News-To-You, December 2007
by Mary Hoien
November 21, 2007
News to You
NORFOLK PUBLIC SCHOOLS
The mission of the Norfolk Public Schools is to equip all students to success in a complex changing world.
Volume XXXX-2
December 2007
FROM
THE DESK OF THE SUPERINTENDENT
“Why go to school?” It is a question that we need to reflect upon as an educational community because the answer helps us determine direction for a school district – by defining the purpose of school. We all went to school, thus we all have an idea of what it was like, what we enjoyed about it, how successful the experience was in preparing us to be successful in life, and what we think school should be like for our own children and grandchildren. It can be difficult for us to think of school in a different way because we have all had the experience. However, times really have changed, and the demands of preparing students are drastically different now than even 10 years ago. For example, technology pervades almost every aspect of life and students are able to connect in ways that didn’t exist just a few years ago; providing powerful tools that allow us to learn more effectively.
A recent editorial in the Norfolk Daily News (November 6, 2007) entitled, “It’s about more than buildings,” presented the idea that students have different needs today and the old model of education that emphasized memorization and accumulation of information is not good preparation for the global society our students will join. The Norfolk Chamber of Commerce is supporting an Education/Business/Workforce Taskforce with the goal of bringing business, education, and economic development together to address current and future education and workforce needs. The school district is very appreciative of this leadership and recognition of the need to rethink school and to have these important conversations about how we are preparing our students.
The Board of Education for the Norfolk District has directed our staff to have the conversation about shifting past traditional educational practices and focusing on preparing all students to be successful with the necessary 21st century skills. We want those conversations to be held with our students, our teachers, parents, business leaders, and community members to help us define what learning is needed for the 21st century. In the near future, we will be sending out an invitation asking for participation in these discussions and I hope you will consider joining us.
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At this special
time of year, we express our heartfelt thanks
for the contributions each of you make
to the success
of the school district.
Best wishes to you and your family for a joyous holiday
season
and a happy new
year.
Marlene Uhing, Superintendent
Norfolk Public Schools
Foundation
FOUNDATION FACTS
Pam Handke, Executive Director
Thank you to the following NPS
Staff members who have made a contribution to the Foundation since
June of 2007. These gifts provide support for our grants
program, the Future Educator Scholarship Fund and other Foundation
activities.
Central Office
Sue Burns
Dan DePasquale
Mark Claussen
Diane Ellenberger
Syd Gardels
Tim Goede
Pam Handke
Diane Hledik
Brenda Kimes
Kathy Mizner
Mark Nelson
Marlene Uhing
Veryle Winter
Doug Witte
Jefferson
Julie Curry
Roxanne Gomez
Jo Roberts
Judy Sovereign
Washington
Bob Hastings
Sherry Johnson
Brenda Oswald
Anita Theophilus
Middle School
Jenny Bayer
Denise Bender
Cindy Gipson
Mike Hart
Deb Navraril
Matt Skiff
Bruce Strong
Julie Wisch
Bel Air
Michelle Anderson
Deb Buresh
Deb Cover
Pat Dodson
Connie Haglund
Tim Kwapnioski
Lisa Walters
Diane Wells
Northern Hills
Marlene Blakeman
Trudie DePasquale
Barb Wittgow
Winter
Janis
Jensen
Senior High
Dale Coan
John Furrow
Nancy Jacobs
Kent Lawson
Dennis Miller
Steve Morton
Bill Robinson
Kathy Steinkamp
Mary Whealy
Grant
Lynn Baker
ChadBoyer
Lori Lundy
ShariThelan
Sunny Meadow
Anne
Darnall
Westside
Wendy Clayton
Jennifer Drahota
Kathy Farlee
Mary Ann Pavlik
Nancy Woeppel
Junior High
Jane Brockman
Lisa Echtenkamp
Sharon Erickson
Kyle Fletcher
Dorothy Fuller
Brent Gatzemeyer
Deb Holland
Peg Machmuller
Ginger Powell
Jennifer Robinson
Dawn Stange
Rita Sukup
Carolyn Swanson
Leann Widhalm
David Wright
Pam Wright
Montessori
Jill Marsden
Joan Olenich
Julie Shoemaker
Gretchen Vanness
Woodland Park
Scott Dodson
Angie Hausmann
Lorraine Jones
Board of
Directors
Welcome to Jerry Ries,
Elkhorn Valley Bank, and Pat Hughes, Midwest Bank, who have
recently joined our board.
Scholarships
The family of Ted Toay, NHS
Class of 1959, has requested that memorials be directed to the
Norfolk Public Schools Foundation. These gifts will be added
to the current Linda Lanman Toay Scholarship Fund and the
scholarship will be renamed the Ted and Linda Lanman Toay
Scholarship.
Memorials for Edna Saltonstall, NHS Class of 1930 and longtime educator, have been designated to fund a Future Educator Scholarship to be awarded to a 2008 NHS graduate who plans to enter the field of education. Thank you to both families for supporting the Foundation through these memorial gifts.
How
to “Behave” with ADD/ADHD
Through the years we have all sat through numerous SAT meetings, MDT’s and other discussions involving students. In many of these meetings, it has been brought to our attention by a parent that their child has been diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder). Teachers also have brought up the idea that a student might have ADD or ADHD. Whenever this has been mentioned, I have always wondered how best we can help these students. Also, do we know as much about ADD/ADHD as we should?
Past research led us to believe that ADD and ADHD was a behavior disorder. Parents and teachers could easily spot the student that had trouble paying attention or sitting still in their seat. These students often times were chronically inattentive, restless and impulsive in the classroom and the playground. Many times we thought of the problem as being a lack of will power by the student. And we have come up with a variety of ways to try to help these students out. We have written directions on the board for them to see if they didn’t get them the first time and we have also given them visual cues on their desks to remind them about classroom procedures, to name a few. And in many cases, these ideas were not successful. What research is now saying about ADD/ADHD is that it is not a behavior disorder. The new model of ADD/ADHD is considered a developmental impairment of executive functions.
These executive functions work together in various combinations. They are listed below:
1)
Activation: organizing, prioritizing and activating for work.
2) Focus: focusing, sustaining and shifting attention to
tasks.
3) Effort: regulating alertness and sustaining effort and
processing speed.
4) Emotion: managing frustration and modulating emotions.
5) Memory: using working memory and accessing recall.
6) Action: monitoring and self-regulating action. *(Brown,
2007)
In daily life,
these combinations of executive functions operate, often without
our conscious involvement, in integrated and dynamic ways to
accomplish a wide variety of tasks. They do not continually
work at peak efficiency for any of us. Everyone has
difficulty with some of them from time to time. However,
those diagnosed with ADD and ADHD are substantially more impaired
in their ability to use these executive functions than are most
other people of the same age and developmental level.
ADD and ADHD have often been seen as an all-or-nothing
concept. Diagnosing these areas is more like distinguishing
depression from normal fluctuations in mood. Although
everyone feels sad from time to time, treating someone for
depression only makes sense when they are significantly impaired by
depressive symptoms over a substantial period of time.
Similarly, the diagnosis of ADD/ADHD is not warranted for people
who have occasional difficulty with the relevant symptoms but
rather for those who are significantly impaired by the various
combinations of executive functions over a longer period of
time.
Many times we have discussions on students where we describe their behavior as lacking effort or focus. We must start to see that students need to have a combination of various executive functions and these must be seen over a period of time for it to truly be an ADD/ADHD issue. Doctors must also start to realize these differences as well. I think we tend to make decisions on students after only observing their behavior for a short period of time. We must also understand that three specific groups of students with ADD/ADHD tend to be overlooked: bright students, female students and students under stress. Adults often think that very bright students who underachieve are lazy. The assumption being that one cannot be bright and, at the same time, have significant ADD/ADHD impairments. Research has found that individuals with ADD/ADHD can be found at all IQ levels. Female students with ADD/ADHD may be difficult to spot because they generally don’t call attention to themselves with their behavior. *(Brown, 2007) Adults often explain away the achievement problems of students from families with multiple stressors such as divorce, unemployment, poverty and multiple relocations. Teachers may assume that poor achievement is just the student’s reaction to these difficulties. They may not realize that ADD is more common in families under stress.
Being able to
identify students with ADD is important because appropriate
interventions can help a student from becoming demoralized by
repeated experiences of frustration and failure. With
appropriate intervention, most students with ADD/ADHD can achieve
at the level of their abilities.
ADD: The Myths, the Facts
Myth: ADD is just a lack of will power. People with ADD focus well on things that interest them; they could focus on any other tasks if they really wanted to.
Fact: ADD looks like a willpower problem, but it isn’t. It’s a chemical problem in the management of the brain.
Myth: ADD is a simple problem of being hyperactive or not listening when someone is talking to you.
Fact: ADD is a complex disorder that involves impairments in focus, organization, motivation, emotional modulation, memory and other functions of the brain’s management system.
Myth: ADD is simply a label for behavior problems; children with ADD just refuse to sit still and are unwilling to listen to teachers or parents.
Fact: Many people with ADD have few behavior problems. Chronic inattention symptoms may cause more severe and longer-lasting problems in learning and relationships for those with ADD than behavior problems do.
Myth: Those who have ADD as children usually outgrow it as they enter their teens.
Fact: Often ADD impairments are not noticeable until the teen years, when more self-management is required in school and elsewhere. ADD may be subtle but more disabling during adolescence than in childhood.
Myth: Unless you have been diagnosed with ADD as a child, you can’t have it as an adult.
Fact: Many
adults have struggled all their lives with unrecognized ADD
impairments. They haven’t received help because they have
assumed that their chronic difficulties, such as depression or
anxiety, were caused by other impairments that did not respond to
usual treatments.
*Thomas Brown-“A
New Approach to Attention Deficit Disorder,” Educational
Leadership-Summer 2007/Volume 64
Submitted by Cory Worrell, Principal
Lincoln Elementary School
