Today marks the end of the first quarter of the 18-19 school year. It has been a busy week and quarter for our students and staff. We believe we have had a strong first quarter due to some outstanding senior leadership on campus. We have had some significant gains in our staff with a skilled group of new teachers who are small in number but have had a positive impact at WHS. I was talking to a group of senior boys yesterday who were amazed how quick the year is going, and they mentioned how Thanksgiving break is perfect this year-it’s exactly halfway in the second quarter and that is pretty cool. Last week, our sophomores and juniors took the PSAT on Wednesday during a shortened week that also included the second week of ACL and several games with Lake Travis - Tennis, Volleyball and Football - all in one day. It was a busy week but a highly successful week on campus and in these events. The ability of our students and staff to remain focused during a week like this one serves our students well as they enter college and post-university life and they learn how to manage, prioritize, and even enjoy all that we know life can bring our way. As part of our mission to help our students find their passions, we encourage our teachers to engage with our community. We do this through our Mentorship program, Clinicals and CERT programs through HST, Incubator and Accelerator programs, and many volunteering opportunities. Our teachers have even begun taking field trips such as our astronomy classes venturing to Fort Davis and the McDonald Observatory. Here is an opportunity some our students had recently: Last week a group of Norman Morgan’s Robotics students got the opportunity to visit UT Austin’s Nanotechnology research facility at the J.J. Pickle Research Center. This facility is one of only sixteen facilities like it in the United States where cutting edge research on design and fabrication of microchips occurs. This was truly a day of learning...
We hope you have a fabulous weekend. On a positive note, the sun may make a rare appearance this Sunday. Hopefully you can find some time to get outside and enjoy a fall day of sun and cooler temperatures.
We would like to remind you to make a donation to EEF. As a group was listening to Dr. Leonard's State of the District today, it was quite impressive to visit with parents about such a large donation which all goes to funding staff positions including teachers, nurses, and librarians.
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We hope you have a wonderful three-day weekend. This weekend always hits at a perfect time. Everyone is into the flow of the new year. The routine is established, and our habits for the year have been established. We are half way to Thanksgiving Break and nearing the end of the 1st Quarter.
We hope everyone can slow down this weekend and get some true quality time with their loved ones. One cannot predict when the best memories will be made with family and friends, but one must be present with family and friends for any memory to occur. Make some time even during a busy ACL, Texas-OU weekend, and activity-filled three days with your closest ones. As my mom used to say often, “we don’t remember days, we remember special moments.” Take care. Every year we host an amazing College Fair for our Juniors and Seniors. This year it was a marvelous event with great planning by our Counseling Department and PTO. Our Juniors usually spend the most time visiting representatives as the future college experience becomes a little more concrete. Juniors can be thrilled with thoughts of independence, leaving home and beginning a new life. This also can cause the first true anxiousness and discomfort about these same thoughts. Our Seniors seem to peruse and gleefully meander between the schools they have on their personal list. Some you see, are set with their choices as the application process is on-going and time-consuming. The College Fair is also a time that our teachers and counselors see a surge in requests for recommendation letters. This may be a good time to have a quick check-in about college plans with your Junior or Senior as you may gain insight into your child’s plans since they can change sporadically. Last week, we were fortunate to open the grand walkway between the library spaces. This has been a desire for me personally as I arrived in February of 2002. This was significantly the most poorly designed area for traffic flow at WHS. This doorway was actually closed at one time to any student traffic until we opened it up in the spring of 2012. After the opening of the door, I had been reportedly told that “an opening simply cannot be done.” Even though a larger passage looked physically feasible with the current design, the answer was always no. The list of reasons was exhausting and even illogical at times. Perseverance is a mighty trait to have when the goal is to make our students’ lives a little better. With the help of our Campus Leadership Team and forward thinking by Maintenance & Operations (M&O), including Jeremy Trimble and Brian Bolek, we were able to get this completed after many years! The look on our students' and staff faces as they were passing through the first few times was priceless. These little things in our daily lives are our response to meeting student needs especially when they can minimize frustration and allow more time between classes. We had nearly a 33% jump in our sales for our Homecoming Dance this year. Thanks to Student Council for this wonderful memory for our kids. We hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.
Homecoming is always a little special at Westlake High School. Even with extremely busy schedules, this day and weekend have a special feel and excitement. Our students and staff always take pride in this school and community, but this weekend seems to bring everyone together a little closer. Upon returning to Westlake High School from WRMS, I made a commitment to brand our campus with reminders of this wonderful community. New wall graphics throughout our campus It was amazing to see how many students attended our Pep Rally while also representing their class with the color selected for their specific class. We welcomed our alumni and parents to the Pep Rally with a reserved section right in the middle of our Juniors and Seniors. We have had a wonderful day as veteran faculty members like myself have reminisced about some of our past greats like Toody Byrd, Ebbie Neptune, John Matysek, Mark Hurst, and Scott Gardner (the list goes on and on……). We will be honoring Coach Al Bennett this evening before our volleyball with the naming of the court after him. Homecoming Pep Rally 2018 While we think of the past, we are also invigorated by our current students and staff who continue to make this campus the best in Texas through their own innovations and creativity. As we all get busy with an array of events this weekend in town, we hope everyone takes a moment to reflect on this special place that is truly the “Pride of the Hills”. As we conclude our fourth week of school, we have all settled into our routine or routines. We have our morning routine concluding with the morning drop off or pre-work procedures at the home and office. We have our lunch routine, our exercise routine, our evening and night time routines. We have our calendars on our phones, laptops and even an old school physical calendar that exists somewhere in our kitchen so we do not miss something. Our kids have their routines as well which include managing up to seven classes with an array of activities. They have calendars on their phones, laptops and some have dry erase boards in their bedrooms and/or bathrooms. Routines, even according many experts, are key to a successful life. Routine: noun- a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program. Adjective- performed as part of a regular procedure rather than for a special reason. As it was raining over the weekend, many of our routines were altered or canceled. On Sunday afternoon, my youngest daughter Kate and her friend and neighbor, Lucy, reminded me of the notion of spontaneity. Instead of allowing the rain to literally dampen their normal time together outside, they chose to play in the rain as if they had never experienced rain before Sunday (not a difficult concept to imagine in an Austin summer). The interesting and profound part of spontaneous events that turn out positive is the pure joy. Nothing is planned. Without prior planning, there are no expectations. Without expectations, the immense satisfaction is deeper and more meaningful. We hope your weekend is a pleasant one filled with planned activities and possibly a spontaneous event as well. We have had a week of true quality time together at WHS. This week has been filled with many activities that have brought our students, staff, parents and community together to share common experiences. The first major activity was our Back to School Night on Wednesday evening. This evening was well attended, and our parents brought exceptional enthusiasm and good natured attitudes to our campus. As part of a consortium of schools throughout the country, I can report that we are the rare campus who actively invites our parents to a Back to School evening - it is a special night for our staff as well. We also had our annual picture day. Even with 17 and 18 year olds, our kids love to get dressed up for their yearbook picture. Our staff was thrilled this was on Back to School Night day so they were already dressed up. When these two groups merge out of the normal classroom setting, students and teachers strengthen those relationships as they stay out of subject matter. Westlake’s students came together for our first Pep Rally of the year. Even Vito looked peppy in his spirit gear. Science at Westlake hit the ground running with students working together and engaged in a variety of hands-on experiences. AP physics students used DataHubs to recreate motion graphs. Physics students used spheros to predict when and where potential collisions would occur. Engineering students designed and made self-propelled vehicles. The common thread was students working collaboratively to solve problems, and design solutions. All of which amounts to an exciting and thought provoking beginning to the school year for our science students! Quality time with hands on activities builds community daily at WHS. Check out the pictures below to see what's “movin” on campus. Tonight we will have our first home football game. This is a true community event as we enjoy the talents of our football players, band musicians, Hyline dancers, cheerleaders, and Tech Crew. Good luck to all of our students tonight!
As part of the Westlake High School experience, we offer a true Back to School Night. All of our parents are invited to attend their child’s classes as they follow their schedule for the evening. We have moved the evening to an earlier start time while also adding a few minutes to each class period - that may help with some of our students for the night who may be tardy! It is a good night for our community, and we look forward to your visit. As you walk the building next Wednesday evening, you will notice some improvements on our campus. As you walk, please notice our new flooring in the main building and new paint throughout the campus. We have removed some lockers to make our hallways more walkable. We also soon be unveiling a new opening between the two libraries to ease traffic flow as well. We have added a few courses over the last few years that have new areas. We have our Design Lab where we have our AP Computer Science classes and our new Swift Coding class are being taught. We have made a few upgrades to our class kitchen area for our Epicure Academy-culinary arts program. We have begun instruction in our new Physical Education class called Outdoor Recreation. We hope you have a wonderful three-day weekend. We hope you can spend some time with your students/children over the break. One night this week I caught the end of the movie, "The Pursuit of Happyness". You might remember this Will Smith movie based upon the life of Chris Gardner as he struggles as a single dad in San Francisco. The interesting item I noticed this time watching was the deliberate action the father took many times when things were the bleakest. He took the time to directly interact with his son. That became his solace and temporary relief from his strained life. While it is much easier to engage with a five-year-old than a teenager, I thought of how much time I make a clear intention to talk and visit with my kids as they have gotten older. I really thought of how my girls would answer this question: when issues arise in my life, do I turn towards them or turn away?
Enjoy the time with your family, friends and pets as we hit the traditional marker for the end of Summer-Labor Day. Every year it seems we have a little change in our calendar. This year we have several - including a week long Thanksgiving Break, a conclusion of the year after Memorial Day, and a Wednesday start day. The state, around fifteen years ago, enacted a law that all schools could start as early as the last Monday in August. Eanes ISD chose to become a District of Innovation in which one of the provisions would be the ability to begin school on a date that the district desired. As with many districts in Central Texas who are also Districts of Innovation, we chose a Wednesday start date. If you ask the students and staff at Westlake High School if this was a good move, I believe you would receive a very loud yes! There is a nice transition to a new year when you have the first day excitement followed by day two where one can already sense the first Friday and weekend. The third day is also the first true day that the new year routine is going to last a long time-May seems a million days away. The third day is usually also the first day of the grumpiness of the reality of the fatigue from getting up and going through a full day. I think everyone may be feeling that along with few extremely warm days may make this a truly welcomed weekend. Our students are already talking about the Labor Day weekend which is only seven days away…… The Class of 2019 is off to a solid start with a spirited welcome to the new school year. We look forward to the leadership and impact of this class on our campus and community. We hope you have a fabulous first weekend of the 2018-2019 school year!
Thanks for a fabulous year at the finest campus in all of Texas. We hope you have a wonderful summer building memories that will last a lifetime.
As we think of our students graduating, there is a wide mixture of emotions. Happiness, sadness, exhilaration, hesitation, denial, optimism, pessimism, fear, and gratitude can all be a part of the process. Visiting with parents over the last few weeks after many events such as Senior Awards Night, Spring Revue, state golf tournament, and a band concert, led to some interesting reflection on the feelings of our parents as all our students go through transitions and major changes as they mature. As I dropped my youngest daughter off at Cedar Creek this morning, a thought entered my mind: we have all done this before…… The feelings we experience during transitions we have experienced before as parents: The first real bite of food the first steps of our babies the first tooth and loss of a tooth the first swim without arms underneath our kids the first bike ride the first words the first time with a babysitter the first drop off at kindergarten the first recital the first game the first day of middle school the first sleepover the first middle school dance the first loss of a loved one or pet the first day of high school the first drive behind the wheel……. During these events, we had to allow our kids to do something on their own. We had to allow them to step up to experience a new thing while we could only observe and watch. The kids, not us, stepped up to the edge and took on a new challenge or life event. No matter the age of your student, these changes bring up the same emotions. The main word I would use to describe my interactions lately has been assurance. Please rest assured that your children are ready for the next step - and so are you. You’ve done this before. Gary Allan is one of my favorite song writers and musicians. I occasionally have control of my music in my truck with my girls. And if I do, I attempt to share some of my tunes with them. A song that resonates with all of us is called Every Storm. Here is a line or two that always gets the Ramseys fired up: "Every storm runs, runs out of rain Just like every dark night turns into day Every heartache will fade away Just like every storm runs, runs out of rain So hold your head up and tell yourself that there's something more And walk out that door Go find a new rose, don't be afraid of the thorns 'Cause we all have thorns Just put your feet up to the edge, put your face in the wind And when you fall back down, keep on rememberin'…….." The girls love this visual of walking out to the edge and allowing yourself the freedom of the wind as you may experience a new event (obviously that’s my paraphrasing of our conversations when they jam to this line). Rest assured, you and your child have been to the edge before as a family! We hope everyone has a fantastic last weekend of the 17-18 school year. When we return, we have a normal class day on Monday and then on to Final Exams. Take care.
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Steve Ramsey: WHS Principal BlogPrincipal's Weekly Reflections Archives
May 2019
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