50 PM. Fairview's hours will be from 7:25 AM to 3:13 PM. The only traffic overlap might be with Fairview in the afternoon.
2. Drop off students at the South Boulder Recreation Center parking lot when weather permits. Students can easily walk across the park to Summit. Use Greenbriar and Gillaspie rather than Grinnell to get to the Rec Center.
3. Drop off students on the west side of campus: Go south on Knox, make a U-turn around the traffic circle, and drop off students at the curb in front of the Summit buildings.
4. Drop off students on the south side of campus: Go south on Knox, turn east around the traffic circle, either park in the parking lot or drop off students at the main entrance to Southern Hills. Students walk around to Summit.
Drive slowly and carefully. Be aware of students crossing Knox.
Every family interested in carpooling should have either received a call from a volunteer or received a Ride Arrangers list and map of nearby Summit families to contact — the process varied by area. If neither has happened, please call Linda Greenberg, 442-6498, to request a Ride Arrangers map and list. Linda can also provide RTD route maps or schedules to anyone needing them. There was insufficient interest in the RTD Ecopass program to pursue a group contract. We still do not know if Summit students will be allowed to ride BVSD buses. The topic is currently under discussion by BVSD.
One possibility parents may want to consider is chartering a van or bus. Kidz Karz, 499-3611, has 15-passenger vans and a larger bus available for neighborhood groups at special rates; Kids Kab, 440-4576, may as well. We have not evaluated these companies, but provide this information for your convenience.
Summit teachers reported for work on Monday, August 5. We now have 16 faculty members. Thanks to all the students who participated in the teaching demonstration classes.
Welcome, Lisa Singletary, our Administrative Assistant.
Some students are missing information in their files. Please call Lisa Singletary in the Summit Office, 447-5529, to verify that your file is complete. You may also inquire via e-mail to Lisa at Ljane1747@aol.com.
A physical exam is required for seventh graders. Your physician has the proper health certificate to fill out.
We have been informed that if your seventh or eighth grader does not have his or her second measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) immunization he or she will not be allowed to enter school. Students who have not submitted a record of immunization and who arrive at school without one will be sent home. This is in accordance with the Colorado School Entry Immunization Law. Your pediatrician and the Boulder County Health Department have the necessary immunization certificates.
Parents who object to immunization on religious or personal-belief grounds may submit a written "Statement of Exemption." Pick up a form at the BVSD Education Center, 6500 East Arapahoe Road, 447-1010.
If you have not yet sent in a photo of your student, please do so soon. You may bring one to school on August 23. Photos will be on display in the administrative office.
Summit Phone Number
Summit is at your service at 447-5529. Additional phone numbers will be announced later in the year.
We know Summit students have many extracurricular activities and interests. Since students are expected to arrive at school rested and ready to work hard in class, the amount of homework assigned by Summit teachers will be reasonable. Here are some things you can do at home:
Be sure your child has a quiet, well-illuminated place to study. Homework should be done away from distractions, including siblings, friends and music.
Set limits on the amount of time your child spends watching television.
Know what topics your child is learning in school. Dinner time is an excellent opportunity to discuss the day's educational and social events.
Know what homework is expected by the teachers, and make sure your child completes it.
If your child is consistently spending too much time on homework, you or your child may contact . . .
the Study-Skills/Time-Management Advisor.
the Counselor. An adjustment in course schedule may be the right option.
one or more of the teachers. They want your feedback. Leave a phone message or send in a note.
the Principal.
Summit is hiring several para-educators to supervise students daily during lunch. Parents may apply for these jobs. Applicants will have to pass a BVSD security screening. Contact Lisa Singletary, 447-5529.
Volunteer Coordinator Wanted
We are looking for one parent to serve as volunteer coordinator for all administrative and campus-monitor volunteers. Please call Linda Greenberg, 442-6498, if interested.
If you would like an extended day program at Summit please immediately call Ellen Dole, 530-2762.
Summit's modular classrooms, teachers' offices, and administrative offices have been installed. Summit volunteers helped clean and move in furniture and textbooks on August 10. Thanks, parents and students!
During the week before school starts, more hands will be needed, although we cannot yet pinpoint the exact dates. If you can help move furniture, do minor fix-up or clean, please call Joan Harig, 466-1464, and tell her when you would be available.
If you would like to help assemble registration packets mid-week, or can help during the orientation on Friday, August 23, please call Linda Greenberg, 442-6498.
One of the reasons Summit has a low student/teacher ratio is that parents volunteer to help out. Consider this your invitation to pitch in.
We would gratefully accept tax-deductible donations of the following items for our teachers' lounge: comfortable living-room chairs, coffee table, end tables, lamps, coat trees, and wooden bookcases. Call Joan Harig, 466-1464.
Audio-Visual Equipment
We would welcome donations of tape recorders/"boom boxes," slide projectors and carousels, picnic tables and benches, TVs, VCRs, TV carts, and musical keyboards. Call Joan Harig, 466-1464.
Our art teacher, Kathy Hutton, would appreciate any hand tools you could donate. She would like to supplement her classroom's art supplies with hammers, screwdrivers, adjustable wrenches, pliers, needle-nose pliers, coping saws, wire cutters, a hand drill, glue guns, small wood saws, a miter box (not electric), clay-working tools, meter sticks, safety glasses, wooden dowels, assorted wire, bright-colored and white and black latex or oil house paint, plastic buckets, small nails, dry-wall screws. Send them in with your child in lieu of an apple for Ms. Hutton.
Some Summit parents have formed a Boulder Junior Soccer NOVA girls team and have some spaces for additional players. Team members are mostly Summit sixth graders with soccer experience. For more information, call Randy Dole, 530-2762.
Girl Scouts
Girls and parents interested in joining the Girl Scouts for outdoor activities and leadership development may contact coordinator Sally Kletzky, 494-0346.
There are several Summit Middle Schools in the U.S., including one in Frisco, Colorado, which serves Summit County. Others are in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Summit, New Jersey; and Edmond, Oklahoma. Summit Ridge Middle School is in Littleton, Colorado; North Summit Middle School is in Coalville, Utah; Summit Parkway Middle School is in Columbia, South Carolina; and Humber Summit Middle School is in North York, Ontario, Canada.
Summit News publishes announcements of activities we believe may be of interest to Summit students. Some activities — such as girls' softball, girls' soccer, and Girl Scouts — are not sponsored by Summit or the Boulder Valley School District.
Summit Board of Directors
Chris Howard, Chair, 673-0978 Jim Cederberg, Chair-Elect, 494-5647 Hunter McDaniel, Treasurer, 530-1840 Ginger Caldwell, Secretary, 444-3039 Ron Harmon, 499-2061 Tricia Olson, 530-7107 Chuck Demarest, 494-2611 Steve Haas, Principal, 447-5529
B.A. English, University of Connecticut; enrolled in M.A. program at University of Colorado, Boulder.
Ms. Avallone comes from a family of teachers and began playing school in the garage as soon as she could hold a piece of chalk. Although the "garage" has changed, and the "students" are no longer neighborhood cats and dogs, the fun and excitement of teaching has not diminished over the years.
Born in the foothills of New England's Berkshires, Ms. Avallone grew up in small-town Connecticut. After college she returned to her alma mater, a highly regarded progressive public high school, where she taught English and French for eight years. After moving to Atlanta, Ms. Avallone taught Upper School English at Lovett, a selective private day school. Other experiences in education range from teaching Windows applications at corporate sites to instructing children in Kenpo Karate.
Ms. Avallone has a strong interest in curriculum writing for English and Language Arts. During her years as a classroom teacher, she has written several courses, including "Poetry Seminar," "From Innocence to Experience," "Classics in World Literature," and "Great American Writers." In addition, she has worked as a curriculum writer for CNN Newsroom, Turner Broadcasting programs, and "electronic field trips." She is eager to work with other English teachers at Summit to help craft its English curriculum in this exciting first year.
A new resident of the Boulder area, Ms. Avallone lives in Louisville with her husband, Bryce, and two cats. No, she does not make the cats write papers or read poetry. She does look forward to meeting her human students and tackling some excellent literature with them.
B.A. English, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Ms. Brakhage is a Boulder native who graduated from Boulder high school in 1983 before moving up the hill to the University of Colorado. She earned her bachelor's degree in English and her teacher certification in December 1988.
After working as an instructor and Director of Education for Sylvan Learning Center in Boulder, Ms. Brakhage accepted a teaching position at Revere High School in Ovid, Colorado, in the northeastern corner of the state. While at Revere, Ms. Brakhage expanded her teaching repertoire though seven daily class preparations, which included everything from eighth-grade English to Advanced Literature for seniors. She also taught the electives Speech, Modern Literature, and Journalism, which produced both the school newspaper and year book. In her "spare time," she served as junior varsity volleyball coach, speech coach for various district and state speech competitions, and director of the annual high school dinner theater. As an active member of Revere's curriculum committee, Ms. Brakhage worked to rewrite district curriculum and prepare district goals and proficiencies.
Prior to her fourth and last year teaching at Revere High School, Ms. Brakhage spent a year working for the Japan Exchange Teaching Program, a Japanese government-sponsored program that employs native speakers of English to teach in the public school system. On the island of Shikoku she taught at three junior high schools and one tiny mountain school, rotating her visits weekly. While in Japan, Ms. Brakhage served as editor of Teamwork Tokushima, a quarterly publication developed to share teaching ideas with Japanese teachers of English throughout Tokushima prefecture.
During her year in Japan, Ms. Brakhage biked around the island of Shikoku, trekked through the Karen hill tribes of northern Thailand, and explored Hong Kong and Macau. In addition to travel, Ms. Brakhage enjoys quilting, mountain biking, and fly fishing.
Ms. Brakhage is excited to be a part of the Summit team. She is looking forward to creating an inviting and structured classroom environment in which to share with students her love of literature and writing. A firm believer in life-long learning, Ms. Brakhage intends to pursue a master's degree in Educational Technology through the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.
B.A. English, University of Michigan; Graduate Studies, Instructional Leadership Program, University of Illinois, Chicago.
Ms. Dozeman has taught at the middle school level for the past three years in a variety of school settings. She begins her career at Summit with incredible enthusiasm, excited to provide the tools students need to become critical thinkers and independent learners.
Ms. Dozeman teaches literature through the study of different genres (one of her favorites is mystery). The English curriculum at Summit will give her and her students the opportunity to dissect literature and its components. Students will compare styles of writing, observe various perspectives, and see the rationale behind certain techniques used by authors. Lively discussion with active student involvement will lead to an understanding of themes, symbolism and characters. Ms. Dozeman has planned unique and enjoyable projects to add a kinesthetic dimension to the novels studied.
She will place great emphasis on writing and the writing process. Don't worry: Ms. Dozeman knows and understands the challenge of the blank page. She will help students learn to fill many blank pages with strong, cohesive writing, with individual flair and style.
M.A. education, University of Colorado, Boulder; B.S. mathematics, University of Western Ontario, Canada.
Ms. Dressler was born in Germany and, after living in England, South Africa, and Canada, came to America at age 14. She just recently became a naturalized citizen.
After getting her undergraduate degree, she worked as a consultant in Boston, and then Denver, providing analysis, design, programming, technical writing, support and training on various types of computers, from mainframes to PCs. She has taught German to elementary students and tutored students at the middle and high-school levels.
Ms. Dressler has two children, age 12 and 16. ("I wish my daughter could have had a Summit to go to when she was in middle school!") A few years ago Ms. Dressler decided to go back to school to earn her master's degree and her math teaching certificate. After graduation she taught math and worked as an internship coordinator at Metro State College.
Ms. Dressler likes spending time with her kids, contra-dancing, hiking, backpacking, cross-country skiing, and playing music. She is looking forward to getting to know the Summit students and to offering math classes that will be challenging and interesting.
Ph.D. physics, Washington University (St. Louis); M.A. physics, Washington University; B.A. astronomy and physics, Boston University.
For five of the past six years, Dr. Guinn has been teaching physics and astronomy at Berea College, a small liberal arts college in Kentucky. He and his wife decided to move to Denver after she was offered a residency position at the University of Colorado's School of Public Health. Although moving from Kentucky to Colorado has been an exciting change, Dr. Guinn believes that moving from teaching college physics to middle-school science will be even more interesting.
In addition to teaching the physics courses for majors, Dr. Guinn team-taught an introductory science course taken by all students at Berea College. He learned more about teaching from this course than from any other. Classes with over a hundred students require certain "educational antics" to keep everyone's attention. His "normal-mode dance," which he used to help explain quantum mechanics, became something of a legend in this course. He is very excited about bringing his excitement and appreciation of the fun of learning to his new students at Summit.
Dr. Guinn was also the Director of the Roberts Observatory, and the Acting Director, for one year, of the Weatherford Planetarium at the college. He enjoyed giving planetarium shows and leading observatory open-nights for the public and school groups. He hopes that these experiences will help him create a fun, exciting, and interesting school year.
During the summer, Dr. Guinn has been occupied by his new baby daughter, Eliza Branwen. She was born on July 9, weighed in at 3.3 kg (7.25 lb), with a height of 47 cm (18.5 in). He observes, "Her academic success is almost assured, as she is equally skilled in all of the sciences and humanities. She also has the ability to make herself understood by any native speaker of a modern language. This leads her parents to believe she might chose linguistics as a career path."
M.F.A. sculpture, University of Colorado, Boulder; M.A. art, Eastern Washington University; B.F.A. painting and printmaking, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Ms. Hutton is originally from Virginia. She lived on the west coast until 1987, when she moved to this area to attend CU.
Ms. Hutton has been teaching art since 1985 as a college instructor, most recently at Metro State College. In addition, for the past five years, she has worked with "at risk" youth and has taught at the Expeditionary School in Denver.
She has had over 50 exhibitions of her work. She had a one-person show in Chicago this year. She is a collaborator on an exhibition, which has been touring the nation's colleges and universities since 1992, called "Wake Up Little Susie: Pregnancy and Power before Roe vs. Wade." (She produced this historical sculpture installation while an associate at the Rocky Mountain Women's Institute.) Since 1990 she has worked as a professional artist, exhibiting in cooperative galleries. For two years she was president of the Edge Gallery in Denver.
Ms. Hutton is excited about the opportunity to work in a school that strives for excellence, working with colleagues and parents who so obviously care about their students.
M.S. human ecology, University of Bordeaux, France; B.A. environmental conservation, French, University of Colorado, Boulder.
Mr. Koch sees social studies as a discipline that combines geography, economics, politics, language, culture, and technology to study the world in which we live, both past and present. He wants his students to imagine social studies as a dynamic subject, where knowledge learned in their other classes can be used to explore a fantastic story: the history of humankind.
A native of Boulder, his own exploration of this story began when he left CU to study at the University of Bordeaux, France, during his junior year in college. Living in the old part of the city, history was no longer something he only read about in books, but something that he woke up to each morning, something deeply-rooted in the present. He used France as a springboard for trips to Spain, Morocco and Turkey, where he wandered through layered ruins from ancient Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman Empires.
After graduating from college, he went to Israel, where he spent the summer diving on a 2000-year-old harbor complex for an archaeological dig in the ancient Roman city of Caesarea. These experiences taught him that, despite our best efforts, history as we know it is not a complete representation of past events. He saw first hand how "history" changes continuously as new information and perspectives are discovered.
In addition to his love of history, Mr. Koch has a strong education and professional background in resource management, a field closely related to subjects he will be teaching in social studies. His degrees in environmental conservation and human ecology required courses in a wide range of fields, from ecology and economics to political science and sociology. Through these programs, he began to see how the world and its governments are shaped by the interaction of various economic, political, social, and ecological systems.
Mr. Koch has worked as a naturalist for Boulder County and Denver Public Schools. He has designed drug/alcohol-treatment and back-to-school programs for the California Conservation Corps. Most recently, he completed a three-year tour as a commissioned officer aboard a NOAA fisheries research ship, where his duties included coordinating all scientific operations, driving the ship for eight hours each day, and serving as the ship's divemaster.
Mr. Koch hopes that, through their classes in geography, history, and government, students will make connections between their own interests and those of other peoples and places and times. He knows that, once these connections are made, students at Summit will suddenly find their own interests growing into areas they never expected.