Good Times!

Hello!

Welcome back from the Thanksgiving Break. I hope that it was a great and restful break for everyone. With 3 weeks between now and the Holiday Break, we are looking forward to some great times upcoming! One of our biggest events of the year is the annual Toys for Tots event. This year's party is on Dec 8th in the Lakeland Aux Gym. Lakeland is known for this holiday event all across Oakland County and we are so very proud to host this event again this year. At the Toys for Tots Bowl-A-Thon we raised close to $6,000 to help us fund the party and the other events that go on around the party. This is wa HUGE amount and we had a record turnout at the bowling alley. It was awesome to see so many LHS Students and community members turnout for such a great event to help raise money for our Tots program. Congrats!

Also this week, the large portion of the Winter sports seasons start playing contests this week, and we love our winter sports here at Lakeland! Good Luck to all of the winter sports!

Well we hope you have a great week!

Mr. Scott Rolando

Giving Thanks

We are almost three months into the school year and there is a great deal to give thanks for. First off, I give thanks every day to work with the incredible staff that we have at Lakeland. Not just the teachers but every member of the team who works to make your students experience here positive.

I am thankful for the students of Lakeland High School as they are, overall, people of high values who respect why it is they are here every day. The high percentage of our student come each day on time and ready to learn. These students adhere to our policies and respect the process when something does not go right.

I am thankful that we have a parent body who understands and supports the policies of Lakeland High School and realizes that we are here every day to reinforce education for their child. It is great to have such a partnership which allows us to have a high attendance rate and students who achieve at high levels.

I am thankful for the opportunity to teach and administrate in a district that put's each students needs first and attempts to treat their staff with respect.

I wish each of your families a Happy Thanksgiving.

Helping Others

For the last couple of weeks, Lakeland High School students have been collecting can food to give to the less fortunate during this holiday day season. Led by the Leadership Class, students have amassed a nice amount of food so that others can have a holiday that befits this time of year.

The Lakeland Family Assistance program runs all year and is led by our counseling department. This program takes financial donations to assist families in our building who may be facing hard times due to the economy or other issues such as house fires, etc. During the holiday season, this program helps families have meals for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Also, it is this program that adopts families who have needs to make their holiday season complete. If you would like to adopt a family or help out financially please contact Lynne Burton at burtonl@huronvalley.k12.mi.us

Another helping opportunity is the annual Habitat for Humanity build. This experience is led by Associate Principal Marc Kay and will take place the weeks of February 21 - 28 and April 3-10. Juniors and Seniors are welcome to join in on this project but spaces are limited. If you have a student who is interested in this, please have them come to the associate principals office and ask for the registration information. Last week, Mr. Kay visited several classrooms and the National Honor Society meeting to hand out the forms and they are currently coming in to the office so act quickly.

We at Lakeland make volunteering and helping others a priority. Please join us in celebrating all of these opportunities.

Be The Change supports Lakeland's Caring Community

In an effort to help educate our students on the importance of being positive members of a community, Lakeland High School continues to push the Caring Community Initiative. While the staff driven portion of the initiative is valuable and can make a difference with students, a real impact is going to be made by student initiatives. One great example of student looking to positively impact LHS is the Be The Change club. This group of students is sponsored by English teacher Ms. Piagentini. Currently, the group is creating a gratitude tree outside the LHS main office. This tress is being filled with leaves that express all of the things LHS students are grateful for. Each day in the lunchroom, Be The Change students are having students fill out leaves that start with the phrase "I'm grateful for..." It has been really neat to watch the tree grow each day. A big pat on the back to the Be The Change club!!

Interventions for Your Student

At Lakeland we make sure that there are several ways for our students to achieve. If your student is struggling in any way we have so many excellent options so that they can make sure that they are on track for graduation at all times. These options include:

1. Meet with their teacher. This is always the best way for students to get help. They may have to stay after school but we have an amazing staff who is willing to stay with their students.
2. Writing Center- This is open every day during lunch for students to come in and work on their writing from any class. They work with trained peer editors to assist in making their papers a great product.
3. Math Center- The math lab is open on two afternoons a week and during seminar on Wednesday. This center is staffed by Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Gilmore along with several students. They are there for any level of math assistance.
4. National Honor Society Tutoring- NHS students are available Tuesdays during lunch, Wednesdays during Seminar and Thursdays after school. All students have to do is sign up outside the Career Center. This is a great opportunity for students to get help from other students in any subject for which they need assistance.

We have other excellent interventions as well which will be spoken of in future blogs. The key is that LHS students are fortunate to have many different ways to get the assistance they need for their academics. Please discuss these with your student when they are in need of help so they can get the best grades possible.

Career Day...What a Success

Today, all the juniors enjoyed an experience going to sessions with speakers in areas in which they might be interested in for their future. Watching our students interacting, asking questions and thinking about their futures was in a word, awesome. One of the most amazing sights to be seen was at the end of one of the sessions when each and every student in the room walked by each of the panel members, shook their hands and thanked them. This is what Lakeland represents: a community where our students appreciate those people who look out for them and who are willing to give thanks for these people. Lakeland is full of amazing young people who often do not get the credit they deserve because of perceptions of teenagers or of foolish nicknames for our school. I am proud each and every day of these students who want to succeed and who represent their generation with pride. We should all be proud of our students each and every day.

I want to acknowledge our school to work director, Jenny Alfano, who put together this amazing program. It is the dedication of Ms. Alfano that ensures that our students are aware of the opportunities in their future. She deserves our thanks and if our student came home and told about today feel free to email her at alfanoj@huronvalley.k12.mi.us and thank her for putting your students future first.

Veterans Day Ceremony a HUGE Success!

On this special day, I wanted to take a moment to recognize the tremendous job Brian Howe and his students did in putting on the 5th annual Veterans Day Ceremony. This years ceremony was the biggest yet, with 47 local veterans and 600 plus students in attendance. I would also like to extend a special thank you to LHS teacher and Veteran Derek Rupp for his inspirational speech about the experience of serving our country. Many of the veterans expressed their gratitude to the students and shared with the staff how impressed they were by the students of LHS. One veteran in particular shared the following:

"You know, I didn't have a very good opinion of the youth of America. After today, I was wrong. There is hope."

Thank you Brian Howe, Derek Rupp, local Veterans and LHS students for a wonderful ceremony!

So Much in One Week

I apologize for the lack of blogging this week but it has been very busy. Tuesday was Professional Development. I want to tell you that your faculty takes this PD very seriously spending the morning working with their Milford High School Cohort and the afternoon discussing what it means to create quality instruction and to be a quality instructor.

Thursday was the Veteran's Ceremony which was moving and impressive at the same time. Seeing all these veterans from as far back as World War II and hearing from our own teacher, Derek Rupp, brought tears to they eyes of many. A special thanks goes out to Social Studies teacher Brian Howe who has been putting together this ceremony for several years.

Also on Thursday, over 70 students and staff left for the Walled Lake Nature Center to take part in our annual Communication Camp. I will write more about this later but suffice to say that as I write this at 12:30 am every participant is truly amazing and already thinking of how to make Lakeland an even more inclusive place.

It was a great weekend to be a Lakeland Eagle!

Scott Rolando here for the Celebrate Good Times Blog!

This past weekend was a great weekend to be a Lakeland Eagle! With so many groups, sports, and other clubs that we offer at Lakeland, this past weekend really showed off the talent we have in many different areas here at Lakeland.

It all started Friday night when our Eagles took on the Mavericks of Milford in the MHSAA District Final for Girls Volleyball. Our Eagles came out with a hard fought 3 game win to defeat the Mavs and to win the District Title! All of the girls played hard and defeating Milford to win the title was a great feeling all around. Our fans were awesome and I know that the team enjoyed winning the title on our home floor. Moving into Saturday, our Lakeland Marching Band, getting to LHS at 4am, competed at 8:15am in the Michigan Competing Band Association Flight I State Finals. First out of the gate can be very hard in any event but our Eagles rose to the challenge and claimed 8th place out of 12 bands in their flight. Later in the day, in Brooklyn MI our Lakeland Boys Cross Country team and our lone female runner Senior Morgan Bridgewater, took to the course at Michigan International Speedway in the MHSAA Cross Country State Finals. With over 230 runners in the field Lakeland Senior Garret Zuk finished in 1ST PLACE to win the MHSAA Individual State Championship! Lakeland runner Scott Neff also finished in the top 30 earning him All State Honors. Senior Morgan Bridgewater finished 26th out of 238 female runners to also claim All State honors!

So as you can see we have a lot to be proud of here at Lakeland, even more so this week. GO EAGLES!

Get Involved!

Through out the school year, Lakeland High School offers students a wide variety of actvities. Our hope is that all students participate in a co-curricular activity. It is no secret that students who are actively involved in co-curricular activities become attached to school and value their experiences. It is also a proven fact that academic achievement increases when students are involved in co-curricular activities. With these things in mind, I want to remind everyone that the Winter Sports Season is right around the corner. All of our Winter Sports are currently holding informational meetings and planning the beginning of their respective seasons. If your student is interested in participating in a sport now is the time! Please have the student contact the athletic office to find out the latest information on the upcoming sport's season! And if sports are not for your student, please encourage them to look for other opportunitites to become involved in a club or student activity. Remember... students that are involved are more connected to the school and ultimately experience greater academic success.

Helping the Huron Valley High School Community

The Leadership Management Team of Huron Valley consists of all administrative members of the district. Each year the LMT group raises money to give a $1000 scholarship to each of the three high schools. This is a great opportunity for our students to be able to assist their college education. Please read the following and consider helping out on this project thus enabling us to help students:

I would like to tell you about an exciting event planned to raise money for the Leadership Team Scholarship that will not cost you any money, only a little time. The LaFontaine Automotive Group has partnered with HVS to offer "Ride and Drive" to raise money for the LMT Scholarship. They will donate $20 for each person who test drives one of their cars (Buick, Cadillac, GM or Nissan) on Saturday, November 19th from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM at Milford High School. Pre-registration is highly recommended but not required. Each person who does pre register is entered in a drawing for 4 Red Wing tickets with parking. We hope that you will sign up and encourage others to participate.

To register, please go to http://hvs.familydealvideo.com to sign up for this opportunity.

On behalf of the Lakeland High School students and the Leadership Management Team I thank you for helping out to help raise the funds for these scholarships.

New, Good Teacher

Did you actually know how great the teachers at Lakeland truly are? I am fortunate enough to be able to visit classrooms and watch our teachers in action. Today, I went into Mr. Bachelor's biology class and could not have been happier. Mr. Bachelor came to Lakeland from Milford High School and based on my interactions with him and watching him in the classroom today we are very fortunate to have him on our staff. He led his students into the world of Mitosis in ways in which showed respect of their learning. Mr Bachelor is just one of the many assets we have at Lakeland and please continue reading the blog as I continue to highlight other incredible faculty at Lakeland.

Bullying and Harassment and our Caring Community

In a Caring Community such as Lakeland High School, it is important that all stakeholders have a clear understanding and buy in to the expectations that are set within the school. One set expectation is not bullying and harassing. Based on media push, we have done a good job of educating our students about this topic. Last year our counselors began a character education program in the 10th grade about why bulling and harassing is not appropriate at all but especially in the school setting. In the next few weeks, counselors will begin to work with this years 10th graders on the same topic. Please have conversations with your students about this topic and how seemingly innocent comments, social media posts or texts can become hurtful if people hear about what has been said. We live in a society where drama run rampant. There are few secrets in the hallways of a high school and students can get hurt even when that is not the intention. It is important that all students feel safe and confident when coming into our school.

A caring community is one where all people: teachers, students and parents give information to our students to take care of all the people in their community even if they are not in our circle of friends.