The 2011/12 Application Period is Open!

Thank you for your interest in our school. Our application period is now open.

We are accepting applications for grades Kindergarten through eighth grade. We will be accepting applications between January 1, 2011 and March 31, 2011.

Applications are accepted per a public lottery drawing in April. Check with our front office for the specific date on or after April 1st. All parents will be notified by April 30, 2011 as to their status.

Late applications, received after March 31, 2011, will be considered only after our entire lottery is
exhausted.

You must re-apply every year if your child is not accepted.

Additional Information:

Siblings of currently enrolled students are given priority. An application for siblings is still required.

Kindergarten Applicants must be 5 years of age on or before October 15, 2011.

How to Apply:
1. Fill out an application and send it in.
2. Attend a mandatory information session for enrollment. Information Sessions are scheduled
on the following dates:

January 25(Tuesday) 6:00 p.m.
February 16(Wednesday) 6:30 p.m.
March 19(Saturday) 10:00 a.m.

Quick Information about Innovations Academy:

Current Enrollment: 253
Programs: 5 day attendance, 3 day attendance and 2 day attendance
Teaching Methodology: Student Centered Project Based Learning, Differentiated Instruction, and our Explorations Program.
Grade Levels: K-8th grade
Academic Year Type: Traditional
Student Teacher Ratio: Maximum 25:1
Before/After School Care Available: Yes, for a fee, from 7:00 a.m.- 6:00 p.m.
Cost: FREE -- We're a public charter school.

Weekly Update

Good Evening, Innovations Community!

1)The Holiday break is coming and I would like to encourage you to find a good read aloud book and set the goal of reading every day aloud to your children. Hearing stories read aloud is important for all age levels, including our eighth graders. Don’t let your children miss out.

2) This is the last week for DeeDee’s class to accept non-perishable food donations for Feeding America-San Diego. Contribute to their service learning project by bringing in a non perishable food.

3) Did you know that tomorrow, Monday, Dec 13th, there will be a Groupon for Donorschoose.org. For $10, you can give $25 worth of donations. If you do groupons, we would appreciate the donation. We currently have at least one teacher with a donorschoose request.

See his request here:
http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/proposal.html?id=447739&verify=1256076429

4) Monday is our fundraising night at Fresh and Easy. Staff from Innovations will be bagging groceries. Stop in and visit them. Do your grocery shopping for the week tomorrow at Fresh and Easy in North Park.

5) Monday is busy. Our December board meeting is held at 6:30 upstairs in Tony’s room.

4) This Friday is Pizza Friday. $3 for one slice and $4 for two slices. This includes fruit and water. Support our 8th grade and get a nice hot lunch.

Fresh & Easy Fundraiser

Monday evening December 13th is IA Night at the "Fresh & Easy" Grocery store at 32nd and University--It's a beautiful brand new store. From 4 - 8 pm, IA is hosting shoppers at the store. We are asking all families to come and shop on Dec 13th from 4 - 8 pm as IA gets 5% of the total sales generated during this time frame. Ask your friends and neighbors to shop at this time as well-- it's all money for our school! When you come to shop, make sure you check in with our parent volunteers as we will offer a party to the class with the most participation in this event.

We need parent volunteers for the night to help greet, bag groceries and hand out free samples. We have 20 one hour shifts available. Please call Michelle Anderson at 951-541-4664 or Tami Hermann at 619-246-4395 and let us know when you can help, or email Michelle at michelle@innovationsacademy.org. Kids are welcome to work along side their parents. This is a great way to meet other families from IA.

Thanks for helping. See you Monday evening as we shop to raise money for IA!

Explorations Program

The Explorations Edition of Highlights is here! Learn all about our Explorations Program, just one part of what makes IA stand out.

If you know of any businesses that would like to sponsor the program and make a year end donation please see our Facebook Causes page!

Changing Education Paradigms

Here's a great video from the RSA where Sir Ken Robinson talks about Changing Education Paradigms.

What are your thoughts on this video?

Innovations Extended Care Info

We often get the question, "Do you offer before and after care?"

Yes! Innovations Extended Care Program is dedicated to creating a fun and creative environment that will inspire students to learn new skills, make new friends, and enjoy being a kid! For more information download our Extended Care Handbook.

A few facts about Extended Care:
1. Before care begins at 7:00am and ends at 6:00pm.
2. Student/Staff ratio of 20:1.
3. Use of Positive Behavior Management just like during the school day.
4. Reasonable pricing at $5/hr. See attached doc for pricing, drop ins are allowed. We would love to be able to offer the Innovations Extended Care program for free. If any parents would like to work on getting grants to sustain this program, please contact the Director.

Please contact Donna in the main office for more information.

Thank you to Solar!

Here is an article about the Extreme School Makeover and the help that Solar provided us with.

~~

Volunteering article – “The Season of Giving”

As the season of giving comes just around the corner, the spirit of giving at Solar is in full force.

On Saturday, October 9, a team of 45 Solar employees took San Diego’s Innovations Academy by storm in an “Extreme School Makeover” project, in conjunction with Volunteer San Diego’s Serve-a-thon. Volunteers transformed two empty, industrial spaces into fun and inviting playrooms by painting murals, constructing planter boxes, building walls and working on an indoor tree house.

“Charter schools are not given facilities, so we are located in a business park with no outdoor play space and are using these industrial bays as our play area,” said Christine Kuglen, Founder and Director of Innovations Academy. “It’s difficult to find the time and money to do what we want to do so that the kids feel like they have a great area to play in, so we are very appreciative for the Serve-a-thon and volunteers coming in to create a beautiful space that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

Pedro Ruiz, a second shift painter in the industrial coatings 149 division, brought his family in to help with his assigned project – a mural of San Diego’s skyline. “We thought it was a great opportunity to get involved and help teach our kids the value of giving back,” said Pedro.

Charter Informational Events

The first event is a Charter Candidate Forum at Gompers Preparatory Academy, Wednesday, Oct. 13^th from 6-8. All the school board candidates who are up for election will be in attendance. The event is co-sponsored by GPA and CCSA and being moderated by the League of Women Voters. Learn more about board candidates by attending this event.

The second event is the Charter Townhall Meeting being held on Monday, October 18^th at Darnall Charter School from 6:30 to 8pm. Board President Barrea and some charter leaders will discuss the budget situation and share information on Prop. J. Come learn about Prop J!

Learn about Prop J

SDUSD is proposing a temporary parcel tax that will cost home owners $98 a year and, in return for that, schools will receive $50 million each year over the next 5 years. Please learn about Prop J for yourself and tell everyone you know to do the same.

In the past 3 years, Sacramento has cut annual funding for San Diego City Schools by more than $300 million – nearly a quarter of the District’s operating budget. Innovations too has experienced cuts, last year alone we were cut and deferred by $300,000, that's 1/3 of our operating budget.

This measure will provide $50 million a year for 5 years to help offset those cuts, to relieve severe cuts in academic programs. Charter schools are guaranteed a per year a pro-rata share each year which we estimate will be about $500/student per year.

This is a local measure, passed by local voters. By law, Sacramento can NOT take this funding away.

Voter Information:

• Check your voter status at:
  http://www2.sdcounty.ca.gov/rov/eng/evoter_query.asp
• Register to vote deadline: October 18th:
  https://www.sos.ca.gov/nvrc/fedform/
• Request to Vote by Mail:
  http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/voters/Eng/Eabsentee.shtml

API Growth

Innovations Academy is in the top schools in the county for API growth for the 2009/10 school year. See the article in Sign On San Diego (see the chart). While we have our qualms about state testing, we know that assessment is an important measure and wanted to share our improvement.

Family Meals!

Dear Parents,

Chickpeas is so grateful to be able to serve delicious and healthy lunches to your child at Innovations Academy! Our first couple of weeks have been successful due to the participation of the wonderful staff, parents and students at Innovations Academy.

First and foremost, we would like to thank you for your understanding and patience as we introduced our online ordering system. There were unforeseen technical problems and glitches that made online ordering difficult, if not impossible, for periods of time. We apologize for this frustrating experience, and want to thank you all for your patience while the Web team to which we outsource troubleshooted these problems. We are relieved that the problems are now fixed and the site is running properly. Features such as automated order confirmations via e-mail and pricing are now in proper working order.

Another improvement you will see is larger portion sizes for some of the entrees and sides. Based on your valuable feedback, we will increase the standard portion sizes for items such as the French toast and sweet potato fries. For those who desire even bigger portions, our menu allows you to order "double portions," in which you get twice the amount of food for an extra $2.50.

Chickpeas serves healthy lunches throughout San Diego

We are truly excited that you have joined us on our mission to feed growing bodies solid nutrition. We are kicking off the Fall season with many exciting plans in store for you and your children. In mid-October, we will be on campus to bring your children and staff a fun and interactive Nutrition Assembly, presented by Chickpeas owner and dynamic speaker, Julie Frans. The topics covered will include breakfast foods, snacks, drinks and general information about ingredients, and how to make healthier choices. Your child will learn how to become a "label detective," by learning which ingredients are truly healthy and beneficial, and which should be avoided or are misleading. Your child will come away empowered and enlightened about the food and choices they can make that will affect them for their entire lives! Stay tuned for the date, time and more information on the upcoming assembly.

Starting on Monday, September 20th, we will begin offering our delicious and convenient Family Dinners! Please read on for more details.

We look forward to a healthy year together!

Sincerely,
Robbie and Julie, and The Chickpeas Team
619.447.4140

Lunch Program

This year IA has a new lunch program, Chickpeas!

As part of our charter we included nutrition in creating an active and engaged learning environment. We couldn't think of a better way to do this than to offer Chickpeas as a wonderful lunch option.

We'd also like to take the time to remind you to please pack your child with a backpack full of healthy snacks and water! Our kids are active all day long and they need those power snacks to keep them going.

Thanks!

Pack a Zero Trash Lunch

We know first hand from last year (since staff took out the trash) that our kids create lots of waste. The average student creates 67lbs of trash each school year. You can help bring this number way down (helping the environment and the staff) by packing a zero waste lunch.

One way that you can do that is to look at the Green to Go products. They came to our school last year and were very popular. They will be back on August 30th at our orientation. But, you can order now if you'd like.

For more info on packing a trashless lunch, watch the video:



For more info on our hot lunch program, Chickpeas, see here.

eScrip and IA

Can you believe the summer is coming to a close in just a few weeks?

Back to school shopping time is here. Sign up with eScrip to help support your school! They're doing a huge promotion from August 11 - September 14th, so sign up now to get some great deals and contribute to IA.

Education Conservator

IA is kicking off a great new fundraising program, read below or click here.

Innovations’ Education Conservators preserve and invest in our Clubs, the Arts, Media, Physical Education, and Science curriculum that provide our students with learning opportunities that have been undervalued and dissolved from public and even private schools. Our goal for the 2010/11 school year is to have 100 Education Conservators join us in contributing to this program.

Innovations Academy, a free K - 8 public charter school, creates happy and vibrant learners. Our students know the joy of making a contribution in their classroom: 5th graders learned about geometry through building a play house for their younger peers, 3rd graders understood economics through opening a school store, and 4th graders contributed to developing nations through micro- financing. By engaging students in real world projects and opportunities, we develop well rounded, collaboratively minded, and creative problem solving members of society.

Click here to become an Education Conservator!

It's official!

IA has a new home:

6154 Mission Gorge Road, Suite 100
San Diego, CA 92120

Remember, school starts Wednesday, September 1st!

Summer Time Outcomes

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to share a piece that I wrote for the 8th grade commencement:

Unexpected Outcomes

As some of you may know, I love a good quote. They keep me grounded and give me perspective whenever I get caught up in the thoroughfare of day to day life.

When I thought of our community, a Buckminster Fuller quote popped out at me, “There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”

There are many times in life when we hope for a certain conclusion. We build up expectations, sometimes only to find that a situation, a feeling, or a thought has changed. If we can keep open to changes, new perspectives, and these unexpected outcomes, we can view life as a place where we’re always growing.

Our 8th grade class has been a grand experiment. Many of these students have come to Innovations from well established schools. Places that have janitors, typical report cards, traditional parent/teacher conferences, principals with normal hair, and even a cafeteria. However, you all, students, families, and teachers, being explorers...were looking for something different, you were willing to experiment.

These young explorers have created classroom rules, faced their peers in class council, greeted each other daily in Morning Meeting, come to me when they are not satisfied with the way they have handled a situation, developed strong friendships, challenged their teachers in positive ways, and have made our community bigger and brighter for every twist and turn.

We’ve come here with a mission, to live powerful lives through self-expression, compassionate connection, and purposeful learning. I see them being self-expressed when they come in wearing colorful makeup, bright hair do’s, wearing Rastafarian hats, and speaking their minds on today’s issues. They compassionately connect with each other when they make mistakes and can hear each other without blame or guilt. Solar ovens, the Sacramento Trip, Roller Coaster physics, and analyzing the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, are just some examples of purposeful learning. I’ve seen the parents living our mission as well, when they come in and contribute to our community and voice their thoughts even when they are nervous.

For me, the mission of IA has been an experiment and the students especially have surpassed what I thought a public school could look like. I know that your future has many beautiful adventures ahead. Bring that sense of self that you have graciously shown us here to your future high school and other endeavors.

I wish you all the best to come and many unexpected outcomes.

~~~

Summer can be a time of many unexpected outcomes, families move, new teachers are hired, friendships change, etc. Here is what is coming up in the week that follows:

1. Tomorrow, Thursday (6/24), we are finishing up packing our facility at 123 Camino de la Reina. Please drop by and lend a hand if you can from 10am - 3pm.
   
2. By the end of next week we expect to have signed a lease with 6154 Mission Gorge Road (stay tuned for a long post about the expectations for the site).
3. We're hiring on two 6th grade teachers and one additional K teacher (all other teacher assignments will remain the same).
4. We have a new K - 2 Home Learning Community class starting in addition to our 2 - 6th grade program.
   
5. Our classes are almost full for next year. We have a few spots left in 6th grade and in our Home Learning Community

I have heard from some community members that there is fear about Innovations Academy remaining open. One of my favorite quotes about fear comes from Neale Donald Walsch:

FEAR is an acronym in the English language for "False Evidence Appearing Real"

As you can see from everything that is happening above, we're strongly open (and if we thought we'd be closing, you'd better bet there would be a blast). Surely there will be some unexpected outcomes, there always are in life. However, if you have a question about what is going on at Innovations (or hear things through the grapevine, or that ol' game of telephone) please speak with a staff member as they will have the best information to inform you with.

Thank you,

Danielle

Article in Union Trib.

Charters have made incredible progress in the communities they serve by providing choice to families and raising student achievement. There are many unique charter programs in San Diego County, including project-based learning, dual language immersion and personalized learning options for families to choose from. Academic achievement and college and career preparedness are common goals in charter schools; many are exceeding expectations. The way I see it, in the 21st century’s ever-changing and highly competitive world, our students require an education that is bold and breaks the mold, bringing creativity and passion for learning that goes beyond the classroom.

Article here.

Enjoy,

Danielle

Care to Share?

Hey Everyone,

There is a contest going on right now for some of the best schools around. We think IA is wonderful and we know others do too:

http://www.care2.com/schoolcontest/6247/90/supporters

"We are deeply happy with I.A.This is our 1st year with IA, after years of just trying to cope with the public school system, we never had a weeknight evening that wasn't full of stress from 2 hours of homework, it would leave us no family time. We are BLESSED to have found IA and their project based learning. I also appreciate that you believe in fostering a positive home life with minimal to NO homework! Our daughter is in 5th grade, and next year, our son will be joining the kinder class. Thanks Danielle and Christine and Bill for the great communication with your students! I couldn't thank you enough." - Finnegan Family

"I am absolutely in love with Innovations Academy. My daughter, Cloe, is in the second grade, and I have watched her confidence and excitement about school grow with every day that passes. The project-based learning has expanded Cloe's concept of learning so even though she doesn't have specific homework, she talks about what she has learned in class and applies it at home and outside the classroom. We are actually engaged in the learning process more constructively and more thoroughly than when she had specific homework assignments." - Maland Family

Guest Performer at IA

Pablo Sainz Villegas visited IA on Tuesday. He was a fantastic performer and teacher. Our children learned about classical guitar music mixed in with some history and geography. Thank you Pablo!

Entrepreneurial Kids

Awesome videos on how we would do our kids a service by teaching them to be entrepreneurs instead of worker bees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCar_sFfEf4

~Danielle

Voice of SD Article

The article:

Setting the rules is part of schoolwork at Innovations Academy, an unconventional K-8 charter school with roughly 200 students that practices what it calls "positive discipline." Children handle disputes together instead of running to the principal. They create rules adults might not agree with. The idea is children will become more independent, cooperative and thoughtful instead of merely compliant, learning the how and why of following the rules.

A parent write up is here as well.

Enjoy,

Danielle

What makes a great teacher?

At IA we're constantly inquiring into our practice. What's working for our students and families? What's working for our teachers? How can we make this more engaging? What are we missing?

It appears that this type of inquiry is one trait of a great teacher as reported in "The Atlantic." Over the last month, myself and Christine have read some great articles espousing the greatness of what our teachers are already doing: building relationships with students, reflecting on their work, endless planning and reworking, etc.

What's humorous to us is that even some district officials are coming out and talking about relationship based classrooms and more positive discipline...so where's the implementation? We know that it has to come from top down and it's going to be very difficult to implement reflection and personal freedom when a system is built on a dominating hierarchy.

They'll have to come visit IA and start training with us.

The excerpt below from The Atlantic is a slice of how our teachers and staff operate:

[G]reat teachers tended to set big goals for their students. They were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: “They’d say, ‘You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.’ When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.” Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.

Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

We'd love to hear from you in the comment section. What do you think makes a great teacher?

Raffle this Thursday!

Hello IA Families,

Thursday is Family Night and we're having a big raffle. Buy tickets this week with Donna or Karrlie and possibly win one of the prizes below on Thursday:

















































And more!

Another Great Video: Capable Kids

http://www.ted.com/talks/kiran_bir_sethi_teaches_kids_to_take_charge.html

Excellent Video: Pediatric Neurologist gives his take on education

While we don't identify as Montessori, what he's discussing here rings true for IA.

Nurturing Empathy

The capacity for empathy seems to be innate, but parents can encourage it in children by teaching them to relate positively to others and by modeling it themselves.

Playing to Learn

Here is a great piece that speaks volumes to what we're doing at IA:

In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way.

What they shouldn’t do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/opinion/02engel.html

School Closure

Hello IA Families,

Though we are safe and sound here at Innovations. We are encouraging parents to pick up their children early as the flood waters are rising at the river and we fear that traffic conditions will only worsen after 3:30 as the storm picks up. Additionally there are very few children at school today. Please come to get your child early.

If you are in the Extended Care program and cannot pick up your child by 3:30pm please call Donna at the front desk, 619-501-6327.

Additionally, tomorrow we are closing school as it does not look like the already flooded areas will get any better until after the weekend. All school activities will resume on Monday.

Thank you,

Danielle

Rain or Shine?

We are due for a lot of rain tomorrow and Friday. Though we know that this area is prone to flooding we are not canceling school just yet. We have heard conflicting reports that the morning may be dry making it possible to commute to school. That said, if conditions get worse over night we will do another phone blast at 6am tomorrow morning to cancel school (and all school related activities) and we will also put it on our website. Assuming that we have school tomorrow, please be prepared in the event that we need to shut down early which would mean an early pick up.

Remember to drive with your lights on, slowly, and cautiously. It will be wild out there! Be safe.

Free Workshops in San Diego

We'll be doing some training with Dr. Katz later this month. We really love what his business does and also love that they give free talks! They focus on learning disabilities and child psychology.

http://learningdevelopmentservices.com/

Happy New Year!

Enjoy a couple pics from year end

An 8th grader reading to a Kinder student

Our chorus kids getting ready to liven up the Barnes and Nobles!