Thursday, April 24, 2014

Extending the School Year

York Public Schools is proud to offer numerous ways to "extend the school year" for many of our students. We feel it is important for numerous children to stay academically engaged throughout June and July in an attempt to minimize the "loss" of academic knowledge/skills over the summer.

We are hosting six "Summer Learning Academies" the week of June 9th-13th. Please visit www.yorkpublic.org to see academy descriptions and to access a registration form. We have everything from a cooking class that focuses on fractions to an iMovie creation course to science-heavy courses dealing with plants and forensics! We're also offering two art courses for 6th-12th graders. Please check out our "Summer Learning Academy" offerings!

Our BOOST and ALL-STARS programs will run from 8:00 AM to Noon from June 2nd-July 11th. These summer offerings are an extension of our grant-funded after-school program that runs at YES/YMS throughout the school year.

We also have 10 students attending some "Bright Lights" courses in Lincoln the week of June 16-20. Add to this, our "Summer Reading Program" run by Title I staff on Tuesdays at YES, Credit Recovery Summer School at the Enrichment Center in June, and all of the SPED and Family Foundations offerings we provide all summer and you will see that YPS remains very busy in June and July.

Have an awesome week. GO DUKES!

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

What's on the INSIDE?

From an unknown author....

A man was exploring caves by the seashore. In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake. They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man so he took the bag out of the cave with him.

As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could. He thought little about it until he dropped one of the balls and it cracked open on a rock. Inside was a beautiful, precious stone.

Excited the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure.

He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left. Then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves. Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he just threw it away.

It's like that with people. We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel. It doesn't look like much from the outside. It isn't always beautiful or sparkling so we discount it. We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy. But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.

There is a treasure in each and every one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth. May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

York Dukes Recognized for State Fair Prowess

Four YHS and one YMS students were recognized at the State Capitol in Lincoln in March for earning first place awards in display competitions during the 2013 State Fair. During their day at the Capitol they attended a press conference with the Committee for the 150th Celebration for NE Statehood coming up in 2017. The students meet with the Speaker of the House, Greg Adams, and watched the legislature in session and were introduced to the legislature. They also took a specially guided tour of the Capital Building. Finally, they had a meeting with Governor Heineman.

Honorees were:

* Nicole Mittman, 8th grade, overall art award, Middle school sweepstakes winner
* Lauren Clark, 11th grade, overall essay award
* John Fletcher, 12th grade, 1st place Improv Team accepting award for YHS being a sweepstakes winner as a school
* Will Tietmeyer, 12th grade
* Kalon Beeson, 11th grade

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

YMS Excels at the Nebraska State Science Olympiad

The Nebraska State Science Olympiad was held on Saturday, March 29, 2014 at UNL’s East Campus. York Middle School competed in the B Division which is open to 6th, 7th and 8th graders across the state of Nebraska.

YMS entered into the following events:

CRIME BUSTERS - Erika Hinz & Kinsley Flynt participated in this category where they were given a scenario, a collection of evidence and possible suspects and students had to perform a series of tests to solve the crime.

HELICOPTERS: Luke Stuckey & Mason Linder had to design, construct and test free flight rubber-powered helicopters to achieve maximum time aloft.

ROAD SCHOLAR: Simon Otte & Nick Weskamp earned 5th place by answering interpretive questions that use one or more state highway maps, USGS topographic maps, a road atlas or satellite/ aerial images.

ROTOR EGG DROP: Lauren Riley & Nicole Mittman earned 3rd place as they constructed an unpowered, autorotation helicopter device, which uses one or more helicopter rotors to safely transport a raw chicken egg from a specified height to the floor.

SOUNDS OF MUSIC: Holly Rockenbach & Ann Magner won 1st place as they built two instruments based on a 12 tone tempered scale, prepare to describe principles behind their operation and be able to perform a major scale, required and chosen melody with each.

WRITE IT/DO IT: Ally Warneke & Nicole Mittman won 1st place as one student wrote a description of an object and how to build it and then the other student attempted to construct the object from this description.

QUIZ BOWL: Simon Otte earned 3rd place as each school could have one student to answer questions.

Sponsoring Organizations were University of Nebraska - Lincoln: College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Center for Science, Mathematics, and Computer Education, Nebraska Association of Teachers of Science, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium, ESU #10 & #16.

All in all, 26 different events were offered. York Middle School entered into 7 different events and brought home five medals with two 1st places, two 3rd places, and one 5th place.

YMS Science Olympiad Sponsor, Pam Petersen, had this to say about York Middle School’s team participating in this event for the first time, “I was amazed that we did so well. I told the kids that I would be ecstatic if we placed in one event! Holly & Ann's instruments were amazing and were a group effort with the help of our shop teacher Jason Hirschfeld and other experts in the musical field. There were over 700 students from across the state there to compete. Some schools have actual classes to prepare students for this competition. The top team overall gets to compete at Nationals - this year in Orlando Florida. Our students are very talented in many ways and are part of plays, sports, and weight lifting; which limits their time to spend on Science Olympiad.”