August: Coachella Valley Adult School had one of its most successful first days of school, in my 7 seven years as the site administrator.

Coachella Valley Adult School Accomplishments:

Coachella Valley Adult School had one of its most successful first days of school, in my 7 seven years as the site administrator.  On day one we enrolled over 200 new students, which is in addition to all of our current pre-enrolled students.  Many of our office staff members worked 12 hours a days to meet the demand.  We are set to exceed all past enrollment records.  Last school year we served over 3000 students.       

 This week we hired our second full-time Alternative Education Transition Specialist.  This position will fill an important gap in our ability to assist our student with their transition to the workforce, and/or postsecondary education or training. 

 n an effort to track and monitor student achievement, Coachella Valley Adult School CASAS tests all students on day one of their enrollment and after every 40 hours of attendance.  This is an important instructional tool but can become a tedious task for students and teachers.  During our welcome back staff meeting we held a collaboration event called Making CASAS Testing Fun.  During this event we came up with the following school wide strategies:

• Student Raffle: Every time a student takes a CASAS test they get a raffle ticket.  If they move up an academic level on their test they get 2 tickets.  Awards and prizes are being donated from local restaurants, movie theaters, International Tramway,  Disneyland, and other theme parks.
• Teacher Raffle: Every time a student moves up an academic level the teacher gets their name in a raffle for similar prizes and free online professional development classes from our online course list from Ed-to GO https://www.ed2go.com/coachella/.
• Certificates: Every time a student moves up a level on their CASAS Test they will receive a special CASAS Achievement Certificate . 
• Wall of Champions: Students who move up a level will get their picture taken with their CASAS Achievement Certificate and be posted on the teachers Wall of Champions bulletin board.      

*We will track student engagement levels thru formal and informal surveys.

Upcoming Events:

On 8/23/17 Coachella Valley Adult School will be holding its EL Civics planning meeting.  During this meeting staff, and students will collaborate to choose 4 Civics participation objectives to imbed into our ESL class lessons.  This program connects literacy to the lives of learners and reflects their experiences as community members, parents and participants in the workforce. Through these programs, adults understand and deal with social issues through community research projects, collecting and analyzing information, and interpreting findings in ways that connect school-based learning with personal knowledge and community experience

On 8/23/17 Coachella Valley Adult School and Independent Study Program will be hosting a first annual Alternative Education Strategies Meeting.  The goal of this meeting will be to brainstorms and collaborate on additional options and strategies to assist at risk (I like to say, at promise) CVUSD students to successfully graduate from high school.