Community Update: Monday, September 5

Monday, September 5, 2016

Dear Advanced Learning Academy Families,

I hope to highlight one aspect of what teaching and learning looks like at our new school in each of my community updates throughout the school year, highlighting different grade-levels and projects to give families a broader understanding of the school across all years. Today, I am happy to share that the task of naming our school has begun! Last week, in our 6th-10th grade students’ Humanities course (English & Social Studies), students were introduced to this essential question: Who are we and how can we, as a community, name our school? Students responded to the charge by investigating personal and collective identity. They created personal identity maps, analyzed and wrote multi-draft “Where I’m From” poems, and created a large concept map on one wall in our commons area that illustrates multiple migration streams to Advanced Learning Academy. To understand the language of migration, students were challenged to inductively learn terms such as voluntary and involuntary migration and push and pull factors and to demonstrate their mastery in creative ways. The project, aptly titled The No Name Project, will continue for several days and will culminate with student presentations and proposals for possible names.  

This week we have several parent and community events to share with you. Our K-3 campus will be holding Village Orientation Parent Meetings this week.  Below are the dates/times for each village

Village A: Tuesday, September 6th from 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Village B: Wednesday, September 7th from 5:30-6:30 p.m.

Village C:  Thursday, September 8th from 5:30-6:30 p.m.  

We will be holding additional orientation meetings later in the month for our 4th-10th grade families as well.  

On Wednesday, September 7, we will officially and formally open the new school year at our very first Advanced Learning Academy Opening Ceremony. Families are invited to attend Opening Ceremony beginning at 10:10 am in the Fox Tech campus amphitheater. Due to limited parking, we recommend that you arrive on campus no later than 9:30 a.m. to give you plenty of time to find a parking spot, check in at the Fox Tech main office for a visitor’s pass, and get settled in the amphitheater. The Opening Ceremony will include remarks from several community partners and the reading of an original poem by Jenny Browne, San Antonio’s Poet Laureate. All of our students, including those from ALA on Euclid, will be in attendance.

The following evening, the celebrations continue as the campus participates in the San Pedro Creek Ribbon Cutting. We would like to invite all Advanced Learning Academy students, parents, and friends to the San Pedro Creek Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on September 8th, 2016, at 5:15 p.m. We are excited to join our mayor, city leaders, the county, the San Antonio River Authority, the San Antonio Opera and many others for this ground-breaking event. In order to celebrate this occasion, we will meet in the Fox Tech mall area for coffee and cookies to assemble a parade of our students, our teachers, our campus leaders, and our amazing mariachis and band students who will lead a parade to the Fox Tech football field. At this event, our school will be highlighted and introduced by our city leaders as a spotlight on education in SAISD. We are both honored and excited to be a part of this celebration and to be highlighted in such a special way by our district, the county, and the city of San Antonio. All students in attendance will receive a free Advanced Learning Academy t-shirt to wear as we march to the football field!  We will also have extra t-shirts on hand for any K-3 Village C families who join us after their orientation meeting. More information about the event and the opera that will be performed can be found HERE. We hope to see many of you there!

Finally, we have tentatively scheduled an Advanced Learning Academy PTA meeting on Wednesday, September 28 at 6:00 p.m. at our Fox Tech campus.  We are working closely with the SAISD Council of PTAs to create our new chapter. Please look for more details in an upcoming message as well as ways to be involved.

Sincerely,

Kathy Bieser and the ALA Faculty/Staff