Volume 3.1October 2011

page 2 October 2011

Stephanie Alana Tilton loves Shakespeare, weightlifting and ‘80’s music. And she loves Beasley Middle School. Affection for her Moseley Avenue alma mater inspired the Palatka High School sophomore to spend one week this summer painting a mural depicting the jungle home of its tiger mascot on the me-dia center’s doors. The tempera and acrylic painting features a monkey, a tiger and books tucked into shelves built into the trees.

The week Stephanie painted the mural was especially hot, as Beasley’s library air conditioning unit was being replaced.“You suffered for your art – like Vincent Van Gogh,” Beasley’s Media Specialist Leigh Porch tells Stepha-nie as they stand outside the media center days before her 16th birthday. Porch said Stephanie never mentioned the heat. “She nev-er once complained,” Porch says. “She almost passed out, but she never once complained.”Stephanie’s only pay for her art was lunch with Porch. “La Hacienda – I was fine with that,” she says.

Stephanie’s mother Sandy Til-ton said Stephanie has been draw-ing “since she could hold a crayon.” She recently painted her room deep purple – sometimes holding the paintbrush in her teeth while texting. And while he was away, she painted little brother Bradley’s room yellow and green. “I had to beg her to do it,” 12-year-old Bradley jokes. “And she hung the wallpaper border upside down.”“It looks better upside down,” Stephanie tells him.Porch became friends with the Tiltons as the siblings came through her library as aides. Tilton siblings now babysit the Porch children and Stephanie paints faces at their birthday parties.“We’ve become very close,” Porch says of the two families.Bradley, the only Tilton boy, jokes that Porch doesn’t like him because he lasted just half a year as her aide – being too often drawn to Beasley’s Agriculture program.

Beasley Middle School

Art, Music & shAkespeAre

x E

October 2011 page 3

Love for BeasleyStephanie defends Beasley against criticism, calling her experience there great and saying outsiders often portray the school unfairly.Beasley, she said, suffers from both the reality and perception of its students. “It’s hard for a lot of these kids,” she said. “If you have a background that includes your parents not taking as much care of you as others, that’s going to affect you. But Beasley has a lot of great students. People saying the stuff are not the ones who went to the school. It’s a comfortable place to go to middle school.”This year, Beasley is in “intervene” status with the state, having not met state standards for a period of five consecutive years. New curriculum coaches and assessment specialists are at the school, and the atmosphere – aided by the new dress code – is changing, said Beasley 7th grade student Macey Langley.“Things are definitely different with behavior,” Langley said standing among friends at lunch on Sept. 8. “Kids are listening.”The state and school district teaming to improve Beasley is a positive development, said PCSD Superintendent Tom Townsend. “The state support team is confirming we have the right strategy in place and with the additional support strategies we are moving forward to get where we have to be,” Townsend said. “This is a school full of great kids who can achieve anything. I’m very proud of and encouraged by the progress we’re making here.”Beasley Principal Sandra Gilyard said the action plan the school is putting in place is a coordinated effort of local and state educators. “Everything we’ve told them we need – ‘boom,’ they’re here just like that,” Gilyard said of the state, as an eighth grader in full compliance with the dress code passes her Sept. 12. “You look great!” Gilyard tells the student, who smiles back at her. “We tell them when they look good. They have responded. We have had almost no problems.”Townsend said the dress code is being praised dis-trict wide for its positive affect on behavior. “Everybody’s pointing to the dress code,” Townsend said. “Proper dress

makes us look better. When we all look good we can see each other. That’s what the dress code has done. It has leveled the ground for students who are not standing out for how they dress, but who they are.”

Linda Givens, an OASIS parent stationed at Beasley, said it feels good to be part of the turnaround

she sees progressing every day. “I love it,” she said. “There’s a big difference and things continue to improve.” Givens said she misses the school on rare occasions that keep her away. “Tomorrow I can’t be here because I have a death in the family, and I’m really going to miss it,” she said.

“A true young lady”While Stephanie might not be the girl who leaps first to the mind of most picturing a weightlifter – she tried the sport in her freshman year and liked it enough to quit volleyball to fully devote her time to it. “I love weightlifting,” Stephanie said. She’s also a young angler, placing in a Bass Master’s contest about a year ago, and plans to become involved with INTERACT – a student civic group similar to Key Club.Stephanie said longtime Beasley teacher Gracine Gurtler, who retired before this year, inspires her art.An affinity she has for ‘80’s music is partly inspired by her mom, who grew up in the decade of “Moonlighting” and big Cyndi Lau-per hits. Among Stephanie’s favorites acts from the era: Queen and Prince. “It’s better music,” she said. “So much is techno now … Lady Gaga. There aren’t the real singers like there were in the ‘80s and before.”Beasley teacher Stanley Figaro, who taught Stephanie in English and is the school’s band and chorus instructor, influences her musical and literary tastes. Figaro has Shakespeare among his lessons, and infused in Stephanie a love of the world’s greatest playwright and thoughts of pursuing some study in theater.An A/B student, Stephanie is also considering cosme-tology college, inspired in part by the art of makeup, and she’s thinking about a graphic design career.“She was an awesome student,” Gilyard said. “She got along with everybody and provided the example of a true young lady.”

An OASIS parent, Linda Givens with Beasley students

Stanley Figaro teaching band

Caroline Cappuccio and Arianna Hardy, two Putnam County students, went to Washington this summer for a week-long trip of learning, including serving on model congressional com-mittees. The two rising Crescent City Jr./Sr. High School juniors debated in committees, hammering out bills on gun control and health care.

The work was part of the girls trip sponsored each year by the Char-itable Cruise Foundation and facili-tated by the Washington Workshops Foundation to introduce outstanding high school students to politics.

They were accompanied by CCJSHS Special Education teacher and Arian-na’s mother, Kimyetta Hardy.

The Hardys had already been to Washington, but not as part of an intensive learning tour that had them walking throughout

the city and the girls returning to serve on committee until late in the night.

For Caroline, it was the first time she got a little closer to her favorite per-son from history. “Abraham Lincoln is not only my favorite president, but the most interesting person I find from the past,” Caroline said. “I can always re-read something on Abraham Lincoln and never get bored, so it was great to be there in front of his memorial.”

She was also awed by seeing Lincoln’s personal book collection in the Library of Congress.

Arianna’s favorite spot in the capitol was Arlington Cemetery.

“It was really neat to see how every-thing there is the same,” she said. “It’s simple and beautiful.”

Arianna and Caroline both said they learned a lot about the process of a bill becoming, or not becoming law, and the complexities of each issue they debated into the late hours.

“I learned a lot about the necessity of gun rights, but also the need to regulate them and bring in gun safety education and hope that stops the vi-olence from increasing,” Arianna said.

Caroline learned about health care, but said she would have been better working on gun control, in which she has a deeper interest. “I believe in the right to own guns,” she said. “But they have to incorporate more educa-tion. Before buying a gun, including at gun shows, everyone should have to go through a background check and take a class taught by an expert on gun safety. Otherwise, it’s like giving people a driver’s license without giv-ing them driver’s ed.”

page 4 October 2011

Crescent City Jr./Sr. High School

Caroline & Arianna Go To Washington

Photo by: Kimyetta Hardy

From right: Tom Crossan, Executive Director of the Washington Workshops Foundation, Crescent City Jr./Sr. High School rising junior Arianna Hardy, fellow CCJSHS rising junior Caroline Cappuccio and Mrs. Crossan in Washington, D.C. this June.

October 2011 page 5

Caroline, Arianna and Kimyetta tour landmarks around Washington, D.C.

The girls, part of a contingent of stu-dents from Florida and Michigan, rose before 6 a.m. and didn’t conclude their legislative work until near mid-night most days, Caroline said. Anoth-er student group came from around the world to participate in a separate mock Congress.

Arianna wants to be a pharmacist. Caroline wants to graduate with a Kindergarten teaching degree before serving in the Peace Corps.

To make the trip, students are required to have GPAs of 3.0 or high-er, have no discipline referrals and be rising sophomores, juniors or seniors.

The girls and Kimyetta stayed in the college dorms of nearby Marymount University, and said they were in-spired in Annapolis by the beauty of the United States Naval Academy. “It kind of makes you want to be in the Navy,” Caroline said.

Kimyetta’s favorite part of the trip was a visit to the city’s Newseum, the Pennsylvania Avenue landmark chron-icling years of history. “When you would look at those pictures it would

make you cry; it would make you mad – there is just so much history,” Kimyetta said.

Kimyetta, whose first return in a while to a college dorm had her missing home a bit, said it was a pleasure watching the girls work hard as they experienced history and politics.

“They had to have enough strength to get up early, walk all over the city, then work until late at night,” Kimyetta said. “And being in the college setting, that’s some-thing they can shoot for, thinking ‘This is where I’m going to be in a few years.’”

The girls formed new friendships, including finding one another.

“We didn’t really know each other,” Caroline said. “We learned a lot about one another and became friends.”

page 6 October 2011

Florida After School Alliance

Award of Excellence

Jeanie Thompson says without the team she works with each day, she would not have been nominated for the Florida After School Alliance Award of Excellence.

Thompson, the director of Putnam County School’s 21st Century After School Program, was recently nominated by the program’s state Research Coordinator Dr. Kathleen Sohar for the Excellence Award that will be presented at an Oct. 7 Orlando event.

“It gives me the opportunity to rec-ognize my 11 site coordinators and the superintendent, without whom none of this would have happened,” Thompson said.

The after-school program, which serves about 1,500 students at 11 sites throughout Putnam County, started in 2009 after the school district’s grant acquisition team secured federal funds for its imple-mentation.

The award funds the program for five years. “The first year was the most challenging because it was new to all of us,” Thompson said. “There was a pretty big learning curve. But it helped that we started in November and had that lead time that first year to do a lot of training.”

Thompson said the state adds requirements of the program each year and her team works hard to implement them. “She’s so much fun to work with,” said Paula Ward, Thompson’s administrative assistant. “We have a good team. And that’s

what she calls us – a team. She al-ways says she couldn’t do it without us; and she pulls the best qualities out of each of us.” Plus, Ward says, Thompson makes the coffee each morning.

In her nominating letter, Sohar highlighted after-school curriculum Thompson brought in including the Beat the Streets boxing program, which serves at-risk kids and has flourished the last two years under Thompson and boxing program director Barry Stewart.

In her recommendation letter, Sohar also detailed a “Say it with Music” workshop that featured Atlanta entertainer Ava Johnson produc-ing songs written and sung by after-school students, and a Florida Times-Union story on the after school program.

Putnam County School District Superintendent Tom Townsend said the after-school program is an important part of services the district provides. “Mrs. Thompson jumped in and developed a program from scratch that has continued to keep the door open to the commu-nity and maintained a sharp focus on the needs of the kids we are serving,” Townsend said.

Thompson said that whoever wins the award, she is proud Putnam County’s after school sites have been recognized.

“Win or not, it’s an honor to have our program nominated.”

21st Century After School Program

October 2011 page 7

Crescent City resident Casey Peacock has always been creative, and enjoys implementing his ideas. A 2010 Crescent City Jr./Sr. High School graduate, Peacock took welding as an elective course as it provided an outlet to apply his talents and a career pathway in a dynamic industry with a big future.

The Rotary Club of Palatka helped Peacock’s aspirations with a scholarship to attend First Coast Technical College’s Welding Technology program to complete his training. In August, Peacock enrolled full-time at FCTC’s Barge-Port training facility in Palatka with plans to earn his American Welding Society (AWS) certification. Pea-cock is proud of his abilities and says he eagerly looks forward to “joining innovative people who are creat-ing the products of tomorrow. Welders are now being trained to operate robots and other automated systems.”“Peacock shows great promise,” said Don Modesitt, FCTC certified welding instructor. “There is no limit to what certified welders can do, especially since devel-opments in technology continually improve accuracy, quality and versatility.”Enrollment is active for FCTC’s Welding Technology program, with classes beginning Oct. 20. Financial aid is available for those who qualify. Call 386-312-0337 or e-mail donald.modesitt@fctc.edu for more info.

First Coast Technical College of Welding

FCtC Student makes Sparks

Two Crescent City Jr./Sr. High School students traveled to the nation’s capitol this summer to serve on mock legislative com-mittees, debate important issues and learn first-hand what it takes to make law. Read about their week-long adventure inside this issue of Insight.

Our students have made your school district the

11th fastest growing in the state in math scores across all grades.

Putnam County School District staff announced data showing the improvement at the Sept. 20 PCSD

School Board meeting.

Putnam County kids in grades 3, 4, 5 and 6 are moving even faster, comprising the

6th fastest growing student group in Florida as mea-sured by math scores.

Congrats to all the students and teachers working so hard in your classrooms!

Volume 3.1October 2011

PUTNAM COUNTy SCHOOLS200 South 7th StreetPalatka, FL 32177386-329-0510

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growth in math Scores!!