Music playing
Welcome back to the Morning Show.
Glad to have in the studio representatives of Weston Schools, Weston Principal, District Administrator, 7th through 12th Principal, Molly Casten, and Jason Meyer as well, Elementary Principal and 7th through 12th Dean of Students at Weston.
We'll introduce you to Jason in just a bit.
Molly, welcome back.
You look fairly well rested
for the
summer.
Yeah, you know, you get lots of rest in the summer.
It's, you know, when you only have the, you have a few adults in the building, but not many students.
And so,
So it's a time, it's a busy time because there's a lot of behind the scenes.
People don't realize all the work that goes into closing up one year and then preparing for the next year.
And especially when you have to make hiring adjustments and do some of those things.
But it's good, you know, and we're excited we had open house last week.
And it was good seeing kids in the building.
And that's why we all do what we do is for students.
And so I know over the summer, I really miss them.
And it's so neat this year when so many came in.
And you just can't believe how they've grown so much over the summer.
And I'm looking at so many kids thinking, wow, we've got some really tall.
There were so many kids that came in.
I'm now looking at them eye to eye, and they're in elementary school, so it's good to have the kids back, though.
Growth spurt, yeah.
Going into the school year, you know, having passed a referendum too, it's a little different than the last couple of years.
You can really focus on what's important this year, can't you?
Yeah, and the past couple of years, that's kind of overshadowed a lot of the work that was going on, but this year our
You know, we really want to focus on clarity and making sure we're clear in our with instruction curriculum, our process and procedures, the expectations we have for staff, students and our parents and the organizational structure.
So really fine tuning things so that we can operate like a well oiled machine and everybody knows what they're doing and where to go with things.
So it's good to have that different.
different mindset of of the year and to plan plan for the year without the addition of all the planning that had to go in for the referendum
Yeah, so back at it anything new in terms of I'm guessing you had a few new hires in the offseason
Yes for our junior high in high school.
We had to replace one teacher our high school English teacher and
We hired Ren Eliason, she is from the Mineral area, and she's in her second year of teaching.
We're excited to have her and the energy she brings as a new educator.
She also will become our forensics advisor, so that's good to have someone taking on that responsibility for our
students.
Okay, and student council as well.
Yes, we had a student council advisor shift, Mariah Green, who is our high school secretary in our public relations.
She has taken over student council and really looking forward to having her really develop our student council as leaders and that's the role they
that those students should have as leaders of the high school.
And so she's looking at working on bringing back some traditional activities along with some new ones to create new traditions and again developing those kids as leaders in our high school.
Student council does a lot of things behind the scenes and can you envision them doing some fundraisers and things like that for the school year?
Yes, and what they've always done a few fundraisers and they're responsible for the activities that homecoming our homecoming we're going to go in more depth on at a later date but we have a lot of plans for that.
But it's really important for me in conversations with Mariah and some other staff that
We need to look at providing some more engaging activities at the school for our high school students.
You know, just providing the sports, which we need to provide sports, we need to provide those clubs and activities, that isn't quite, that's not enough.
You know, we need more for them to become engaged with the school because
If we don't provide things for them to do, they're going to find their own things to do.
And we know that sometimes they don't make the best choices.
So we are looking at really bringing in some more fun and rich activities for our high school.
And for our school district, we have had
We have two big dances.
We don't have that third one, but we are going to be adding a winter formal this year and some fun activities the week of that.
So really adding to, we want our kids to have that full high school experience that everyone remembers, right?
You remember the things you did in high school and that's what those activities are a big part of that.
We used to have more dances when I was in school, right?
So I mean, that was always a fun activity.
Good to hear you're bringing those back a little bit.
Yeah.
So as far as some other things you're looking forward to, is there anything in terms of the schedule that's going to change this year for Weston?
No.
Our school schedule is consistent with what we've been doing with our class structure in the junior high and high school.
We've worked over several years because it's
It's difficult scheduling classes when you have some teachers that are teaching from 4k to 12th grade and having people that are teaching in both the high school and the elementary.
So our schedule, our class schedules in pretty, we've been revising that over the years and it works pretty well.
There's some adjustments that are elementary that Jason's gonna talk about, but at the high school,
In junior high level, it's pretty consistent.
Our school year calendar, the one big change this year is we did move our spring break that it is, I think it's March 8th through the 12th.
It's earlier, we're trying to get it between the sports seasons so that there's the break at that time instead of at the end of March around.
Easter time.
So we did move our spring break this year.
Important there for people to make plans.
Well, you mentioned Jason will introduce you to Jason Meyer.
Good morning.
Good morning, Phil.
How are you?
Great.
First trip to the morning.
So tell us a little bit about yourself if you
would.
Sure.
Well, so I came to Weston seven years ago right in the heat of COVID.
And I'm a local person.
I grew up in Loganville.
So Weston was always
I was always aware of Weston and I was always kind of jealous that, you know what, I always heard about the sports and the athletics and all the different activities that kids at Weston got to do.
I always saw myself as a small town person so there was an opportunity that came into play and I joined the team at Weston seven years ago.
So I've been working with Molly here for all that time and
So that's a little bit about me.
I've always been an elementary person.
I taught sixth grade before I was a principal.
And so I've really come to love Weston and the community.
Got to know everyone and working in partnership with them.
So today I'd like to talk a little bit about our structures for the school year, if that's okay.
So last year we had our kindergarten teacher left us halfway through the year.
So we had to kind of think outside the box around the rest of the school year, how that would look.
And so our first grade teacher at the time, Amber Needham, agreed to give it a try and teach kindergarten for the rest of the year.
And she discovered that she really liked it.
And so this year she's going to be in kindergarten.
Our second grade teacher, Mrs. Woodrick,
We decided to combine first and second grade at the end of last year.
So we just didn't think that would be a long-term solution to a short-term problem.
And so I brought the brainstorming session to our teachers to say, hey, what would be the best structure for us moving forward?
Given that our numbers are where they're at and everything else like that.
So we have some wonderful staff who
came up with some outside of the box ideas and that's what I love about our staff is that when you have a problem that you present, they come up with some great solutions.
So this year we're going to have our third, fourth, fifth grade classrooms being taught by two classroom teachers and one paraprofessional.
You might be familiar with one of our teachers who's also a coach, Bailey Miller.
She's going to be one of our teachers, and then Laurie Glassbrenner.
So they're going to teach our third through fifth grade classrooms that gives us a little flexibility as well in terms of maybe meeting the needs of some of our higher learners, of our younger students, and some of our lower learners of our upper grades.
And so some book group possibilities and also in math, perhaps, as the year goes on, just meeting
the needs differently in that way.
So that's exciting.
That's one of the things that I think our parents are probably a little nervous about going into the year.
What will that look like?
We don't have all the answers to all those questions until we encounter them, but definitely we're
We're working as a team to get through all those things.
The students move like from
classroom to classroom at that age then?
Or how does that
work?
Well, so that was one of the things we talked about, Phil.
What the teachers came up with was that the teachers are going to have the, they'll have some, we have three classrooms structurally and then the students will move to the teachers.
So there is some movement, which is nice, especially in the third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade.
age groups, you know, we need to give them opportunities throughout the day to move, so that kind of naturally gives them some breaks.
So yeah, that's part of the rotational structure.
Bailey's going to be teaching science and social studies, and then Lori's going to teach the language arts and the writing.
They decided to specialize a little bit there.
But as we go, the main theme is that flexibility and the ability to perhaps make changes along the way as we see those needs arising.
Do you
miss the classroom?
Oh, you know, I do a little bit.
I do have opportunities to do some of that teaching just naturally in what I do.
A couple years ago, I took a class.
where I can teach yoga and mindfulness.
And so some of those skills really do come into play with teaching students and staff self-regulation skills, which is really one of the most important things in order to learn.
You need to be self-regulated, right?
And able to be calm and, you know, present, so.
And you can use that in your role as
principal.
Yeah, and dean of students.
And so yeah, I've I have been busy with that.
And in the first couple of years, since then, just, you know, working through those things and teaching staff how to give students some of the strategies.
Connecting to your breath is just one simple strategy.
So we do that on the daily basis at Weston at the elementary school.
I presume you get maybe in a fill in role once in a while, you get in the
classroom.
Oh, absolutely.
Yes.
actually a joy is having opportunities to fill in when I can.
You wanted to talk about elementary enrichment as well.
Yeah, absolutely.
So this is an after-school enrichment program that we started a couple years ago now.
We have a coordinator, Stephanie Vic, who's also one of our junior high teachers.
And basically what it is is that we have several of our staff members right now, but it is open to anyone who would like to
you know, coordinate a program or an activity.
It started with chess club, which I actually ran only because I know how to play a little chess and so I thought I'd share that skill with some of our students.
And, you know, I was planning on maybe 15 students and we ended up with 30.
So there's definitely a need for the students as well as the parents to have something to do after school that then built into
Marcus McCauley doing a wrestling club and Laura Deamer doing an art club and Amanda Ren one of our paraprofessionals doing something called Little Eagle Cooperative with our younger younger learners where they get to learn cooperation skills through play and And then we have a talent show or a drama club that Christina Jennings runs and so Those are just some of the things that we were currently doing and that will continue to do but
Just putting a pitch to anyone out there that might be interested in maybe sharing a talent who would love to lead a small group.
They can contact me over Stephanie Vic at Weston.
It's a great way for somebody to give back a little bit to the community.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And that's the best, you know, giving, giving makes us feel good.
And so, yeah, any of that is, is always welcome.
So looking to expand that and
And any volunteers out there as well, if there are people that are looking to give their time, have them contact us at Weston.
Wonderful.
New cell phone policy.
We've talked about this with some other districts in the area.
What's going on with the policy at Weston?
So the approach that our school board took is our elementary will not have any cell phones during the school day.
But our junior high and high school students are permitted to have their phones before and after school.
at lunch and between classes.
The way we approach managing this, and it's still, the policy still fits with the statute, state statute.
Our teachers have a consistent storage system in each classroom, so as the students come in, they drop their phones into those, and so that they're not on them.
If a student doesn't do that, doesn't leave their phone in, and they happen to be on their phone during a class period, which includes Study Hall,
sore any of our junior senior privilege, they are taken away.
You know, for us, it was important that in we live in
Our students live in such a rural area and our school is in such a rural area that there are so many times that parents are communicating with kids, you know, to let them know they need to go home with someone or that they're having practice at a different time or location, all of those things that come up.
And, you know, parents want to be able to communicate with their kids and give those messages.
We felt that it was a good thing and also it was important to teach kids the skills of appropriate cell use, you know, that you're not on your cell phone during school or you're
your Bluetooth speaker because that's included as well or a watch, you know, that you need to be present during that time.
But then there is a time that you do need to communicate with people and check in with your parents or some different things.
So that's how the West End School District approached it.
What is cell reception like?
I mean, you're high on the hill there, so it's probably pretty good, isn't
it?
One would think.
One would think.
It depends on what...
which company you have and what location.
I know Jason is in a hole down in the, and when I say down in the elementary, our elementary portion of the building is in a lower.
a lower spot than the high school.
The high school sits up a little higher and you walk down some steps to get to the elementary.
And there's some areas within there that you can't get reception.
So it depends too if you have your Wi-Fi on and a lot of different things.
But yeah, some areas are good.
Luckily for me, my office, my previous office that Jason's now in, I did not have service in there, but now my office that I've been in the past,
just my third year.
It's got service, so that's helpful.
Weston and Ithaca joined forces for football this year.
Back to 11 player football, it seems to be going pretty well, Molly.
Yeah, it was an exciting game.
It sounds like last Friday night against Riverdale when they won.
And you know, this is our new, our first year of this new co-op with Ithaca.
We also did
with the co-op, we are also combining our junior high students.
And so they're playing together as well.
So that was something we found.
We did that with Girls Basketball.
Last year when we switched to our co-op with Ithaca for Girls Basketball, we also included our junior high middle school so that it's a consistent program.
So that's been pretty effective.
And we have quite a few students out.
And we have some kids that have been, we knew the sophomore group that we have, they've been working pretty hard in all sports and with some strength and conditioning over several years.
And it's a good group of athletes and they're a good group of kids that work hard as students and they're good school leaders.
Yeah, and they showed well on the field.
And I mentioned it before because I've experienced it with your girls basketball and wrestling and track and softball.
But the kids don't seem to mind.
You know, they don't know anything about a rivalry between the schools over the years.
It seems like they are pretty cohesive as a team.
Have you seen that?
Yeah, we have.
And we've seen, you know, the girls softball team that co-op was a positive experience for a lot of our kids, too.
The kids enjoyed it.
the team itself you know they they're cohesive and like you say it's not it's not always the the kids you know these these students they don't they don't remember those rivalries that other people do you know so it's they have different rivalries they have different things and and when you think of it the the connections that they have they've all been connected because of social media and cell phones you know it's not like
back in the day, Richland Center River Valley, we were rivals.
And Richland Center, when you lived in Richland Center, it was long distance to call River.
We didn't have a way to easily communicate.
It was not easy and it's not like that anymore.
And so the boundaries and limits of where kids have friendships have expanded so much.
So they don't know a rivalry.
They don't remember it.
And it also helps that we've had the successful co-op of wrestling.
That has been ongoing for several years.
And so that's a connection too.
And then once you have one or two students that are connected, somehow it just spreads like wildfire.
And they have friendships.
And they've known these kids for a long time.
Most definitely.
Where are you at in terms of the nickname for the team?
You
mean the mascot?
The mascot.
That's been kind of bandied about, I think, in both communities.
Yes.
I still stand by, and I've said this for the past several years, that the name of the mascot is something that should come from the combined effort of students and community.
It isn't something that I'm going to come out and say this is what we should be named and talk with other administration about.
It needs to be a community thing, a community and student thing.
And especially, you know, it's the students, right?
they're the ones that are going they're in school and um it's we want them to have pride in their in their school and their their teams and all the things they do that they have to have a say in that so um I I'm okay with taking some time on doing it the right way instead of rushing to name to name something um and you know like there are so many sports that
have co-opped for years and they're, you know, like with wrestling, right?
It's the Ithaca-Weston wrestling team.
Yeah, we have a few other things that sometimes, you know, that is the unofficial name for the team, but, you know, we need to take some time and do it the right way.
I think that's a good plan, good idea.
We referred to you as IW when we weren't saying Ithaca-Weston
last
time, so, yeah.
And that's, you know, and in time,
as people adjust, you know, because we don't, we don't want it to just be, you know, we take over one school's mascot.
We want to make sure that it's something that everybody has a say in and everybody can feel some pride in because it's new.
It's something new.
And we're still, Weston is still going to be the Silver Eagles and Ithaca is still going to be the Bulldogs, right?
But when we have our teams together, we have to have
We can have something, but it needs to be from the kids, in my opinion.
Yeah.
Oh, I think that's good news.
So both schools will have their homecomings for football and for sports this year.
And that's going to be a little different, because it's fairly early this year, isn't
it?
September 19th.
Yeah.
So that's coming up.
We had ours really early, I think, last year at that time.
So it's a quick turnaround.
You get kids in the building.
You're doing a lot of community building because you're preparing for homecoming.
So that's how we that was the approach we took last year.
So they got the early date for the homecoming game and then ours is October 16th.
And you've had some alumni reach out and things like that wondering about it.
And you recently had some alumni tour of the school too,
didn't you?
Yeah, I had some, the class of 1971 contacted me and they were having their class reunion and they wanted to do a tour of the school because several of them hadn't been back to the school in some time and they wanted a group picture.
So I think it was August 15th they came back and I was able to
to tour with them and go through the building.
They weren't interested in the elementary section.
That wasn't even there when they went to school, but it was really neat to see them in the school and hear the stories that they told about high school.
And then I took their picture.
And then of course, after they took the picture, they put me on the spot because they had the words to the school song, but they couldn't remember the tune.
And so I had to...
felt it out there.
It's posted in the gym, isn't
it?
The words aren't the problem.
It's the music.
They didn't remember the tune, how it sounds, and so I had to lead.
And so I was able to do the school song, and they were able to chime in once I, you know, hopefully had the right tune behind the melody behind it.
You're not going to perform it to close the morning show
today?
No, not that.
You know, I don't have those.
It's weird because I can do the school song when I see it, but I still remember my high school song.
And it's like, how can I remember that from all those years ago?
And I'll struggle with, as an adult, the school song at Weston.
But I know it when I have the words.
Next time you can sing it for homecoming when you come back.
Maybe.
Jason, what excites you about the upcoming school year
at Weston?
I'm just excited to see all the kids.
We had a little taste of that at the open house and I can't wait for our first day.
So I'm just thrilled to get started with another school year film.
Is there anything else that parents should know about the first day of school at Weston?
Well, if they're dropping their kids off, just remember we're going to drop them off at the upper
end with the high school, end of the school.
So make sure you do that.
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to Corinne in our office or myself or any of our staff.
And the first day is Tuesday.
First day is Tuesday.
Wow.
Right around the bend.
My granddaughter started today down in the Milwaukee area.
So tis the season to get going.
Good to see you both.
Thank you.
Here's to a good school year at Weston.
We'll see you
in the home
football Friday night,
right?
Yes, Friday night at Weston.
Hosting Wozika Stubin-Seneca.
Yep.
Very
good.
Well, good luck.
All right, thank you.
Molly Kaston joining us, Weston Principal, District Administrator, and also Jason Meyer, Elementary Principal, and 7 through 12 Dean of Students.