August 11, 1997
Volume 4, No. 2
Thursday, August 21, marks the beginning of the second academic year at Summit Middle School, and students can look forward to a year full of learning and fun. We are eager to welcome our new 6th-grade students and to see our old friends from last year. A few new teachers join our excellent faculty this year. I am pleased to be a new member of the Summit team. We will all continue to build on Summit's success.
Please stop by the office any time to say hello. Come to the East Boulder Recreation Center for our Fun Night on Saturday, August 23, 8-11 PM, to see old and new friends and to talk about the summer and the coming school year. We aim to make Summit one of the best middle schools in the nation. We are glad you are on board and welcome your help.
Students should bring sack lunches to school on Thursday and Friday, August 21 and 22. Milk and juice will be provided. Normal cafeteria service begins on August 25.
We will coordinate bell schedules with Southern Hills this fall. School will begin at 8:10 AM. Class periods will be 48 minutes each. Only 4 minutes will be allowed for passing. Lunch will be 30 minutes and will not overlap Southern Hills' lunch periods. There will be no nutrition break, but students will be allowed to snack in class at the beginning of 6th period and at other times, with teacher approval. (Granola bars from home are suggested.) Summit will have a mandatory 20-minute study period after 7th period to get started on homework while Southern Hills' traffic clears.
| 1st period | 8:10 AM - 8:58 AM |
| 2nd period | 9:02 AM - 9:50 AM |
| 3rd period | 9:54 AM - 10:42 AM |
| Lunch | 10:46 AM - 11:16 AM |
| 4th period | 11:20 AM - 12:08 PM |
| 5th period | 12:12 PM - 1:00 PM |
| 6th period | 1:04 PM - 1:52 PM |
| 7th period | 1:56 PM - 2:44 PM |
| Study period | 2:44 PM - 3:04 PM |
Note that there is no passing time between 7th and Study periods. Students will remain in their 7th-period classrooms, except for students meeting with teachers for scheduled conferences and help sessions.
All Summit students are invited for an evening of fun at the East Boulder Recreation Center, 5660 Sioux Drive, on Saturday, August 23, from 8 to 11 PM. We are renting the whole place and will have pizza and soft drinks, dancing, the pool, games, basketball, and more! The cost is $7 (at the door). Anyone needing a scholarship for this event should request one from Lisa Singletary in the Summit office.
Dr. Dressler and teachers will be on hand. Parents and teachers who chaperone will get in free. We need a ratio of chaperones to students of 1:10. To volunteer for chaperoning, please call Jeff Bradley, 499-4275. You will have a lot of fun, and you will not embarrass your student!
No students can be admitted without a Summit permission slip. You will find one enclosed with this newsletter, in the office, and at the Rec Center on Saturday. If you drop off someone else's children, make sure they have permission slips with them, signed by one of their parents.
This event is for Summit students only; sorry, no siblings, friends, or pets. Once signed in, students can leave Fun Night only accompanied by a parent or designated adult. Bring: bathing suit, towel, money for extra snacks. Do not bring: electronic items or any valuables.
Incoming sixth-grade parents: This is an excellent opportunity to meet other Summit parents. See you there!
Teachers will inform students of the school supplies they need once classes have started. Because of the individualized class schedules at Summit, it is not practical to list supplies in the newsletter for all students. It is likely that most students will need two three-ring, two-inch binders, paper, and pencils.
In creating each individual student's class schedule at Summit, we give higher priority to core classes than electives. This semester, every student got all of his or her requested core classes. That was not always possible with electives. However, only two students did not receive their first or second elective choices from those offered. In fact, 94% of students received their first choice, and 67% are enrolled in both their first and second choices.
On the other hand, many students will have electives from farther down in their lists, and 21% of Summit students will be enrolled in classes they did not choose at all. Here are some of the reasons:
We believe that Summit is unique in the attention it gives to individualizing each student's class schedule. Our staff will provide guidance and help make any changes you feel are necessary in your student's schedule. However, we hope you will understand if a desired elective is not available.
The Summit Board of Directors will meet on Sundays, August 24, and September 14 and 28, at 7:30 PM in the library. The meetings are open to the public.
By parent request, here are Summit's median national percentile scores on the CTBS for all three grades. Previous issues of Summit News contained other data related to the test.
| 1997 CTBS | 6th | 7th | 8th |
| Reading | 87.2 | 90.7 | 83.7 |
| Vocabulary | 88.7 | 90.6 | 84.9 |
| Reading Composite | 90.8 | 93.7 | 86.5 |
| Language | 88.4 | 87.7 | 85.0 |
| Language Mechanics | 78.5 | 79.5 | 73.5 |
| Language Composite | 87.3 | 86.6 | 86.0 |
| Mathematics | 87.9 | 87.1 | 88.6 |
| Math Computation | 64.6 | 84.1 | 81.2 |
| Math Composite | 80.5 | 88.2 | 88.5 |
| Total Score | 90.0 | 92.8 | 89.8 |
| Science | 91.1 | 88.2 | 90.5 |
| Social Studies | 86.6 | 92.1 | 84.2 |
| Spelling | 83.3 | 78.2 | 72.0 |
| Number of Students Tested | 98 | 107 | 40 |
Incidentally, all school profiles published in the Sunday Camera's "Back to School" insert on August 10 had erroneous captions on the bar graphs of CTBS scores. The captions should have said, "National percentile scores in reading, language, and math for this school's 25th, 50th (median), and 75th percentile students."
Parents interested in hosting coffee-and-dessert gatherings at their homes to meet Summit principal Boyd Dressler should contact Debbie Fee in the Summit office, 499-9511. Host parents may invite other Summit parents to attend. Suggested times are 7-8:30 PM on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays.
On July 18, 1997, the USA National Karate Federation tournament was held at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs in a crowded, hot gymnasium. Melissa Anderson, a 7th grader at Summit and an assistant instructor at International MartialArts Association (IMA) in Louisville, was one of several thousand competitors. Competition categories were individual and team kata (patterns), kumite (sparring), and kobudo (weapons).
According to IMA Madani sensei, Melissa won third-place medals in her division in both kumite and kobudo, where her weapon was tonfa (wooden nightsticks). She also placed fourth in kata. Melissa said that everyone had fun, except for some of the parent spectators who waited for up to 11 hours in the heat for their children to compete.
This school year, in response to parents' requests, Summit News will be mailed, usually every other Monday. To assist our staff in mailing the newsletter, we ask that you bring 20 self-addressed stamped envelopes to the office. Current and past issues of Summit News are available on the Web at http://bcn.boulder.co.us/univ_school/summit/.
If you would like your e-mail address included in the 1997-98 Summit school directory, please send an e-mail to olynmawr@aol.com with the word "Directory" on the subject line and your full name(s) and e-mail address(es) in the body of the message.
Our staffing for fall semester is almost complete. A few additional positions have yet to be finalized. As always, all of our teachers have specialties in their subjects.
M.A. Education, University of Colorado; B.A. English, University of Connecticut.
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, instruction, and improvement of education. 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, as well as the curriculum for Summit's English IV. In addition, she has worked as a curriculum writer for CNN Newsroom, Turner Broadcasting programs, and electronic field trips. In her second year at Summit, she looks forward to dividing her time between classroom teaching and working with the Summit staff on curriculum and instruction.
Ms. Avallone and her husband Bryce live in Superior with their two cats. Recent transplants from the East Coast, the Avallones are loving the Boulder area. On any weekend afternoon, you can find them on either the ski slopes or hiking trails of the Front Range.
M.A. East Asian Languages and Literatures, The Ohio State University; B.A. East Asian Studies/Economics, Wittenberg University, Springfield, Ohio.
After taking classes as part of the teacher certification program at Regis University, Denver, Ms. Cox is now pursuing her teaching license through the Colorado Department of Education alternative teachers' license program. Although her knowledge of such areas as history, economics, politics, and geography is extensive, she continues to take classes at area community colleges.
As part of her undergraduate and graduate studies, Ms. Cox studied in intensive language programs at Nankai University in Tianjin (PRC) and the Stanford Center in Taipei (ROC). Before coming to Summit, she taught Chinese culture and history and Mandarin Chinese at Ohio State, and English as a second language to elementary, middle, and high school students in Taiwan.
Ms. Cox has first-hand experience with the executive and legislative branches of government. For three years, she was a linguist for the Department of Defense; before that she was a research assistant in the Economics Division of the Congressional Research Service.
Ms. Cox has traveled extensively in Asia, Central America, North America, and Europe. Her hobbies include golf, cross-country skiing, hiking and climbing, and reading. This is Ms. Cox's second year at Summit.
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 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 is 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. This is Mr. Koch's second year at Summit.
M.A. Spanish Language and Literature (minor in Women's Studies), Colorado State University; B.A. Liberal Arts and Spanish (minor in Latin American Studies and Asian Studies), Colorado State University.
A Colorado native, Ms. Stough brings a love for the Spanish language and culture to the classroom. She lived in Mexico as an undergraduate student in Guadalajara, 1989, and as a graduate student in Puebla, 1991. She has taught Spanish at the university level for six years at Colorado State, Metro, CU-Denver, Community College of Denver, and the School of Mines. While living in Mexico, she taught English at the University of the Americas and at a private school.
Ms. Stough has several achievements in the area of professional development. In 1994, she attended two Women's Studies conferences at the University of California, San Diego, and at the University of Missouri, Columbia. She presented a joint project about the El Salvadoran poet and author Claribel Alegría, who is an outspoken advocate of the on-going liberation struggle in her country. Ms. Stough also attended a conference in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in 1992 where she did simultaneous translating from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English. There she presented a paper on the global coffee industry and the role it plays in the Honduran economy and well-being of its people. In 1993 she presented a joint session at the Colorado Conference of Foreign Language Teachers about alternative approaches to teaching grammar and vocabulary in the classroom.
Ms. Stough believes in the "total physical response" approach to second-language acquisition: her classes are very active. She believes students retain more of a foreign language if they are physically and emotionally involved in it. She is constantly studying ways to teach culture in the classroom, based on her philosophy that language cannot be taught as an entity separate from the culture of a people. She enjoys sharing her experiences living in Mexico and traveling through Spain, Honduras, and Chile. Ms. Stough returns to Summit for her second year.