Pictures of the Week (Sept 24-28)

Wednesday, September 26, marked the public re-opening for Savvy's Bistro, our culinary program's student-run restaurant. Read the post.

Summit HS was the final campus in the high school iPad program deployment. Students and the professional staff at all MISD high schools were issued iPad devices. Over 9,000 iPad 2 devices were issued at high schools. Make-up dates for deployment and an upcoming Parent informational meeting date are pending. Stay current on the high school iPad program.

Dr. Fred Garza's "Reflections" Scientific, Technological, and Literary Observations in Pastel, art exhibit opened on Wednesday, September 26, in the Mansfield HS Library Learning Commons. This exhibit is divided into three distinct parts. Each part of the exhibit is influenced by areas of which Dr. Garza is very passionate. The exhibit will be available Monday - Friday, 7:00 a.m. -3:30 p.m., until Thursday, November 15, 2012.

Each month during the school year, students from our elementary schools are selected to receive the Superintendent’s Star Award for outstanding citizenship. The photo above is from the September 2012 School Board Meeting photo gallery.

Timberview HS Basketball Coach, Duane Gregory, took some of his basketball players to Thelma Jones Elementary for the elementary school's Camp Out Reading Day on Thursday, September 27. "I’m not sure who enjoyed it more, the elementary students or my guys," said coach Gregory.

Texas Poet Laureate Makes a Mansfield Stop

The 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate and Mansfield HS alumna, Karla K. Morton visited and spoke to students in the school library on Tuesday, April 17. 

Ms. Morton is continuing her publicity tour for her newest poetry book, “Little Town, Little Texas” (Spring 2013, TCU Press). Art work and poetry created by three of MHS English teacher, Corinne Thomason’s Creative Writing students were selected to be published in this upcoming book. She made a previous stop on this tour at Mansfield HS back in 2010.

Morton read some of her poetry and shared with the young writers ideas for getting their works published. She also offered thoughts and words of encouragement for the students to aspire to higher education and beyond.  

Ms. Morton loves to promote poetry and serves as a board member of the Greater Denton Arts Council, a founding member of the Denton Poets’ Assembly (part of the Poetry Society of Texas) and as a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Western Writers of America, the Writer’s League of Texas and the Academy of American Poets. In her role as Texas Poet Laureate, she created the Little Town, Texas Tour, and logged thousands of miles across Texas to take poetry and the arts into schools across Texas, focusing particularly on small towns underserved by the arts.

Karla K. Morton, the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, is a celebrated poet, author, storyteller and speaker. A Betsy Colquitt Award Winner, a two-time Indie National Book Award Winner, a Councilor-at-Large for the Poetry Society of Texas and a Foreward Book of the Year Award Finalist, she has been widely published in literary journals and is the author of six books of poetry. Morton was born in Fort Worth, graduated from Mansfield High School, holds a Journalism degree from Texas A&M University and currently resides in Denton, Texas.

The 21st Century Library

The following is a guest post written by one of the district's librarians.

Three events have occurred since the beginning of 2009 which have reinforced the concept that my library is much larger than it first appears. In January, Pam Pinkerton, the librarian at Legacy High School, shared with the secondary librarians how she has used Survey Monkey with the Legacy students to help her plan the wisest use of her dollars in purchasing books (graphic novels in particular) for her campus. I have begun using Survey Monkey with my students since then. Thank you, Pam, for reminding me of an additional application of a digital survey within the library environment.

The second event was a workshop I attended sponsored by the Education Service Center Region XI. Cindy Gray, Margie Gallagher, Deborah Jones and I spent a day with David Warlick, who reinforced my educational philosophy that we must address a new literacy, a digital literacy, a web-based literacy, as well as the traditional literacies about which we librarians have been passionate. I learned a great deal Tuesday. I have commented that “my brain is full.” As I process what I was taught I will share with my colleagues ways to incorporate this information within our schools. Thank you, Mansfield ISD, and in particular, our principals, Travis Moore , Marilyn Varner, John Williams, and Sharon Ferguson for providing the funds and the time for us to attend this valuable workshop.

The third event happened on February 24, during the monthly MISD School Board meeting. Dr. Cunningham shared with the school board the proposal to purchase the Gale Virtual Reference Library. The school board unanimously approved this purchase. For the first time since we began building additional campuses at each level we now have reference equity. Every student who has access to a computer and the Internet, be it at home, at school, on vacation, wherever, will have 24-hour access to a full authoritative reference library. All students, teachers, administrators, school board members, and their families will have access to this product. Having equity of materials in our library environment has been my dream since I opened the DJMS Library in 2004. The Danny Jones students had newer reference materials than the other middle schools. However, the other middle schools had a more extensive collection than Danny Jones. This inequity was glaring and seemingly impossible to address with our library budgets. Thank you, Dr. Cunningham, Mr. Sneed, Dr. Brubaker, and the MISD School Board for your enthusiastic support and approval of this resource.

We librarians must now undertake the task of teaching our clientele: students, teachers, administrators, instructional coordinators, families, etc., how to use the GVRL. This is a challenging undertaking. I am confident we are up to that challenge. Through the training which Gale will provide and the training which we can provide to each other we will be able to positively impact our community as we prepare our children for 21^st century life. Our biggest challenge will be equity of access; however, I am certain that the MISD school board will embrace innovative solutions to address that particular inequity. I am proud to be a librarian in the 21^st century in the Mansfield Independent School District.

Debbie Andrews
Teaching Librarian, Danny Jones Middle School