and it's a thrill to be back here at Livingston Park where I started out as principal um we do this road show um on a regular basis getting the board the opportunity to come and see the schools and see what's going on in our schools so this spring we are visiting the elementary schools we had a wonderful visit to Parsons last week last month and are thrilled to have our second Road Show to Livingston Park and so without any further Ado Mr Dawson if you could take it away we're looking forward to your presentation well welcome to LP everyone thank you so much for coming welcome to the board of ed Welcome to our families Welcome to our students our staff I really appreciate you all coming out and cheering us on tonight we look forward to this every year it's our chance to tell you what's going on in our school tell you our story and let you see a little bit on the inside of Livingston Park school so we're excited to tell you about what's going on here tonight and tonight you are going to meet some cougar Champs and we cannot wait to tell you about these awesome people who make up our school and we have many cougar Champs in our school and I'm going to get to what that means in just a moment but before we get into our presentation I need to give you a little bit of background so everything makes sense when we in education talk about how we reach students we often talk about tear and to people who are not in education you may not know what that means so I'm going to give you the the cliffnotes version real quick typically we talk about three tiers of support in a school tier one is what everyone gets tier two is for students who need something a little bit extra and tier three is one step above tier two so for example if you're a classroom teacher lesson everyone gets is tier one some students may need a little extra help working with their teacher maybe in a small group to really understand the lesson that would be tier two and some teachers some students they might need an individual's tutor session with the teacher that might be tier three so when you hear me throw those terms around tonight tier one tier two tier three that's what we're talking about the first thing we're gonna talk about tonight is something called cougar Pride students raise your hand if you know what cougar pride is okay I love all those hands up okay so we are a pbsis school and that's a program it stands for positive behavior supports in schools and what that means is as a school we've defined the values that we have what we believe in and because our school mascot is a cougar and a group of cougars is called a pride our PBS slogan is cougar Pride Mrs finegan gave you some fancy stickers to Adorn your yourself with tonight and each letter and pride stands for a different value peacefulness respect effect inclusivity determination excellence and every year we teach our students what those values look like in our school we have a big assembly big program in the beginning of the school year and we Define what respect looks like in a classroom what is inclusive at recess what does determination look like when you're something out for the first time and when our students show those values with their behaviors to reinforce them we give them something called a posum ticket and the pawsum tickets are drawn every Friday there's one winner in each classroom and they get a special prize and it reinforces all the values we believe in here at Livingston Park this is a good example of a tier one program it affects the entire School in a way that shapes our school culture so this device over here this is our paomet every year every Friday the tickets go in here and we keep track of how much positive behavior is happening in our school so as of Monday morning our officials person Mrs fin updates our total we are currently at 20,18 posum tickets the school year and we reach certain levels we make certain goals like last year we got to do fun things movie day we able in the fizzed classes lots of neat stuff happens but that's not where pbsis ends it goes even further a few times a year we ask each classroom teacher to nominate someone we call a cougar champ a cougar champ is one student just one student in each classroom that is doing a really great job exemplifying all of those cougar values being peaceful being respectful including their peers being determined in their work we make a really big deal out of this we have a special ceremony people come in in the morning champ our school uh oh who's in charge of this thing champ our school cougar comes there spoilers in here and we make a big deal out of this the kids come in they get a bag of treats they get a certificate they get a cougar champ medal we take some pictures we read their nominations we invite their families because a lot of the kids learn these things first from their families and they work with us to make our school great so cougar Champs are a big part of our school they're very special kids so when we think about our school presentation tonight I've now given you the background information you might need to understand what we're going to do tonight keep things fresh make it a little different every year tonight we're going to talk about some of our school goals that we're working on this year at LP one goal is to promote better attendance in our students decrease our absenteeism rate another couple goals came from our school climate survey and that's how to help our students have better interpersonal relationships with one another we also have a goal about having better relationships between our staff members and our school administrators and most importantly to increase student achievement so tonight we're going to do things a little bit differently it's us usually in our school that we ask our teachers to choose cougar Champs we flipped it around this time so in the last couple weeks I've met with almost every second third and fourth grader and I asked them a simple question if you could only pick one adult in our school that is cougar champ for you who would you pick and why so we ask the most important people in our school who their cougar Champs were and through their work tonight we're going to tell you the story of our school the first cougar champ awards first people we're going to recognize are people who are working on our attendance initiative we're going to meet a lot of cougar Champs tonight what I would ask you to do instead of applauding for everybody we're going to do some some snaps when you people come up if you want to snap for them that awesome so let me tell you about our attendance team our first couger champ Awards go to Mrs finnean and Mr Brown we've been doing a lot of cool things with School attendance Mrs finnean is the leader of our attendance initiative and she is designed attendance supports at tier one tier two tier three every day we take attendance WE Post our results on the bulletin board outside of the school and neat things happen Mrs finegan announces is every month which students have perfect attendance there are rewards for classes that have the best attendance there are even celebrations for grade levels that have the best attendance all of those things happen at tier one tier two when this a student or a family is going through something more intensive Mrs finegan and her team work with that family to design a really targeted approach that will help that family help that student to date our attendant rate has improved by 8% we're very proud of that because Mrs finegan and her team have worked really hard on that a key part of her team is Mr Brown snaps for Mr Brown Mr Brown is awesome Mr Brown's one of our special education teachers he may or may not also have a part-time job wearing a certain Cougar costume he's wonderful with our students and if you come here at 8:15 you will find Mr Brown right out front so Mr Mr Brown has had a positive impact on so many kids but his cougar champ nomination mentions something that I thought was pretty special here's what the student wrote Mr Brown is a very important teacher for us bear in mind this student is not in Mr Brown's class he makes everybody feel welcome with his big enthusiastic smile Mr Brown inspires me by always being kind and looking for ways to help people in need great job Mr Brown another thing we've been working on with attendance is we've been doing a staff book study this year the book study we are reading we've read as a staff is called relationship regulation and responsibility Mrs Fin and Mrs Mor have led about 40 teachers through this book study and what this book study does is it teaches us about trauma informed practices our kids have been through a lot past few years during the pandemic and students are presenting needs that we need to Grapple with as a school and really all of those needs if we can find a way to meet them make our kids capable of learning they could be emotional needs relational needs physical needs control needs things that are behind their behaviors through this book study we've been able to connect with kids in different ways and think differently about how they're presenting and how we might meet their needs and at the end of the today what it comes down to is as a school we need to do things that help our students mental health mental health is a big concern with kids a lot of kids came out of the pandemic with a lot of things that we wanted to work on their interpersonal skills their anxiety their ability to feel comfortable in a school setting so for the past couple years we've been working on a concept as a school of belonging making sure every child in our school knows that we're Roo roting for them can connect with an adult that they trust have a good relationship with them feel empowered and in that culture of belonging we can really get to know our kids what motivates them what encourages them what they respond to so every week we look at ways to support students mental health we have what are called Thrive meetings where we identify any student that may be in need of services we try to connect them with staff members we build them in mentoring programs and most importantly we try to make sure every single child has someone that they can connect with we have a school hashtag it's called you belong at LP you may have seen that on our Facebook posts you may have seen it on Twitter and that's the idea everyone belongs here there's something here for everyone so the next cougar Champs we're going to nominate and we're going to speak about are folks who are really doing an exceptional job at connecting with students and to be fair we got a lot of cougar Cham nominations we could be here all night there's so faculty members here who are nominated and I don't have enough time to speak about everybody so folks who are here tonight are just a small sample of many of the aw people we have here in our school and when I say everyone in our school tries to connect with kids I mean everyone our first coug champ nomination in this respect goes to our plant manager Mr jaunky Mr jaunky keeps our school clean he keeps our school safe he makes sure things are working but that's not why he got a cougar champ nomination he got a C cougar champ nomination from a student who spoke about how every time she sees Mr junky she gets a fist bump she gets encouraging words how she was nervous on the first day of school but it was Mr junky who reassured her that it was going to be great and she was going to have a wonderful school year we also got a wonderful C cougar champ nomination for Mr Duan Mr Duan is our school police officer he's been a wonderful addition in our school Mr dlan keeps us safe he keeps us secure he's friendly he's positive he's kind at the start of the school year Mr Dulan visited every single classroom to meet with every single teacher and review what to do in emergency situations but to our students he's a friendly face he's an encouraging person he's the positive guy who greets you at the door in the morning or at drop off when your parents leave you at school we got some awesome cougar champ nominations for our office staff Mrs fizazi Mrs Locus these folks are the heartbeat of our school they're the people who answer the phone they are the people who help our parents they're the people who make make sure Mr Dawson is doing what he needs to do they are the people who manage the budget they're the people who manage all of our orders all of our supplies our School attendance tracking substitute teachers you name it they do it but the cougar champ nomination they received wasn't about the budget it wasn't about making sure the attendance is calculated properly it was about a student who felt encouraged by them when he makes the morning announcements they on they encourage him and that they have been supporters of the student every single person in our school tries to connect with kids make a difference for them let them know we are rooting for them sometimes everything we need to learn we learn in kindergarten I was really proud of the nominations this teacher got you see Mrs Fedor is one of our kindergarten teachers Mrs pedor is always positive she's smiling she's friendly she's everything you'd want in a kindergarten teacher she a really special person you know what was special though she wasn't nominated by kindergarten students she was nominated by fourth graders and the fourth graders who nominated her spoke about how she always encouraged them she was friendly she was positive she taught them how to be in school she taught them how to persevere through through challenges she taught them how to read she was caring she was sweet she encouraged them that's pretty special the difference that a really good teacher makes on kids lasts for years and years and years we also got great nominations for Miss Perez Miss Perez is one of our kindergarten teachers Miss Perez is one of our dual language teachers and she has been such a vital component in building that program helping our school serve our kids all over the world kids who want to learn Spanish as a second language who are learning English for the first time Miss Perez's nominations spoke about how she helped kids feel comfortable persevere through challenges grow their brains someone who was always rooting for them to succeed in our school which has a very large population of kids who speak a different language predominantly Spanish but many different languages having a friendly face in kindergarten building those foundational skills building kids in English and in Spanish is so valuable and Miss Perez has been a wonderful example of how that program can help our students perform okay you can't miss our next cougar champ because he's 6 fo7 everybody knows who it is our school nurse is Mr shaffrey Mr shaffrey is awesome he's a fan favorite Mr shaffrey is a special guy and initially when you meet him you might not think of a guy who's 6'7 has been kind and nurturing and supportive as the guy who wipes away tears and cleans up scraped knees but that's who he is and it's really a trip you know when you see Mr shaffrey working with the preschool student there there's kind of some funny things going on so Mr shaffrey got nominations that I thought were pretty special special students recognize him for being kind caring respectful always there to help them with their medical needs we do have some students who have some intricate medical needs and Mr shaffrey is a master at helping those students one student even noted thanks to Mr shaffrey he wants to be a school nurse when he grows up now our next cougar champ is Miss can ano Miss kanano is a brand new teacher here at Livingston Park she's a preschool teacher but this is not her first year in North Brunswick she went through our schools she started here as a PA professional and then grew into a preschool teacher and she is a rock star Miss kanano is a great way for our families to come into the district for the first time to feel comfortable to feel supported to get excited about what their kids are learning she is a true cougar chimp she's Dynamic she's friendly she's fun and the kids lover okay our next cougar champ is a relationship rock star this is a person who is absolutely exceptional at forming relationships with students and her name is Mrs Marin Mrs Marin is one of our second grade teachers what I love about Mrs Marin is she empowers kids she gets them to believe in themselves she builds their foundational skills she builds really supportive relationships with kids as an example today I needed to talk to Miss Marin remind her about the details for tonight when to come I went to Miss's classroom and M Maron wasn't there there was another teacher covering turns out one of our classes won a reward and the reward for them was could choose any adult in the building they could have lunch with guess who they chose they chose Mrs Maron Mrs Marin's not their teacher Mrs Maron was their teacher in previous years but they still wanted to connect with her those kids even though they're not hers have someone who's cheering them on have someone who believes in them someone powerful in their lives and our next cougar champ is also a really great Ambassador at building relationships with kids it's Mrs Carter in fourth grade Mrs Carter has been with us for several years also a North Brunswick graduate she's calm she's focused she's collaborative she does a great job of building relationships with students of all backgrounds Mrs Carter is the secret brains behind one of our pto's biggest events which is our national Night Celebration that event draws hundreds of families to our school to celebrate diversity and honor their cultures in fact it's an event that is so big we can no longer do it at LP because there's not enough space we have to go to another school impressively Mrs Carter got nominations in several languages all speaking not about how great she as a teacher because she is great but how great she makes kids feel and how empowered they feel how inspired they feel by her we are lucky to have Mrs Carter on our staff so those are just a few of our Cougar champs for tonight they show you our goal how we connect with kids trying to get kids to feel like someone's rooting for them at school but there are some cougar Champs we're going to celebrate do a a really great job of helping our kids work with each other our second School goal how to improve the way kids interact with one another we've been doing a lot of work with that we're trying to show kids how to interact with one another you know during Co a lot of the kids forgot how to play together forgot how to work in a group and we've working on building those skills our goal this year is to emphasize kindness we do something in our school called family circles a family circle is a group of students who represent all different ages every adult in our school has a family Circle where they basically are the parents quote unquote of 10 kids ranging from preschool all the way up through fourth grade and we do with our families about kindness so we meet a few times a year and the idea is that as kids who are young preschool kindergarten will see a third grader a fourth grader and that person can root for them that person can cheer them on that person can give them a fist bump in the high hallway and remind them to be kind Mrs my our dean of students has also brought a peer mediation program to our school this year we have many fourth graders who have been trained in how to resolve conflicts amongst themselves they were presenting at lunch today I was very excited for them we have monthly pbsis themes that emphasize different values that we teach students about all of those are tier one supports parents your children have told you about a positive praise initiative we're doing in school right now where every day a student is chosen to be the compliment receiver and we are teaching kids how to compliment one another how to express verbally what they appreciate about one another and there are some classrooms where there are hundreds and hundreds and thousands of compliments that have been tallied each year we want each child to know not only that their teachers support them but their classmates are cheering them on as well a really great example of someone who teaches not only the core subjects Reading Writing math is Miss MOA Miss MOA is one of our third grade teachers snaps for Miss MOA she's in our dual language program and there's a really special part of Miss MOA that's hard to put into words but she has a way about her where she models beautifully for children how to interact with one another how to calmly Express themselves how to share their feelings how to manage their emotions the lessons her students learn go beyond English Spanish Reading Writing how to be a great person and she received several nominations not only from her current students but from previous students as well another great example of someone who's teaching us how to interact with one another is Miss prior Miss prior is our school guidance counselor we have two Miss prior and Miss Izzy Miss prior does all sorts of stuff in our school at every tier she works in classrooms doing lessons she works with groups of students she works with individual students she organizes our school's mentoring program connecting kids with adults she works lead meeting our Thrive meetings all of those things help us but to kids she's someone who's cheering them on she's positive she's a resource for them she's someone who can help them learn how to resolve their problems how to manage their feelings how to build their confidence they adore her and for them she is a cougar chimp good job Miss prior okay if you ask any student in our school what class they're going to look forward to I guarantee you within 30 seconds You're Going to Hear fette I got some brain matches going on Mr gersan is one of our fiz Ed teachers Mr gersan got a number of nominations as did Mr grow his partner Mr Grow is under the weather can't join us tonight but Mr Gershon is pretty special we've got a great team of fizzed teachers every single fiz ed class is fun kids are doing all sorts of cool things I got to experience the parachute a couple weeks ago that was always a fan favorite and the activities are fun kids get to move they get to interact they get to learn all sorts of skills exercise experiences but deeper than that they're learning so much more than these exercise skills these motor skills they're learning how to play with one another they're learning how to cooperate they're learning how to collaborate they're learning how to win gracefully lose Grace fully cheer one another on so Mr Gan got a lot of nice nominations from multiple grade levels in fact one student even declared him the best PE teacher in the universe and I think most people would agree right okay managing all of this work to help students have better personal relationships is our school data team so our next cougar champ is is Mrs Mory Mrs Mory our dean of students Mrs Mory does a wonderful job in her role she analyzes all of our behavioral data she creates plans for kids she tracks how they're doing she checks up on them but it's so much deeper than that when a child has a behavior maybe that um is less than an ideal Behavior that's communication to us children generally don't misbehave because they want someone to have a lousy day they misbehave because they have a need that needs to be met and Mrs Mory does a wonderful job of trying to figure out what that particular need is our teachers have learned that if they approach Mrs myy they will get a thorough and detailed and specific response to try to help a particular student and she is a cougar champ is impressive to me that Mrs myy got couger champ nominations from some kids who have gotten in trouble and they were appreciative about how Mrs my helped put them on the right path pretty cool stuff another goal we're working on this year as the school is improving our relationships between staff and administrators I know you're thinking to yourself how could anyone find Mr Dawson less than delightful but we all can get better in that respect and again we look at that in terms of tier one tier two tier three there are things we do for the entire staff there are things that we do for teach and there are things that maybe individual teachers may need and a really valuable partner in that work has been one of our teachers Miss Varga Miss Varga is one of our fourth grade teachers she's a really special person to kids and to our staff members she's a great teacher talented able to differentiate very well she does a wonderful job teaching uh social emotional learning lessons students find her to be friendly very relatable someone who can cheer them on someone who can encourage them she's got a wonderful demeanor with students with our school climate work she also analyzed all of our school climate data and she developed a really differentiated approach when you think about uh the different personalities adults have all of us like to be recognized in a different way there are some teachers who might Love A Night Like This where they're recognized in front of everybody for some folks they might not like that they may not feel comfortable with that so they prefer different things so we put together a variety of way to recognize the various things staff members do uh in our school we've been doing some social media posts you can follow us on Facebook we're LP copers we're also on Twitter so a couple times a week we shout out some teachers on Facebook we talk about all of their contributions sometimes we do it over the PA system and the announcements sometimes it's something more personal a thank you note a quiet conversation um sometimes it's sharing lunch together or sharing a snack together all sorts of things that we're trying to recognize our staff in the way that they feel um most comfortable with and most importantly as a school we're always worried about how can we help our students achieve at a greater level so some of the folks that we're going to speak about in a moment are good representatives of people who are doing really exceptional things in the classroom to help our students learn at a greater rate and there's we could spend hours and hours and hours talking about all the great things our staff members do here but these are some of the teachers who were nominated just a small portion so let's talk about some of the great things they're doing before we do it in reading the nominations I was reminded of this wonderful speaker her name is Rita Pearson and if you have a moment when you go home go on YouTube and look up Rita Pearson Ted Talk she gives a wonderful talk about education and she reminds us of of some important things one of the things she reminds us of is kids don't learn from people they don't like in other words if you can think about your life if you're an adult in the room if there was a teacher that you just didn't like you probably didn't learn too much in that class but if you know the teacher's rooting for you if that teacher's got a good relationship with you you want to work for them you want to learn the other thing Miss Pearson reminds us of is every child deserves a champion every child needs a champion tonight we're going to put a little asterisk in the quote we believe every child needs a cougar champ so let's celebrate some additional cougar champs as we do so you're going to hear me throw around a word engagement quite a bit so when you're a school administrator you're a principal you're a vice principal you're a supervisor we often talk about engagement which basically means when you go into a classroom what what are the kids doing are they invested in the work are they doing the work just because the teacher told them to do the work are they not interested in the work at all do they understand why the work might benefit them the teachers we're going to speak about are really great at engagement but when you think about engagement it's much deeper than can you get kids to do an assignment to be really good at engagement means that you've known who your kids are what their skill levels are where they need need to be challenged where they might need extra support what kind of assignments are going to motivate them who they might work well with it means creating an environment where kids are comfortable taking a risk making a mistake trying something new it means creating a space where you can encourage kids they encourage them themselves it means a teacher who is very reflective and constantly looking at how things are going what's working what can I better and these teachers our teachers at LP generally do a really great job with this these next folks especially Mrs dilva is one of our second grade teachers snaps for Mrs dilva Miss dilva is in our dual language program she's been with us a few years she's a triple threat she can speak English Spanish and Portuguese which is pretty cool and she has helped our dual language kids make some incredible gains uh we've done a lot of work in developing our dual language program offered a lot of professional development and if you can identify one teacher who really embodies all of that learning it'd be Mrs dilva if you walk into that classroom there's some amazing things happening all that are geared towards helping kids in that program exceptional weit time language decoding cognate identification intensive Phonics work you'll hear multiple languages if you can think of a best practice in helping kids in a dual language program learn jenda Silva is doing it and you can see it every single day in her classroom she got several cougar champ nominations from students who were talking about how she encourages them how she helped make them grow and here's what stood out to me she received nominations from multiple grade levels and some of the nominations from kids that she had a couple years ago when they had just come to our country country not knowing a word of English the entire nomination that they wrote several paragraphs was entirely imperfect English often times it takes years for children to develop comfort in speaking a second language Mr Silva is helping kids blossom and grow as so many of our teachers do our ESL teachers our dual language teachers they are making incred incredible gains in our kids and we are so deeply proud of them our next teacher snaps for Miss seris Miss cimus is an awesome professional she's one of our heroes this year Miss cmis is filling in for us in a fourth grade dual language class Miss cimus is positive she is professional she is helping us tremendously we've had a tough time finding a permanent teacher in that class so she's on loan to us from Parson school she is among the most positive professional can do people we have in our entire district and she is our hero this year she cheers on kids she works with them in multiple different languages and has a big fan club so snaps for Miss simus okay our next teacher received nominations from multi multiple grade levels snaps for Miss shammy we got some enthusiastic snaps okay Miss sham is one of our third grade teachers she is an awesome literacy teacher loves reading and it's authentic when you walk into her reading lessons you can see a teacher who is really excited and passionate about her work she knows a million different strategies to help kids read you know when you walk into her class you see four or five different lessons taking place at the same time and you can tell that they're all designed to reach different types of kids students write about how they're grateful for her help for her enthusiasm how they love reading because they got Miss Shamy for a year how to be strong confident in their work confident in their writing the fact that they love her voices her jokes she does tell a lot of jokes they're pretty good too and the ways that she makes learning interesting so great teachers find a way to make kids want to pay attention Miss sham is a perfect example of that and it makes a difference for our kids another group of snaps for Mrs Alvarez Mrs Alvarez is on our fourth grade team she specializes in math and she does a great job differentiating differentiation when you're in education means designing a a lesson or a task that reaches kids on multiple different levels maybe kids of different abilities kids who might learn in a different way if you can find a way to differentiate Mrs Alvarez will do it she's positive she's friendly reliable she beats me to school every morning every single morning the first car I see here is Mrs Alvarez the first person I see when I walk in the school is Mrs Alvarez making copies for the day every single day she beats me and she's got a smile on her face and is POS positive in every way she does a great job of connecting with kids not just personally but connecting kids to the school she's our student council adviser and she always finds a way to get kids connect and involved in something at school we are lucky to have Mrs Alvarez snaps for Miss Mueller in fourth grade Miss Mueller is one of our fourth grade teachers she is is really great at tier one and she's another teacher who is fantastic at differentiating when you watch Miss meller teach you're watching about five different lessons at the same time there's something going on for everybody she gives really great feedback to kids really precise feedback about what they can do that's great and how they can make their work even better she is remarkable in so many ways if you need a an idea a strategy um Miss Mueller is the person to go to her colleagues rely upon her and her kids rely upon her in her nominations students wrote about how they love working with Mrs meller in small groups why because she knows her kids so well her small group lessons that she meets with them are really purposeful they're targeted towards exactly what each particular child needs and they grow tremendously because of it our kids adore that knows every nuance and detail about them and how to help them grow as Learners she cheers them on she's positive and she's got a big fan club so cheers from Miss meller we got a lot of great nominations about our academic support teachers academic support teachers are teachers who come into classrooms work with kids in small groups usually in Reading usually in writing sometimes in math we have a great math academ support team Mrs Bora is one of our teachers we get to share her with Parsons as well she sends part of her day here here part of her day at Parsons Mrs Bora has done a great job of helping students who may need a little bit of extra help in math love math what was awesome for me is reading nominations students wrote about how math is now their favorite subject because of Mrs Bora how she makes it fun how they believe in themselves how they adore working with her and want to keep working with her how every lesson is based on games and interesting things and it's really impressive said when you have a student who can come in maybe needing some support and leave confidence excited loving of subjects Mrs picoo is another wonderful example of that Mrs picchio is one of our Ela academic support teachers she is a really special person she helps grow our students as readers and writers she is working on Orton Gillingham certification and she knows a million different strategies to help kids as they grow as readers and writers she's precise she's focused and kids are growing leap bounds she's also a big part of our school's data team so behind the scenes of our school in math and behavior in ela there are groups of teachers look at our data and how our kids are performing and analyze what we can do to better serve them Mrs picoo a rockstar on our Ela data team she analyzes our our data she looks for Trends and she teachers design lessons that respond to it and we love her for it and the kids love her too all right many many years ago uh when I was at ruter there was a graduate class called the teacher as a performer and the idea was to be a really good teacher you've got to be a really good performer people have got to pay attention to you you've got to be able to get a group of kids and hold their attention and Captivate them make them want to listen to what you're saying want to do the activities that you are doing and there is no better example of a teacher as a performer than Mrs Cabrera Mrs Cabrera is our preschools specials teachers and it's when you watch Mrs Cabrera teach it it's something special it's kind of like uh like a rock concert there's people singing they're dancing there's people making hand signs agreeing you know there there's usually some sort of behavior management going on all sorts of cool stuff and she is just a master adct she designs art lessons music lessons literacy lessons she helps kids learn not just all of those things but their fine motor skills how to play together how to collaborate how to um interact with one another she does it in English la in espanol she does it in so many fun ways and she is such a talented person and what's impressive about her when you think about the attention span of a four-year-old child not very long so when you watch Mrs Cabrera teach she's a full bag of tricks there's a different activity about every three minutes and the kids love every second of it what a valuable addition she is to our school she is absolutely a cougar champ so our next cougar champ uh I started reading about when I at Lynwood School about 10 years ago I worked at Lynwood School and one year we had an essay contest called my favorite teacher and the kids at the middle school would write an essay and we would submit it to Barnes & Noble when Barnes & Noble was where Trader Joe's is now and for years I've been reading this next teacher and I said man I got to meet this person every year I've got these seventh graders these eighth graders writing about this teacher and when I came to LP I finally met him it's Mr Johnson Mr Johnson is a really special fourth grade teacher he's a marathon runner he's a break dancer he's a really cool guy and he's always very calm he models strength Poise he has one wonderful relationships with kids great SE what really impressed me in reading his nominations is that everybody knows all those wonderful things about Mr Johnson but what the kids wrote about is how they love love love Mr Johnson's math lessons this year Mr Johnson has been doing some work representing our fourth grade team working with a professor from ruter on New Concepts in math instruction for teachers he's bringing all that great work back to our team and sometimes when you watch a teacher teach you just know that they sincerely just enjoy their job they enjoy their kids they radiate with that it's authentic you know it when you see it and when you know it it's not there and for Mr Johnson it's there and because of his passion his enthusiasm we've got a group of fourth grade kids who love math okay our next cougar champ is Mrs Hart Mrs Hart is our gifted and talented teacher it's a program called sore and Mrs Hart and one of her colleagues Mrs Welsh with the board support have identified and and created a GT program that we are so proud of at LP our program looks at so many different ways a kid can show us they are exceptional so we've got 500 students more or less here at LP there are 115 kids in our GT program kids of all ages all backgrounds kids who have been in LP for four years kids who have been in the United States for a month many many different ways Mrs Hart supports our students and our kids absolutely love their time with her Mrs Hart got a lot of nominations here are some things the kids said she's helped them learn things about themselves they had never seen before Mrs Hart has inspired some of our students to become reading teachers they speak about how Miss Hart helped them feel proud strong confident like they are in a school that is perfect for them thank you Mrs Hart you are a cougar champ I love the enthusiasm another couple teachers who got some nomin ations are our first grade teachers we have an awesome first grade team at LP and first grade is a very important year in education it's the foundational year for literacy let me introduce you to miss Torres and Miss tabota they are our dual language team in first grade they are doing an awesome job they got a lot of nominations from kids who spoke about how they helped them learn the basics of literacy in two languages how they encourage them how they never U gave up on them how they helped them feel comfortable in school in the United States cheering them on Miss Torres and Miss toota are very humble people they do a ton of great work in our school they are reliable they are among the hardest working people in the profession and they have been really important in building our program tremendously so behind all of these great teachers there's also support for teach teachers in our school and we have two really special people who have helped our teachers do all this work let me introduce you to Mrs barter and Mrs pulli Mrs barter is our Ela literacy coach that means she helps our teachers learn new strategies to teach Reading Writing phonics it means that she teaches lessons with teachers to introduce them to new texts new ideas she connects teachers with resources and most importantly she has modeled how to build relationships with teachers when you have a teacher you want them to feel comfortable with someone coming in and giving them ideas feedback and our teachers do one of the things I really love about our staff everybody's open to collaborating everyone's open to new ideas and they take advantage of Mrs barter and Mrs pulli Mrs Puli is our math and science coach she does a wonderful job snaps for Miss pulli Mrs Puli is incredibly resourceful she's positive she's enthusiastic she has great relationships with our teachers and kids and she's always introducing new ideas try in math in science language arts she's excited I think she's learned Spanish in the past five years I when she tries which is awesome and she's a wonderful resource so behind all of these great teachers building relationships with kids uh expanding their pedagogy doing things tier one tier 2 tier three you also have great coaches who are supporting the teachers we've got a couple more people to celebrate and there are folks who deserve an incredible amount of recognition but often times don't get them so we've got two very special people with us tonight all all of this work that we've talked about it often requires a lot of meetings it requires the ability for teachers to roll up sleeves take some to look at data have in-depth conversations and the only way that is possible in our school system is with really really dedicated substitute teachers and we have two very very special substitute teachers who are here tonight they are Mrs barnhard and Mrs Seaman guess which staff member at LP has the best attendance record in the entire school it's Mrs barnhard guess which staff member is here before Mr Dawson every single day and I get here early Mrs barnhard guess which staff member is willing to help out in any situation any classroom any day any time it's Mrs Barnhart she's multi-talented she knows almost every child in our school and she is able to pitch in in any role and we are incredibly grateful to have her the same can be said for Mrs Seaman Mrs Seaman is delightful she works in our school incredibly frequently is willing to work with any student always Pleasant patient kind hardworking great substitute teachers are rare and we have some of the very best ones here at LP and we are really proud to recognize these folks who are always willing to pitch in and support our kids and our school snaps for Mrs barnhard and Mrs Seaman so we have so many great people at LP tonight that we've told you about we've talked about in student achievement we've talked about improving the way kids interact with one another we've talked about improving the experience our staff members have at our school we've talked about how to improve our attendance rate and it all comes back to this key idea you belong at LP if you're a teacher you belong here you will be supported you will be challenged and you will grow if you're a student there is someone here rooting for you there was someone here who's going to connect with you it could be anybody it could be the plant manager it could be the people who work in the office it could be your preschool teacher could be your substitute teacher could be the school nurse it could be the math specialist you work with it could be anybody you belong at LP because people are rooting for you we want you here we want you learning and we want you achieving and when you grow up we want you to achieve wonderful things so our student students have spoken we've identified our Cougar Champs so as we wrap up our presentation we would like to invite all of the staff members who were nominated to come to the front this is your cue to come to the front and we would like to invite our teachers and our students to come on up give their student selecting cougar champ certificates to their staff members some students have multiple nominations some teachers have multiple nominations so when you find your person give them their certificate give them a bump and celebrate them pi you see okay let's have our Round of Applause for our Cougar Champs and remember this is just a fraction of the awesome people who we have working with our kids in North Brunswick at LP and we thank all of you and we thank all of our families for cheering us on tonight thank you to our students for their wonderful nominations when our teachers get these tomorrow they're going to have very full hearts and be very proud of their profession so thank you thank you thank you for your support all right sta we can take a seat and fielded any questions from our board so Mr Dawson thank you so much for your presentation this evening parents we thank you for bringing your children tonight they are the heart and soul of living Park School um we appreciate Mr Dawson you sharing with us the you belong at LP and how important that is and LP teachers we know how important you are as the backbone of the cougar Champs and how nice to turn that around and give them the the honoring that you always give to students so thank you and uh appreciate your your wonderful presentation Mr Dawson on behalf of the Board of Education we all just want to Echo what Mrs choka had mentioned I personally have known you for many years now so you are uh you know enforcing and and fostering a wonderful environment for all of the children but also your staff kids you should be so proud of your teachers because they are who you're going to look back to many years from now like I do with Mr Dawson and say you know I really learned from some really great people so so congratulations to you all and thank you for having us all right anyone else have anything on the board they'd like to say all right we are going to continue with our short meeting um I'll open it up to open session on any uh old business or new business neither tonight okay none at this time so we'll move on to item number seven I'd like to um open it up to the public on any um matter a public session on any matter if you'd like to come up and address the board we ask that you come up sign in state your name and you'll have three minutes to address the board all right seeing none at this time Mr Brockman can you please motion to close make a motion to close public session public portion of this meeting second all in favor I anyone opposed the public session is closed thank you and could someone please make a motion to adjourn so moved second all in favor anyone opposed we are adjourned thank you everyone that was rich yeah yeah yeah get