Come join us in the AB connector between 12:30 – 1:15 pm!

TSL and Lincoln-Sudbury (PDF)

The Jean Lind Teen Center (JLTC) is holding its annual contest for all Lincoln and Sudbury Students who will be attending Lincoln Sudbury Regional High School next fall.

The JLTC produces the L-S directory each year and this year we would like to put YOUR artwork on the cover. All interested students should submit their drawing (pencil or ink) on 8.5 X 11 paper by July 13^th to Marcy Wilkins at 34 Meadow Drive Sudbury, MA  01776.  Include your name, grade for the 2012-2013 school year, address and a phone number where we can contact you. Any questions, please contact Marcy Wilkins at:  Marcy@Wilkins.cc or 978-579-7939.

CLASS OF 2012 EVENTS

My Town Meeting presentation and my Superintendent’s Report can be found on the L-S School Committee website.

Please download the detailed schedule as class sessions have been rearranged to accommodate the testing.

MCAS Math May 2012

If you find an error or problem on the website, please report it by clicking here.

The end of our school day on Friday found Science teachers Doug Grant, BJ Pegram, and Caroline Singler hosting a National Ocean Science Bowl scrimmage with the Marine Academy of Science and Technology from Highlands, New Jersey.  This New Jersey team drove 250 miles just to spar against another nationally competitive team.  It was exciting to watch students from these two schools battle back and forth demonstrating their grasp of the sciences.  After the scrimmage, Lincoln-Sudbury parents provided a potluck dinner for the two teams.  Students from the two schools intermingled in their seating and conversations at dinner, making the scrimmage a success on many levels.

Friday evening, I took my second grade daughter to watch the L-S Girls Basketball team play Boston Latin in our gymnasium.  Both parents and students were on hand to cheer on the teams.  Our JV girls prevailed in an adrenaline-filled overtime win.  At halftime of the varsity game, the L-S Dance Troupe entertained the spectators.  Under the tutelage of a parent advisor, the dancers harmonized years of individual practice into a synchronous team performance.  After buying a piece of candy from the parent-run basketball concession, my daughter exclaimed that between the game’s excitement, the dancing, and the candy it was becoming “the best night ever!”  When our varsity girls finally put away Boston Latin in the second half, her evening was complete.

Before driving home for the evening, we stopped by the L-S cafeteria to catch the end of the 9^th Annual Steven Richard Memorial Scholarship Rock Concert.  Eleven student rock bands entertained a crowd, there for the music and the atmosphere.  The supervision and support of teachers Ann Kramer, Tracie Lopez, Susan Frommer, Matt Wentworth, Housemaster Eleanor Burke, and a few parents made for a smooth evening that raised nearly a thousand dollars towards this L-S scholarship.

When I returned to Lincoln-Sudbury early Saturday morning, Instrumental Music teacher Tom Grandprey was ushering 23 Lincoln-Sudbury concert band, jazz band, orchestra, and chorus students onto a bus to attend the second day of the Eastern District Senior Music Festival.  The previous day, Choral teacher Mike Bunting chaperoned our students to “Districts,” which brings together the best high school musical talent in the Boston area to perform under collegiate conductors.  Many parents travelled to Boston Latin to watch the performances, and many parents also chose to support our music program by contributing to the Friends of Music.  At the conclusion of “Districts,” fifteen of our 23 musicians students received recommendations to audition for the Massachusetts All State Music Ensembles.

As the busload of students drove off to “Districts,” I was heading to Northeastern University with Tech Ed teacher Paul Shultz, two parent chaperones, and three vehicles full of students.  We were attending the annual robotics competition kick-off for FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).  Under the guidance of Mr. Shultz and the support of some area engineers, the robotics team will spend the next six weeks designing and building a robot tasked with collecting and shooting basketballs in an arena filled with obstacles.

For some, Sunday is a day of rest.  For FATA teacher Paul Sarapas, Sunday morning provided time to connect with student actors, directors, and set designers while filming segments of this year’s winter theatrical production – a montage of comedy sketches that will pay tribute to icons like Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers, Jackie Gleason, and Lucille Ball.  The fifteen students he worked with Sunday morning represent only a third of the final production’s student ensemble.  Parents through the Friends of LSB Players help support this and all theatrical productions at the high school.

This is just a sampling of one weekend’s happenings at Lincoln-Sudbury, but hopefully it allows you to experience the flavor of the many extracurricular endeavors available to our high school students.  We are the town center of teen life.  Whether a student’s interests are academic, athletic, artistic, or musical, there is something here for each individual.

An important thread throughout this weekend’s snapshot was the ever-present parent support that helps maintain such a diverse menu of extracurricular opportunities.  Support may be your presence or a non-monetary contribution towards making an event successful.  Support may simply be paying the voluntary $60 Activity Fee per student.  Throughout this weekend, parents hosted a dinner, provided transportation to a venue, ran concessions at a game and dance, cheered on athletes and musicians as part of an assembled crowd, and financially supported programs.  Your contributions make a difference and help Lincoln-Sudbury be the town center for our teens.

Thank you.

Scott

My week in Germany centered on an immersion in the German educational system.  I visited both public and private secondary schools, a university, and a technical academy run by a global corporation.  Americans and Germans may speak a different language, but we both want the best for our children and want them prepared to succeed in the world today.  An ocean and 3600 miles may separate us, but our educational systems face similar challenges and are pushing forward similar educational reforms in hopes of elevating student performance.  There are also some clear differences between our educational systems.  The US model offers more opportunities for students with learning differences and for those who are “late bloomers,” while the German system excels at having business directly involved in preparing the workforce of the future.

The experience in Germany that most resonated with me was a visit to the Siemens Technik Akademie Berlin.  German students out of secondary school have an option to apply to Siemens, a multinational electronics and electrical engineering conglomerate, in hopes of entering the company’s Technical Academy.  This model isn’t unique to Siemens – it happens throughout Germany, where businesses and corporations successfully prepare their future workforce by training students exiting secondary schools in a variety of technically skilled fields.

Siemens covers student’s cost for attending their academy.  The company also pays its students a modest living wage, and provides students the option to come out of this experience with a BA in Electrical Engineering.  More importantly, Siemens employs the students when they finish the academy.  This German model seems rather appealing when you consider that students in the US may leave college with $100 thousand debt in student loans just hoping to find gainful employment.

What I most appreciated about Siemens Technical Academy is how they were preparing students for exactly what the company needed.  The academy’s curriculum is constantly updated to meet their current industrial needs, with 25% of course material being revised or refreshed each year.  The approach to science and engineering is “hands-on,” reinforcing theoretical knowledge with real-world experiences.  Teamwork is emphasized, as was “handlungskompetenz” a uniquely German word referring to the special combination of knowledge, skill, and interpersonal behavior that prepares adults to succeed in a work environment.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Siemens Technical Academy was their push to prepare students for the global workplace through world language instruction.  Courses at the academy are taught exclusively in English.  The students present their research in English to their instructors, engineers, and visitors.  The fluency of the Siemens second-year students and their ability to converse with me in English about their projects was amazing.  These students are truly ready for the global workplace.

Lincoln-Sudbury students, who progress through our world language sequence to senior year, gain facility with a second language, but most don’t graduate from LS with an immersion experience to help hone their skills anywhere comparable to the immersion in English the Siemens Technical Academy students are receiving.  The Germans clearly see English as the language of an international business environment and are preparing their next generation to succeed in today’s global economy.  Is the US educational system doing the same?

I don’t speak German and meandered around Berlin like the archetypical American tourist, assuming that people I’d encounter would speak enough English to enable me to navigate my way around the city.  My handful of German phrases didn’t leave me with the confidence to conquer the city.  I was only able to get by because the Berliners, who so welcomed me, never pushed me out of my comfort zone by forcing me to “spreche Deutsch.”

The big take home message from my trip to Germany is that we can’t let our children become linguistically complacent.  We live in a world that through technology and air travel is becoming increasingly interconnected. Speaking English as a mother tongue doesn’t mean that our children are better prepared to succeed in today’s English dominated global economy.  Sensitivity to a foreign partner’s culture and facility in their native language are the subtle factors that differentiate those simply able to meander through the global economy versus those best prepared to conquer it.

Part of the “handlungskompetenz” that needs to be promoted in our youth is the importance of multilingualism.  We need to instill in our children an expectation that they will become fluent in another language.  Learning about and using world languages shouldn’t stop after high school.  Language acquisition is a skill that needs to be honed.  Just as Siemens Technical Academy is immersing their students in English, we need to foster more immersion experiences to push our children out of their English-speaking comfort zones so that are equally prepared to excel in today’s global economy.

What I took home from my “German exchange” is a commitment to send my own children abroad.  If we want to better prepare our children for an interconnected world, sending them abroad for an immersion experience before they graduate from college may be an invaluable investment in their future.

-Scott

Scott Carpenter

Superintendent/Principal

One of the special aspects of Senior Dress-Up Day at Lincoln-Sudbury is that it provides a stage for many to take a risk and express their creativity. Each year we preview the skits that will perform in the gym during ACA Block. As I watched this year’s previews of the senior’s skits with members of the Senior Steering Committee, I was impressed by the time and energy so many put into their choreography. The skits were fun to watch, and the choreography pushed many outside of their comfort zone. Like an LSB Players production, what I most enjoyed was seeing so many of our seniors preparing to boldly take the “stage” before their peers in this uniquely L-S event.

With confidence one can do amazing things.

The next meeting is Wednesday, October 19th (7:30 LS Cafeteria) to discuss the results of ther MetroWest Adolescent Youth Health Survey and our reactions to the various statistics that came out about our children’s use of substances in school, at home and at parties.  What were we happy to see, what concerned us and what can we (as a community) to do about it?  Please join us for our meeting.  The more voices represented, the more children we can impact.

Metro West Adolescent High School 2010 Presentation

The mural was made possible through generous grants from MCC, SCC, LCC and SERF

SERF – The Sudbury Education Resources Fund is a granting source that helps bring many innovations to L-S.  The SERF Ace Awards are an excellent way to let your student’s teacher know how much their service is valued.

FELS – The Friends of Educators at Lincoln Sudbury provides grants for L-S teachers to pursue interests that spark excitement in our students when the teacher’s experiences are brought back into their classrooms.  The FELS annual Thanksgiving pie fundraiser not only enhances the offerings at your holiday table but also enriches our educators.

LSPO – The Lincoln-Sudbury Parent Organization helps support many varied aspects of student’s experiences at Lincoln-Sudbury.  They support initiatives in the classroom, in our extracurricular program, and school-wide events.

Your support and appreciation of our teachers goes a long ways in helping bolster spirits of a staff that has faced four consecutive years of layoffs.  Your support for the three organizations above is one way to help, during these challenging times.

While gifts to teachers are appreciated, please keep in mind that State Ethics laws limit gift amounts to public employees to under $50.  A $50 gift card or tickets to the Red Sox (for writing a letter of recommendation or a job well done) are nice gestures, but put the teacher in an awkward situation of returning a thank-you gift because it is excess of the Massachusetts Ethics Law limit.

As the bumper stickers say “If you can read this, thank a teacher.”  And, please consider thanking the teacher through support for SERF, FELS, and/or the LSPO.

-Scott