CCHS Orchestra Honored, AD of the Year, and Community Input and Participation Needed

Top Honors

David Gresko and the CCHS orchestra have been chosen to perform at the 2018 MMEA All-State Conference!  We are the only high school orchestra selected to perform.  A tremendous honor for Mr. Gresko and our students and we are incredibly proud. Congratulations to Mr. Gresko and our talented CCHS students. 

The performance is scheduled for Thursday, March 1st at the Plaza Ballroom located at the Seaport Hotel in Boston. 

Campus Advisory Committee (Student and Community Input Needed)

Arriving on the CCHS campus from Thoreau Street, a visitor is greeted by lovely vistas of a state-of-the-art facility that includes a stadium, tennis courts, and lush grass complete with a baseball diamond and a softball field. Nearing the top of the hill the beautiful, award-winning, and eco-friendly high school becomes visible. Entering from Walden Street, one is met by a parcel of land that equates to a blank canvas with enormous potential. Once complete, this signature plot of land will serve as a bookend to a majestic campus that will be enjoyed for generations.

With great excitement, the Concord Carlisle Regional School Committee (CCRSC) formed a CCHS Campus Advisory Committee (CAC) to study the current and potential future use of the school grounds.The site garnering the most interest and attention is the parcel of land with the most potential. Located on the Walden Street side of the CCHS campus (map), the recently completed remediation project leaves untapped acreage with latent potential.

The primary purpose of the CCHS facility is to serve the educational needs of our students. In addition to serving our students, the facilities are also used by various other entities, including Adult and Community Education, youth sports groups, Concord Town Meeting, and others. To maximize our investment in the facilities, we need to develop potential land-use oriented projects that will need careful analysis, planning, and implementation.

The Campus Advisory Committee is charged with studying the future use of the property, and to solicit input from Students, the Superintendent, Principals, Athletic Director, and all members of the CCHS educational community.  To this end, we welcome counsel from all interested persons.  We encourage anyone interested to bring forward their best ideas so we can leave a lasting legacy that will benefit students and community members for generations.   

CCHS Athletic Director of the Year Announces Plans for Retirement

CCHS Athletic Director Barry Haley, recently named Athletic Director of the Year, has announced his retirement effective August 2018. We are thankful for his years of dedicated service. Mr. Haley's admirable commitment to the students and the athletic program is both appreciated and commendable. We are grateful for his dedication.

Mr. Haly was selected as the CCRSD athletic director in July 2006. Prior to his current position, he worked as the athletic director at 3 Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) schools Malden Catholic, Bedford and Wakefield.

Haley has served on the Massachusetts Secondary School Athletic Directors Association(MSSDA) executive board and served as that organization's President in 1997. Since 1997 he has also served the students of the state as a member of the Board of Directors of the MIAA serving as the Association President from 2008 to 2010.

“I really enjoy the position that I’m in and I really love working with the student’s, coaches and Concord Carlisle communities but I’ve sort of reached the point in my life, that at the end of next June, I will have been in various school positions for 41 years,” 31 years as a high athletic director Haley said. “As they say, it’s time.”

Haley, a Middleton resident, started his career as a physical education teacher and athletic trainer at Malden Catholic. He has worked as the state tournament director for the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association in football, ice hockey, and boy’s lacrosse for many years and hopes to continue in that role in retirement.

Haley said one of the reasons he made his announcement at this time was to get the search process started for the next athletic director.

The process for finding a new athletic director has commenced. We are looking for three community members, ideally one from Boston, Carlisle, and Concord, and two students. CCHS coaches and staff, along with district personal will round out the committee. Dates and times of the interviews will be announced once the committee is finalized.

If interested in serving on the committee, please follow the link provided.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/N95JGJV

Parent/Teen Dialogue Night @ CCHS: January 18, 7:00pm

Dialogue Night

By Leslie Knight

When: January 18, 7-8:30 p.m.

Where: CCHS Learning Commons

I remember my high school experience vividly. I could tell you who were my teachers, what classes I liked best, the projects and papers I was most proud of, who were my friends and what we talked about, the extracurriculars I did, and how I generally felt as a high school student. So when I became a high school teacher I assumed I understood the experiences of all of my students. In graduate school, I had studied teens and how they learn. During my practicum I learned about classroom management. I had fully formed (so I thought) ideas about student discipline and know all about teens’ motivations, including why they might be late to class.

Last night Dr. Michael Thompson, during his talk “The Pressured Child” here at CCHS, shared a story from when he shadowed a high school student for a day. At one point during the day he needed to stop to use the restroom and the student he was shadowing waited for him, despite knowing s/he would be late to class. Dr. Thompson shared how comforting it was to have someone waiting for him with whom he could walk into class late.

How often had I, as a classroom teacher, admonished a student for “waiting for a friend”, making them late to my class? How easily I “judged” a student for committing a normal, everyday, human courtesy -- keeping a friend company.

In a world of social media “echo chambers” and rushed and busy lives that leave little time for real conversations, how often do we take the time to understand a situation from the perspective of the other person? How often, as adults, do we really take the time to listen to our teens and try to see the world through their eyes? How often do we assume we understand everything they’re facing because, after all, we were once high school students ourselves? If we don’t carve out the time to listen and to share our own vantage points, while not in the middle of a crisis, neither us nor our children will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of the other.

That’s the purpose of a Dialogue Night -- create that space and time to talk, to listen, to share, and to gain perspective on someone else’s life. We know our students are stressed. According to data collected in the spring of 2016:

• 48% of students reported that a stress-related health or emotional problem caused them to miss more than one day of school in the past month.
• 52% reported that a stress-related health or emotional problem caused them to miss a social, extracurricular or recreational activity more than once in the past month.
• ~37% of students surveyed experienced exhaustion, headaches, and difficulty sleeping in the past month.

We need to better understand what the lives of our teens are really like. We need to understand what is causing them this stress so that we can help. Maybe there are coping strategies we can teach. Maybe there are changes we can make in our community. And maybe all they need to know is that we understand, we’re willing to listen, and we care.

Please join us on Thursday, January 18 from 7-8:30 in the CCHS Learning Commons for our first ever Parent Dialogue Night. Together we will watch a series of brief skits performed by CCHS actors that illustrate typical situations in the lives of our teens. Then we will debrief in small groups. So that this is a dialogue between adults and students, please consider bringing your teen as well. The event is geared towards students in grades 8-12 and parents of students in grades 6-12, You can register for the event on Eventbrite here.

This event has been inspired by our work with Challenge Success, a non-profit organization that works with schools looking to reduce student stress. For more information check out the new CCHS Challenge Success website here. There you will find photos from our first Feel Good Friday event, resources on teen stress, and our own Challenge Success blog that we’ll update with more news on our work in this area.

Two Upcoming Events at CCHS: Junior Parent Night 1/11 & Dialogue Night 1/18

Junior Parent Night
By Alison Nowicki 

Parents /Guardians and Students are invited to attend Junior Night on Thursday, January 11th starting promptly at 6:45 pm in the CCHS Auditorium.

 **Students - if you have a lot of homework or assessments that you need to study for, please do not feel pressured to come.  While there is a lot of helpful information, getting your work completed is more important.

The CCHS Guidance and Counseling Department will be conducting a series of 30-minute workshops related to the post-secondary-planning process. See the enclosed agenda for the evening with the workshops being offered. You will have the opportunity to attend three of the presentations listed.  Note that none of the programs will be given during all of the time slots, so please plan your schedule accordingly.  We hope you will find the evening informative and enjoyable.

For the agenda and list of sessions please CLICK HERE

If you unable to attend, we will post information about each session on our website.

http://www.concordcarlisle.org/

Date: January 11, 2018 6:45 pm – 8:30 pm

Venue: CCHS Rooms 241, 242, 247, 248, 256, 262

Categories: CCHS Academics, CCHS All

Dialogue Night

By Leslie Knight

When: January 18, 7-8:30 p.m.

Where: CCHS Learning Commons

I remember my high school experience vividly. I could tell you who were my teachers, what classes I liked best, the projects and papers I was most proud of, who were my friends and what we talked about, the extracurriculars I did, and how I generally felt as a high school student. So when I became a high school teacher I assumed I understood the experiences of all of my students. In graduate school, I had studied teens and how they learn. During my practicum I learned about classroom management. I had fully formed (so I thought) ideas about student discipline and know all about teens’ motivations, including why they might be late to class.

Last night Dr. Michael Thompson, during his talk “The Pressured Child” here at CCHS, shared a story from when he shadowed a high school student for a day. At one point during the day he needed to stop to use the restroom and the student he was shadowing waited for him, despite knowing s/he would be late to class. Dr. Thompson shared how comforting it was to have someone waiting for him with whom he could walk into class late.

How often had I, as a classroom teacher, admonished a student for “waiting for a friend”, making them late to my class? How easily I “judged” a student for committing a normal, everyday, human courtesy -- keeping a friend company.

In a world of social media “echo chambers” and rushed and busy lives that leave little time for real conversations, how often do we take the time to understand a situation from the perspective of the other person? How often, as adults, do we really take the time to listen to our teens and try to see the world through their eyes? How often do we assume we understand everything they’re facing because, after all, we were once high school students ourselves? If we don’t carve out the time to listen and to share our own vantage points, while not in the middle of a crisis, neither us nor our children will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of the other.

That’s the purpose of a Dialogue Night -- create that space and time to talk, to listen, to share, and to gain perspective on someone else’s life. We know our students are stressed. According to data collected in the spring of 2016:

• 48% of students reported that a stress-related health or emotional problem caused them to miss more than one day of school in the past month.
• 52% reported that a stress-related health or emotional problem caused them to miss a social, extracurricular or recreational activity more than once in the past month.
• ~37% of students surveyed experienced exhaustion, headaches, and difficulty sleeping in the past month.

We need to better understand what the lives of our teens are really like. We need to understand what is causing them this stress so that we can help. Maybe there are coping strategies we can teach. Maybe there are changes we can make in our community. And maybe all they need to know is that we understand, we’re willing to listen, and we care.

Please join us on Thursday, January 18 from 7-8:30 in the CCHS Learning Commons for our first ever Parent Dialogue Night. Together we will watch a series of brief skits performed by CCHS actors that illustrate typical situations in the lives of our teens. Then we will debrief in small groups. So that this is a dialogue between adults and students, please consider bringing your teen as well. The event is geared towards students in grades 8-12 and parents of students in grades 6-12, You can register for the event on Eventbrite here.

This event has been inspired by our work with Challenge Success, a non-profit organization that works with schools looking to reduce student stress. For more information check out the new CCHS Challenge Success website here. There you will find photos from our first Feel Good Friday event, resources on teen stress, and our own Challenge Success blog that we’ll update with more news on our work in this area.