THE CHALKBOARD: A bountiful harvest at Valley Vista

Valley Vista is growing. It’s garden is thriving and the outdoor learning spaces are full of activity and fun, shares principal Catina Haugen. Haugen, along with a team of fifth-grade students, harvested, cleaned and prepared salad for all 325 Viking students this week. Six different salad greens, dandelion greens and spinach, along with purple kohlrabi, cherry tomatoes and Armenian cucumber were served. “With the warm weather, we may squeeze in another Valley Vista-grown garden salad before fall really arrives,” says Haugen. The renovated garden classroom and new hillside classroom are full of activities of all kinds. Students do buddy reading, writing and hear “read alouds” to name a few of the mobile learning opportunities.

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La Tercera Elementary School has been busy making big changes on campus to create new learning opportunities for students in transitional kindergarten through sixth grades. La Tercera received a $5,000 Student Achievement Grant from the National Education Association Foundation. According to principal Michele Crncich Hodge, these funds will be utilized to continue to grow learning spaces in the school garden area. The La Tercera garden went through a complete transformation this summer thanks to the efforts of teacher Kari Sampietro and other community volunteers. The grant, written by Kristy Corbett, teacher on special assignment, will create a literature connection to the garden by developing a garden themed read-aloud library, supplying journals/sketchbooks to all students to capture thoughts and images, and providing materials to create student murals. “This will support our goal to develop learning experiences that provide opportunities for students to be engaged in their learning,” said Hodge. Connecting lessons to the real world drives students’ interest, engagement and retention. That is what Hodge expects to see as a result of this collaborative effort of continually evolving learning stations, in keeping with the school’s design of thinking to answer how does the campus make STEM its academic identity?

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Sonoma Mountain Elementary School has had a busy week as the east-side campus celebrated the school’s Harvest Festival on Sept. 23 complete with family fun and games, raffles, cotton candy, balloon art, face painting and much more. The students and their families had a wonderful afternoon and evening building community on their campus while enjoying the incredible weather during our region’s harvest season.

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On Tuesday of this week, the Sonoma Mountain student body welcomed New York Times bestselling writer and illustrator Ed Vere to share how he brings his “Max” stories (Max the Brave and Max at Night) to life, and hear how he creates the colorful graphics for these brightly designed children’s books. The most recent book in the “Max” series is Max and the Bird.

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Wilson School Wildcat classes do a song or poem at the campus’ weekly assembly. Last Monday, superintendent/principal Eric Hoppes had the sixth-grade class perform the National Anthem for the rest of the school. “It was very moving to have the whole school standing and learning about patriot observances. Our music director, Babette Dennis, teaches a variety of patriotic and classic Americana songs to the kids. Each class then performs for the whole school some time during the school year. It is very special and a wonderful opportunity for every student to participate,” said Hoppes.

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Congratulations to the St. Vincent High School debate team. Two students, Julia Hunter and Colin Birkenstock, earned places in the quarterfinal competition at the recent Greenhill Invitational in Dallas. This finish sets a new record for SV, beating the mark set by one of the competitors, Hunter, and her partner last year. Hunter also earned seventh among the best debaters in the country. This year, Hunter has been paired with Birkenstock, and it looks like they are bound to make their own mark in the high school debating world with this strong start to the season.

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(Maureen Highland is a Petaluma mother and executive director for the Petaluma Educational Foundation. She can be reached at schools@ar guscourier.com)