School is back in full swing, with kids re-accustomed to school life following winter break and ready to learn. In the small town of Sunnyside, this is no different as employees at Bruin Point Elementary continue to deliver a quality education to its students. To discuss what’s going on at Bruin Point, Castle Country Radio was joined by Principal Cindy Garcia, first grade teacher Chelsey Poglajen and fifth grade teacher Tyler Grundy.
Opening our discussion, Principal Garcia discussed what academic trends she’s been seeing with the start of the third quarter,” we completed our middle-of-year data and we have significant amounts of growth in our students. So we are headed in the right direction to hit our end-of-year school goals.”
Of course, this growth wouldn’t be possible without the teachers’ hard work, which Garcia was also quick to highlight,” Our teachers have been really busy participating in professional development for our new school curriculum, and they are doing such a fantastic job. We’re highly complimented by this and by their overall enthusiasm and interest in their desire to help our students grow and learn.”
Grundy continued on this point by explaining some of the initiatives the teachers are undertaking,” one of the things that the teachers have been working hard on in the last few weeks coming back from Christmas break is working toward getting a mission statement and a vision statement for everybody to buy into. We feel that at our school, that’s something that is very important for all of our stakeholders to be a part of.” He added,” and we feel that with doing that, academic success, behavioral success, and everything else will come along with that. So we’ve come up with some school values and now it’s just kind of getting those things put into motion.”
Grundy also covered the school’s “Goal Getters” program, which incentivizes student success,” we have been working hard on getting students to see their success. And when they do something successful, they get a punch on a punch card. And when they complete 10 punches on that punch card, then they get a little reward. And some of them, those rewards go into being a teacher for 20 minutes, a janitor, a principal, a secretary. And they have really bought into that. These kids are so excited. They’re working hard.”
Poglajen provided the lower grade perspective on the program,” It’s also really impressive to see even young first graders. They’re very specific with their goals. They know exactly what they’re working for. And they’ve learned that by setting those little goals, they can attain the larger goals. They’ll tell you exactly what they’re working toward. And that’s been rewarding for us to see.”
Poglajen also spoke on the academic side of things, focusing on the growth she has seen especially in math and reading,” the growth we’re seeing in reading and math both has been really impressive. The excitement, we thought maybe there would be a little bit of competitiveness with comparing one another, but there hasn’t been. They’re just excited for one another. When one attains a goal, they celebrate each other. So it’s been awesome.”
“In terms of numbers, our end-of-year goal for reading growth is 68%.” explained Principal Garcia,” And midyear, our reading data showed that our school was overall at 77%. So we are seeing some great numbers increase in growth.”
Principal Garcia also spoke about upcoming events for the school,” we have our school spelling bee on the 31st. So we would like to invite parents out to join us for that. We have a wonderful PTO who is so on top of things. We do have our schoolwide PTO bingo night on March 6 at 6 p.m. So we would like to invite everybody in the Price area to come out and play some bingo at our school. We also are starting up our NASP archery program in our school.”
To stay up to date with what’s happening at Bruin Point, you can visit the school’s website or Facebook page.