Native Students Receive Awards

We received exciting news from Fife’s Coordinator of Indian Education, Phyllis Covington this week:  four FHS seniors recently were awarded checks of $500 each to help defray senior year expenses by the Washington State Indian Education Association!

Evan Ashmore, Brittnee Farris-Roesli, Ashley Peterson and Katie Twinn each submitted an essay, two letters of recommendation, and their high school transcript in order to be considered for this award.  Ms. Covington was hopeful that one of the students would be awarded a $200 prize and was overwhelmed when all four received the larger amount of money.

The awards were presented as a surprise earlier in this week in FHS Principal’s Dr. Mark Knight’s office. Congratulations to all of these great students!

Congrats Mr. Alfano

Mr. Alfano holding a sign the students of Endeavour Intermediate made for him.

Congratulations Mr. Alfano, Endeavour Intermediate School Principal, who today completed the Boston Marathon in 3:11:06!  We are all very proud of you.  Please leave him a note of congratulations below!

WOW Refrigerator Updated

Click here to check out our new featured work on our district’s WOW Refrigerator!

A Day in the Life….in Fife: SLMS Cafeteria

Welcome to visit number two of my “A day in the life…in Fife” blog. For the record I am truly having a blast doing this. Today I worked once again in one of our school kitchens. I had the great pleasure to work for Laura (the taskmaster) Berry the manager of our Surprise Lake Middle School cafeteria and her wonderful crew consisting of Shelley Prendergast, Sherry Andrews, Vallies Tupuola and Pam Zarko. And…what a great crew this is. It was a little different today than my last visit as the food is all prepared here. Wow..what an undertaking that is done smoothly.

What impressed me the most in this visit is just how great a team atmosphere exists in this kitchen which is what I also saw at Discovery. Talk about cross training. It is clear that everyone looks out for the other with the main goal of getting the job done as efficiently as possible. I am seeing a theme of this already in our kitchens.

These ladies prepare food and serve it to over 500 students in a very short amount of time with about a 20 minute break in between lunches. I am very impressed as well with the multitude of really good choices that our students have every day. Also it is clear that great care is given to putting a quality meal out to every student and it is also clear that cleanliness and food safety is a huge priority.

Well, after helping prep the food I was put front and center and given the primary task of serving up the hot lunches. Man, middle school kids sure can move fast when food is involved. I did get into a little trouble for heaping on a little too much chili with the hot dogs but hey it’s the way I like it myself. For the record, I did correct that by second lunch. It would have been really embarrassing to get “let go” on my first day for skewing the portion control.

Between lunches I helped Mrs. Zarko with cleaning the dirty trays and then before I knew it we were starting all over again. I was also so very impressed with once again just how great our Fife kids are. Most of the students actually said “thank you” when they were served. (I think the ones who got the extra helpings of chili during first lunch in my rookie session were the most thankful though).

I left this experience once again feeling so proud of the caliber of folks that make up Fife School District. I once heard a quote that went something like this: “throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow”. I really believe that we don’t have anyone around here that simply sits on a fence when it comes to our kids.  Thank you SLMS ladies for reinforcing that for me today. More to come; off to read at Discovery on Tuesday and then back into a kitchen at Hedden on Wednesday. Man, I love my job.

A day in the life…..in Fife: Discovery cafeteria

As you may recall, I have decided to work alongside my colleagues in order to not only get a better idea of the great work going on in our district but also to celebrate the wonderful folks that work here everyday on behalf of our students. In celebration of kicking off Classified Employees recognition I have scheduled several visits with some of our great Fife family. While I will not be able to work in every station, I hope to get a good cross section of our wonderful staff. I plan to work in cafeterias, as a custodian, ride along on the buses among other fun visits.

I began with my first visit to Discovery Primary. The really neat thing is that we had a communication glitch and Adrienne Myers and the ladies in the kitchen did not know that I was coming on Tuesday for lunch. It worked out just great as I got to see how wonderful they serve our kiddos on a daily basis. With a small but wonderfully efficient staff of Adrienne, Claire Robertson and Drasann McDowell they are able to feed nearly 300 students in a very short span of time. The paras, custodians and teachers do a great job of managing to get that many students funneled in and out in a very short time.

It was pizza day (a day not underappreciated by the smiling Rocket students for sure) so I helped unload the pizzas into the warmer and then proceeded to help Adrienne with scanning in the student debit cards. I think if the truth be told, I was a little too social in greeting the students and slowed the whole process down. It did not help that some of the goobers in line decided to mess with me a little bit and play hide the card on me with a big mischevious smile. But it was great fun. When the first lunch was served I was then tasked to help bus about 140 trays per lunch and get them to the kitchen for a quick washing. I was truly amazed with just how efficiently the kitchen is operated at Discovery. It is operated with such warmth and care for our students. This was not a suprise to me but I was truly proud to experience it first hand.

The kids were just great and well mannered. One little guy asked me if he could have mustard for his salad. Mustard? Well I went looking and it turned out he really wanted the ranch dressing but hey a condiment is a condiment regardless of color and who am I to judge? All in all this was a great start to my adventure and simply reaffirms that we have great folks doing great things for great kids. On a final note, I was appalled with the fact that after spending only ten minutes at the recess that followed lunch it dawned on me that these kids had already burned off more than the calories that they have consumed in eating pizza for lunch. Life is not always fair. I had one slice and I am sure I still have it with me. More later as I am off to the Surprise Lake cafeteria where Laura Berry has already threatened me with a 5:45 a.m. wake up call to unload a delivery……we’ll see.

Another Letter of Intent!!!

The string of rewards for talented FHS student-athletes continues! Jaimie McFarland recently signed a letter of intent to run cross country and track for Lipscomb University -a Division I school – in Nashville, Tennessee. In a press release FHS Athletic Director Amanda Fox said, “Jaimie has been an outstanding girls cross country and track athlete for Fife High School as well as an outstanding student academically. We are proud to send her on to this next level of competition and know she will do well.”

Jaimie has attended Fife schools since kindergarten and the entire Fife family wishes her well!

Happy Classified Employee Week

Fife Public Schools joins with school districts throughout our state in honoring our classified employees this week. These staff members play vital roles in ensuring that students are able to participate fully and engage in the work their teachers design for them to do. By delivering them safely to and from school, feeding them nutritious meals, keeping them safe on the playground, keeping their school environment clean, and provide extra assistance with their schoolwork these vital members of our district team contribute daily to the lives of our students and staff. Fife classified employees rock; thanks so much for ALL you do!

In their honor Dr. McCammon, and members of the district’s administrative team, will be serving cake at various locations throughout the district this week.

Dr. McCammon serves cake to FHS classified employees Tom Harris and Joseph Robinson.

Three FHS Athletes to Sign Letters of Intent

Press Release from Amanda Fox, FHS Athletic Director:

Three Fife High School seniors will be signing letters of intent with area colleges this Wednesday, February 3, 2010.  Shelby Hutton will be signing to play women’s soccer for Eastern Washington University. Haley Shaw is signing a letter of intent to play women’s soccer at Oregon State University.  Faith Wasmund will be signing to compete with the women’s wrestling program at Yakima Community College—one of the few colleges or universities nationally that feature a women’s wrestling program.  All three have competed at the high school state level, and all three are excellent students and active members of the Fife student body.

Fife High School will be hosting a reception to celebrate these athletes’ achievements this Wednesday, February 3 at 1:30pm in the FHS library.

Congratulations to these athletes, their families, teammates,  and coaches!

UPDATE 2.04.10: Here are a few pics from the signing ceremony.

District Science and Technology Showcase a Winner!

Thank you to the approximately 1,000 guests who attended our inaugural District Science and Technology Showcase! Be sure to visit our website to see a slideshow and video of the evening. We are blessed to have such a supportive community behind what we do. If you attended the event, please leave us a comment about what you thought!

Trojan Digital Media

Trojan Digital Media is the creative force behind all kinds of video productions at Fife High School.  They produce a weekly video announcement for FHS’s ASB called, ‘Life at Fife‘ and a monthly show for their school, ‘Trojan TV.’  In addition they produce PSA’s, short films, and other video projects as they are asked.  They recently helped create a series of videos to help the district inform voters about our two upcoming levies.  Over the past few years, TDM has been awarded seven Emmy’s for their work. Kudos to the students and their teacher, Mr. John Shula for work well done!  A sample of their work appears below:

Levy Intro (1/4) from FifeWOW on Vimeo.

Be sure to visit Trojan Digital Media’s website for more information and a great sampling of their work!