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Dr. Rudy Keller & Ross Truemper
Dear West Aurora Families,
Welcome to West Aurora High School where students, parents, faculty, staff, administrators, Board of Education and community make a positive difference in the West High community. We look forward to working with you another year as we all continue to make West High a great school!
For those of you new to West Aurora High School, we welcome you with a proud tradition of excellence and opportunity. We are confident you will find that West Aurora High School offers many experiences for your student beyond the regular classroom setting. Please encourage your student to join a club or activity, participate in a fine arts program and/or join one of our many athletic teams. Your student will find that the more he or she is involved at school, the more he or she will gain from West High.
We are excited about this year as we improve our teaching and student learning through the implementation of Professional Learning Communities. A Professional Learning Community (PLC) is made up of an interdependent team of teachers who teach the same subjects. To help all students continuously achieve better results, the team works collaboratively on improvements through an ongoing process of collective inquiry and action research. This focus on student learning translates into four critical questions that drive the daily work of the school.
- What do we want students to learn? Each PLC will determine what is essential that each student should know and be able to do as a result of each unit.
- How will we know if they have learned? Each PLC will create and utilize common formative assessments in order to monitor each student’s learning on a timely basis.
- What will we do if they don’t learn? We will work together as a school to develop systematic interventions to provide additional time and support for students who are experiencing difficulty.
- What will we do if they already know it? We will work to enrich the learning and engage students who demonstrate early mastery.
As a result of the PLC process, mastery rates and test scores for all students will increase.
Our families will see two significant changes based on the implementation of PLCs. First, we have moved to a Five-House design in Student Services where we are combining a dean, two counselors, a social worker and a psychologist in each House. Families will now have one place of contact for all these services. The second change will be a delay to the start of school every Monday (with the exception of semester exam week) in order for our entire staff to meet in Professional Learning Communities.
Finally, efforts as a school will continue to focus on providing opportunities for all students to be more successful socially, as well as academically. Due to overwhelming positive data and support by staff and students, Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) will be continued at West Aurora High School this year. PBIS is a school-wide system that teaches and promotes appropriate behaviors by students. PBIS creates and maintains a safe and appropriate environment at West Aurora High School where students can learn.
We look forward to serving you and your students. Please feel free to contact us if you have questions, concerns, or comments. We welcome your feedback. Thank you in advance for your participation in your student’s high school experience.
Sincerely,
Dr. Rudy Keller, Principal
rkeller@sd129.org
Ross Truemper, Principal
rtruemper@sd129.org
(630) 301-5600
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