Inside TSD December 2023

The December 2023 episode of Inside TSD is now available for listening! Also find the transcript below.

Hello and welcome to Inside TSD. I'm your host, Dr. Rich Machesky. Recent news across the Troy School District:

For those interested students, you'll be hearing very soon about an exciting new partnership with Lawrence Technological University and the Troy School District called TSD Early College. This is an opportunity for students who might want to get an early start on gathering college credit. This is a little different than dual enrollment. Dual enrollment is about taking a course that might otherwise count for college credit, we have many students in the Troy School District to take advantage of dual enrollment. But this is an opportunity to take multiple courses over a couple of years to earn your associate's degree while you're earning your high school diploma, and what a great opportunity and to be able to do that with an institution like Lawrence Tech, who's very well respected, I think serves our students in Troy School District very well. So we're gonna focus starting out of the gate with our early college program on computer science and cybersecurity, two areas of great importance in our community, and opportunities for our students to get certifications, or college credit, of course, but then also segue that into a potential internship, jobs and so forth. So we're going to ask that you look for information as we enter the new year, but really thought that was an important one to share with our community. As always, in Troy School District, we're looking for opportunities to help our students accelerate and help our students find a pathway that might work best for them.

Got some upcoming news that will affect all of our students and community. We want to thank first of all, all of you that joined me and other representatives from central office at our first coffee with the superintendent held at Kerby’s Coney Island over on Crooks Road, we're going to host another one as we start the new year. But this was a great opportunity, I see as a great opportunity for all of us moving forward. If anyone has an interest in finding out a little bit more about what's happening in and around the school district, this might be an opportunity, if someone you know, maybe no longer has students in school, for instance, and maybe isn't connected to the normal communications that go out in the Troy School District, share these opportunities with them, encourage them to come on over. So for instance, this first time around, we talked about bond projects, we did an update as to where we are with bond projects. We talked about some curriculum changes across our school district in the area of math, we talked a little bit about some of our ELA curriculum or English curriculum, K-12. We talked about our newly launched Portrait of a Learner initiative, as well as we talked about busing, and a few other things happening, new food service opportunities for students for breakfast and lunch across the school district. So a myriad of topics that we will continue to touch on, as we offer more of these superintendent coffee chats. So be watching for more of those dates to come.

Another really exciting opportunity for our community to come together and celebrate is our annual TSD MLK Day of Celebration and Service that will be held on January 15. This is a program that is supported by our Superintendent Student Advisory Board. We will gather hundreds from across our community at Athens to have breakfast together beginning at 8:30AM. There will be a short program that will follow that. And following that we'll have an opportunity for individuals from our community, students, parents, any, just volunteers that have an interest to do service projects. In the past we've done projects like tying fleece blankets that we have donated to the hospitals. We have filled care packages for local shelters we've filled care packages for troops stationed overseas. We have done kindness rocks, we painted kindness rocks, there's all kinds of programs, exciting programs for students to be involved with, although it's a day off of school for our students, this is an opportunity for them to give back to their community. For those who are interested, we are collecting fleece donations at all of our schools right now. Those come in two-and-a-half a yard sections. So if you happen to be out and about, if you're at Joanns or Michaels and you see there's an opportunity to grab some fleece, we'd encourage you to do that and would ask that you get those in two-and-a-half yard sections.

Couple of other important nights that will welcome us when we come back to the new year. Our preschool information night, January 10, will begin at six o'clock for those of you that may have a youngster who will be going into preschool, you know someone that's looking for a preschool experience, do encourage them to come to our informational night, January 10, six o'clock, as well the IA East information night takes place same night, January 10, at same time six o'clock ,at IA East. So if you know of an eighth grader interested while going into ninth grade, and they're interested in the IB program that is hosted at IA East, do encourage them to come along.

Congratulations to the Schroeder dragons who were named a National Blue Ribbon School this year, we had a team that was able to go to Washington DC, celebrate together and receive that award. So we're very, very proud of all of our Michigan, all of our schools, our Michigan Blue Ribbon Schools and many of our schools, our National Blue Ribbon Schools, congratulations to the Schroeder dragons. Likewise, we want to celebrate and give a shout out to the Athens High School and Leonard Elementary Schools who are named National Schools of Character. They too were recognized in Washington last month, we had teams that were able to go learn together, celebrate together as a way to encourage more of our schools across the district to be identified as State and National Schools of Character.

As we close, don't forget one really important initiative that we've started, now second year in the schools ,across the school district that is our district-wide wellness weekends. During those weekends, we encourage, there's no homework, projects, assignments, planning, meetings, tests, quizzes, or otherwise just encouraging a stress-free break. As we look towards winter break, we want to remind the community that these are district-wide wellness weekends.

Also it's a great opportunity to enjoy all of the concerts that are taking place this time of the year. Get out, enjoy some of the holiday season with our choirs, our bands, our orchestras, from elementary all the way through our high schools, we have such incredible musicians in our school district. It's a great opportunity to get out, celebrate the season with our students, with our staff, with parents across the Troy School District.

Lastly, I just like to say happy holidays to all of you. We hope you enjoy the extended break with your family and friends. That's it for another edition of Inside TSD, I'm your host, Dr. Rich Machesky.