Our school will  have two teams in the fall, a FLL team which will be ages 9-14 and a jrFLL which will be for ages 6-9.  If you think you might be interested in providing this opportunity for your student I would encourage you to attend an informational meeting tomorrow night at Coe Elementary. Please read below for more information on the meeting.  If you have any questions please contact Sara Mirabueno at 252-2100.

While there is little you need to do before school starts, there are some helpful things we have learned in the past two years, which if taken care of now, will allow you to hit the ground running in September and prepare for the competition season in WA State.

John Hay will be hosting an informal meeting for parents interested in signing their kids up for the new program at 7 p.m. tonight, Wednesday, June 8, at Coe Elementary School, located at 2424 7th Ave W. At the meeting parents and teachers will get the chance to talk with CoeBotics Coach Willem Scholten about how the CoeBotics team is organized, what they have learned throughout the program, and pose any questions they may have. Scholten encourages those interested to pass this invitation along to other schools and organizations that may also be interested in starting up their own program.

The meeting will go from 7 to 8:30 p.m. tonight. If you plan on attending, please email Scholten at wscholten@learningaccess.org and let him know how many people will be coming so he has a rough idea of expected attendance. Check out more about the Coebotics team here.

From the Race to Nowhere website:

Featuring the heartbreaking stories of young people across the country who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried that students aren’t developing the skills they need, and parents who are trying to do what’s best for their kids, Race to Nowhere points to the silent epidemic in our schools: cheating has become commonplace, students have become disengaged, stress-related illness, depression and burnout are rampant, and young people arrive at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired.

Race to Nowhere is a call to mobilize families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens.

Communities around the country are using the film as “a call to action for families, educators and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens.” By engaging in a grassroots effort to organize screenings in in schools and neighborhoods nationwide, the filmmakers are hoping to turn the project into a catalyst for education reform–”using the film as the centerpiece for raising awareness, radically changing the national dialogue on education and galvanizing change.”

Tickets to attend the screening are $10 in advance, or $15 at the door, and are available for purchase here. For more information on the film, check out the Race to Nowhere website.

According to Mary Cropp over at the SeattlePI, an  interim principal, Terry Acena, is already in place at Coe, and both Acena and SPS Executive Director of Schools for the Central region Nancy Coogan will be attending a meeting at the school for parents and incoming families on Thursday, March May 12 in which they will “briefly discuss the recent changes in leadership and outline a course for the future of Coe.” The meeting will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Coe Library.

For more information, contact the Coe PTA directly through the organization’s website.

The event, which is being held by the Queen Anne Rotary Club, Safeway, and SEADRUNAR Recycling, is completely free, though donations of non-perishable foodstuffs for the Queen Anne Helpline will be accepted.

Members of Coe Elementary’s “Team CoeBotics” will also be on hand at the event to talk about the program with the community. CoeBotics will soon be traveling to Legoland in California to represent Washington state in the national team competition of robotic technology, design and function. This event gives the community an opportunity to meet the team members, learn about this educational extra-curricular program, and learn how to help support the them.

Penny sent us the above video and says that each choir sang one or two songs alone and all sang Yonder Come Day together as a combined showcase choir. Participating schools were:

Loyal Heights Elementary
Whitman Middle School
Lawton Elementary
Ballard High School Trebel Choir
Coe Elementary
Ballard HS Men’s Ensemble
Whittier Elementary
Ballard High School Concert Choir

Upcycling is the process of converting useless electronics into useful items again, creating a second or even third chance at life for these devices. Through upcycling, old electronics get saved from being thrown away, or forgotten about in drawers and closets.

UpCycle4Hope, with a motto of “a second life for electronics,” collects small wireless devices including cell phones, laptops, netbook computers, digital cameras, games and gaming consoles, iPods, DVD players, and even CDs, and either refurbishes them for re-sale or, if beyond being salvaged, disposes of them in an environmentally friendly way.

Electronic waste is the most quickly growing waste concern worldwide. The average life span of a cell phone is only eighteen months. On average 130 million cell phones are retired annually in the U.S. alone. Therefore, cell phone recycling is imperative. Nationwide, it is estimated that less than 10% of retired cell phones are recycled or reused. The remainder litter closets, drawers, and unfortunately landfills.

From 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 10 outside the Upper Queen Anne Starbucks Coe Elementary students will be collecting used cell phones, Blackberries, iPhones, laptops, laptop and cell phone batteries, satellite radios, digital cameras, iPods, iPod docking stations, digital picture frames, and other small electronics (nothing too heavy to ship cost effectively) to send to UpCycle, which will then clean, test, repair, recycle and sell the donated items. Coe will then receive 70 percent of the profits from the sale of the items collected through the drive.

For more information on Coe’s electronics recycling drive, or for more information on getting involved in the Coe Cares committee, please contact committee chair Stacy Lawson at 206.999.6274.

Using the Lego Mindstorms systems, Coe students work together in FLL competitions to solve realistic world issues, “such as using a robotic unit to rescue victims from, or deliver supplies to a burning or unstable building,” according to Cropp. From the Coebotics website:

Robotics is the ultimate team activity. All good robots and robotic devices are created by teams of engineers, biologists, artists and programmers to name a few disciplines. Because of this need of integrating many science, engineering and social science skills into a great Robot, it is an ideal discipline to start teaching as young as Kindergarten. It allows students of any ability to be part of a great accomplishment.

To read more about the Coebotics program, check out the team’s website. Read the full Seattle PI store here.

Just one week into the fundraiser Zaw released its donation totals so far, and Coe Elementary and Queen Anne Elementary are two schools leading the way, earning 35 percent of the donations each. From Zaw:

Our first week was a great success, the families and friends of Coe and Queen Anne Elementary came out in force, but there are still three weeks left for McClure, John Hay and St. Anne’s to give them a run for their donation dollars!

In addition to donation checks for each school, we’re spicing things up thanks to a suggestion from a Zaw School Days customer this past week! Whichever school receives the largest number of $5 donations, Zaw will gift an extremely special auction item to the winning school – an all-inclusive Ultimate Pizza Party birthday package for up to eight kids (a up to $150 value)!

The Road Company performed its bullying-prevention play Super School to an auditorium packed with children in grades kindergarten to fifth. The young students listened and laughed as the cast of five told the story of Asteroid Academy students who begin a new year confronting challenges of social interaction, like dealing with a bully, managing anger, and the tests of honesty and friendship.

“It was awesome,” said fifth grader Makayla Johnson. “It had a very good meaning and it looks like they did a lot of hard work.”

Fellow fifth grader Melanie Lopez agreed that the play was fun and that she learned a lot.

A Q&A session at the end of the show allowed students to ask questions about the show, which mostly addressed the various props and tricks that gave the illusion of super powers. The session also gave the cast a chance to quiz the students, who had no problem articulating the finer points of the show’s message.

The bullying prevention play addresses a growing concern in schools. Previous coverage about incidents of bullying in Queen Anne schools can be found here.

From Taproot Theatre’s press release:

In the United States, 15-25% of students report being bullied, and 15-20% report bullying others, according to the “Stop Bullying Now!” website of the Health Resources and Services Administration. In some cases bullying has led to suicide. For the offenders, it can lead to suspension, expulsion or even criminal charges. In Washington, nearly 15,000 students were suspended and 442 expelled in 2008-2009, according to data published by the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction last January. In King County alone, 2,231 students were suspended and 89 expelled.

In Washington, a new expanded anti-bullying law took effect in June, stating that although a law had been put in place to prohibit harassment, intimidation and bullying, the problem had failed to decline. The new law expands efforts, requiring schools to institute policies regarding harassment, intimidation and bullying, and requires each school district to appoint one individual to be the primary contact on the issue.

But the play is more than a timely statement on current social issues, said actors Solomon Davis and Laura Bannister.

“I think the message is timeless,” said Davis. “It could have run since the beginning of time because we’re talking about helping kids to understand their emotions and what they can do.”

“And it’s about how to live as part of a community,” added Bannister.

Bannister and Davis, who both have experience teaching children, said they love what they do and take seriously their obligation to impart an important message.

“This show, all of our shows, have an emotional quality to it. You notice that the students get completely silent during some of the more emotional scenes, which means they’re really engaging with the storyline and also the emotion of it,” said Davis. “I think that this is going to make it in their system and they’re going to make a note of that so that when they get into a situation that is similar they have that memory that says ‘I know how to deal with this.’”

This school year the Taproot Theatre Road Company is performing four plays. Don’t Tell Jessica… and New Girl teach junior and high school students the dangers of gossip, rumors and cyberbullying and the consequences their actions can have, while Treasure Ally and Super School are aimed at elementary school students.

From the press release:

Taproot Theatre’s Road Company has been touring dynamic social-issue plays to students throughout the Pacific Northwest since 1985. The Road Company reaches tens of thousands of students each year with productions that address relevant social issues and provide youth with safe steps to approach them.