Josh S. is a dedicated and hard-working DCS grad, earned a B.S. Degree in Finance Dec. 2011 (CSUN), and is looking for a position in a financial institution. He will be an excellent team member. Please message me with any leads.
Rotary So Cal-Nevada PETS Training. Congratulations Incoming Rotary Club Presidents!
Congratulations to the Rotary International Club Presidents-Elect from Southern California and Nevada! It was a privilege to lead workshop sessions designed to sharpen your fundraising and meeting leadership skills. It was clear from our time together that your clubs have thoughtfully and wisely selected you to serve as President for the 2012-2013 year. I have included the combined session notes and links we discussed in the workshops.
Fundraising that Really Works
Rotary International Southern California/Nevada Presidents-Elect Training Seminar (PETS)
Rotary Districts 5240, 5280, 5300, 5320, 5330, 5340
LAX Marriott Hotel
February 24-26, 2012
Instructor: Cecil Swetland
Collected responses from the elective sessions on fundraising.
Defining Rotary Fundraising: Raising funds for the Rotary Cause.
What is the Rotary Cause?
- Improving Community X3
- International Projects X2
- World Peace & Understanding
- Young Adults – Interact and Rotaract
- Education & Literacy
- Eradicate Polio X3
- Scholarships X2
- Clean Water
- Hunger Relief
- Leadership
- Literacy X2
- Mentorship
- Service Above Self
What are the purposes of Rotary fundraising?
- To Improve Lives
- Increase Club Exposure (public relations) X3
- Invite New Members
- Fellowship
- Team Building X2
- Membership Retention
- “Friendraising”
- Support Local Outreach
- Grow Membership X2
- Telling the Rotary Story
- Networking
- Learning through meeting Needs
- Meeting Needs
- Utilizing our Strengths
Share your Great and Creative Fundraising Ideas”
- Haunted House
- Skeet and Eat (Skeet Shoot)
- Choral Music Festival
- Basketball Tournament
- Lobster Fest
- Crab Fest
- Golf Tournament
- Educator of the Year Dinner
- Comedy Hypnosis Show
- Formal Dance
- Red Wine and Blues Festival
- Classic Car Show
- Reverse Drawing
- Polar Plunge
- White Elephant Raffle
- Talent Show (3 nights)
- Telethon-Auction
- July 4th Fireworks Celebration
- Entertainment Books
- Cowabunga Crab Fest
- East vs. West Barbeque Showdown
- Travel Raffle
- Vintage Car Show/Poker Run
- Chippio Feed & Auction\
- Garage Sale/Superbowl Drawing
- Gator Run (5K & 10K events)
- Trivia Challenge
- 3-Year Fundraiser
- Community Heroes Dinner
- Piggy Bank “Change for Change”
- Penny Pot
- Fundraising with other clubs – Tailgate Party
Click the following link, then click the Training Materials tab to see four different fundraising documents: http://www.socalnevadapets.org
Effective Club Meetings:
Planning for Meetings Your Members Won’t Want to Miss
The course outline and documents are available at the PETS website.
Click this link: http://www.socalnevadapets.org/news/pdf/news4-23.pdf
Filed under Rotary International
A Huge Success: The 2012 DCS Auction
The Desert Christian Schools Annual Auction is a wonderful event and provides important financial resources for the ministry of DCS. The Auction Committee selected this years’ theme “Racing to the Auction” and decorated the Runner Center in appropriate racing style. There were large racing tires marking the walkway with two real NASCAR racing cars at the entrance to the event!
Cheryl Corlew, Susie Popp, and Vickie Van Boheemen worked with an outstanding committee of 30 DCS parents and supporters to organize, decorate, and host a wonderful evening. Every year, many of our teachers and other staff members assemble and decorate very prized auction items that are special keepsakes for their classes or other groups of DCS students. The bidding for these one-of-a-kind items can be intense and exciting! We often receive requests to duplicate these special items which we decline because it takes away from their unique nature, diminishes their value, and puts extra pressure on our staff members to expend even more time and effort when they’ve done something great to produce their special items. Thank you for these special donations.
There were several highlights to the event but I will mention three of my special memories from the evening. First, we shared our appreciation for Roberta Bloom whose husband, Duke, opened up Duke and Slims here in Lancaster almost three decades ago. Now that Duke has passed on, Roberta is closing the store so she can enjoy being a grandma rather than running a small business. We wanted to say “Thank you” because they have supported our auction every year for 23 years! Second, let’s just say Brian Roseborough suggested having a puppy auction next year. Our first long-haired Chihuahua sold for $350 when the auctioneer surprised the crowd by announcing there was a “sister” puppy for sale at the same price. There was a collective gasp and laughter when the auctioneer sensed a hesitation from the runner-up bidder and announced “It would be sad to have to put this puppy to sleep because you didn’t buy it!” The second cute puppy was sold for $350. The biggest puppy headline of the auction was the extremely cute English bulldog which sold for $2,300! Third, it takes dozens of people to organize and plan this event and a few hundred to donate and bid on the items. Our staff and parents are always at the core of this effort. Thank you to everyone who served, donated, and purchased items at the auction.
We budgeted for a net income of $40,000 from this event. I am pleased to announce that we raised $53,901 in addition to the sponsorship provided by the Calandri family and all the good folks at Sonrise Farms. Philippians 4:19 comes to mind, “And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”
Filed under DCS
ACSI California School Board Members and Administrators!
It is always an honor to spend time with ACSI School Board Members and Administrators and a distinct pleasure to have this opportunity at the beautiful Tenaya Lodge in Yosemite! Christian schools are communities in which every member is called to be salt and light in the world. I have posted slides from the two workshops I am presenting at the conference in PDF format so they can be viewed on any computer with ease. If you would like me to email you a PowerPoint or Keynote version of the slides, please post a comment below (or email). I will be pleased to forward you this information so that you can share it with others. May the Lord continue to guide and bless you and you lead in your schools!
Filed under Uncategorized
Motivation: Inside-Out or Outside-In?
Motivation is being moved to do something. McGrew (2007) has defined academic motivation as “a student’s desire (as reflected in approach, persistence, and level of interest) regarding academic subjects when the student’s competence is judged against a standard of performance or excellence.” Many motivational theories have been developed in order to provide a language, conceptual representation, or explanatory system that offers a framework for understanding a complex process which involves emotions, perceptions, and intellect. The most basic distinction between the theories are intrinsic motivation, doing something because it is enjoyable or inherently interesting, and extrinsic motivation, doing something because it leads to a separable outcome.
Our published philosophy of learning contains the following statement, “By presenting academics in an age-appropriate time frame and involving the learner in the learning process, young people will develop into eager lifetime learners.” What this is communicating is that we are committed to teaching children in way that is active and highly engaging, that we will introduce knowledge and skills in a way that takes advantage of our students’ natural development, and that our students will develop an intrinsic motivation to learn that persists throughout their lives. I am in the midst of a three journey to research and understand the concept of academic motivation and what adults can do to foster motivation in students. I can share one aspect of this research with you in one sentence. Students will develop intrinsic motivation for learning when they see it modeled by an adult they admire and respect. I want to encourage everyone on our staff to be a lifetime learner. That could involve taking a class or getting a degree. Studying the Bible can be a powerful source of lifetime learning. For many people it involves reading a few books every year, listening to audiobooks, watching documentaries or learning a skill or hobby. Lifetime learning should be fun and add meaning and purpose to your days. It also encourages those around you, including our students, to see the value of learning and provides an example for them to follow.
Spelltacular Event!
Poems have been written about it. Songs have been sung to describe it. Plays have been performed to relive it. Tomorrow, we will host it! What is it? It’s the Spelling Bee.
The local spelling bee at DCS will involve students from nine different ACSI member schools. Five of the schools are in the Antelope Valley and the other schools are located in Lomita, Hesperia, and Banning.
The winners from our local spelling bee and eleven other local spelling bees that take place throughout southern California will compete at the ACSI Regional Spelling Bee at Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena on February 18. The winners from the regional bee advance to the ACSI National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. on May 12.
I am impressed by each student selected to represent their schools at this event, especially the Knights! Many of the participants engage in a significant amount of study to prepare for this competition. The Spell-Off that takes place after the grade-level contests is very exciting and a joy to attend. You’ll be enthralled if you watch the students apply what they’ve learned to spell many difficult words. You might become spellbound by it! See what I did there? That’s a pun. P…U…N. It is a noun. It means “the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning; a play on words.” Thankfully, the students representing Desert Christian Elementary and Middle Schools will not limit themselves to 3 letter words. It’s very likely someone will be asked to spell a word like hippopotamus which, if this had happened to me in second grade, would have caused me to faint. It’s not a fear of spelling words that would have caused me to black-out, it would have been the crowd of people all intently staring me right in the eyes while I tried my best to spell very long words. By the way teachers, please do not ever ask me to spell a difficult word, like cymotrichous, which was an actual word at the Scripps National Spelling Bee last year, in front of your students. If you do, I might faint. If you cause me to faint, I will bring a hippopotamus, with a big red bow around its’ neck, to your home and tell your children, or grandchildren, that it’s their new pet and to take care of it in YOUR backyard until it is fully grown in 10 years.
Now, back to happier, hippopotamus-free thoughts! We are able to host this event every year because our staff members, parent volunteers, and volunteers from other schools make it possible. The entire team is led by Julie Shirar, Spelling Bee Chair and Vice Principal of DCES. Thank you, Julie, and our fantastic hardworking volunteers for making this a special day for our students and guests. Please note that the participants may not invent words as I did in the headline for the article.
Filed under DCS, Uncategorized
New Research regarding ACSI Accredited Schools
The following summary is taken from The Seal, a newsletter published by ACSI, Volume 7, Number 3.
“The release of the Cardus Education Survey has provided Christian schools with some data that warrants reflection, discussion, and dialog (Pasadena, CA: Cardus, 2011). Ray Pennings, senior fellow and director of research at Cardus, will be a presenter at Leadership Academy 2012. ACSI, in collaboration with Cardus, asked for additional data that compared ACSI accredited schools with nonaccredited, other conservative Protestant schools and Catholic schools. The 390 pages of data from that study provide some interesting perspectives and make a strong case for schools to become ACSI accredited. The following are a few of the notable areas where ACSI accredited schools were highest in the category:
• Highest standardized test scores (2) – Catholic schools were second.
• Involvement in evangelism (7) – Other ACSI schools were a close second
• Historical and literary knowledge (40) – All schools were a fairly close second
• Second language learning (42) – ACSI accredited schools were significantly higher than others
• Appreciation for a liberal arts education (49)
• Love of learning (60) – Other ACSI schools were second.
• A close personal relationship with God (65) – ACSI accredited schools were much higher than others
• Common spiritual values uniting students (108) – All schools had close scores in this area
• Missions and social service outside the United States and Canada (129)
• Course requirements in all core subjects including Bible (152-161)
• Percentage of students in college preparatory (194) – Catholic schools were second
• Regular worship attendance of teachers (265) – Other ACSI schools were a close second
• Superintendents influencing policies and decisions (291)
• College recruiters visiting campus (327) – Catholic schools were second
• Adherence to a dress code (351)
• Students participating in athletics (354)
• Students required to take college entrance exams (357)”
There is more information being published in the next edition of The Seal. Meanwhile, take a look at that list again. ACSI accredited schools, like DCS, were highest in these categories! That’s an impressive list of documented strengths among institutions similar to Desert Christian Schools. Now you know!
Filed under DCS
