(also located at http://alamedaclc.org/)

1 School Picture Retake Day; 9:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

1 – 2 Freedom from Chemical Dependency Program

2. Healthy Lunch

2 – 3 EHS Drama: "12 Angry Jurors"

3 – 4 Ultimate Varsity Boys Tournament in Santa Clara

5 Graduation Committee meeting: 7:00 p.m. at Sue Johnson’s house

7. Governing Board meeting; 7:00 p.m.

9 ACLC Staff Development Day, School dismissed at 12:15 pm

10 – 11 Ultimate Women's/Men's College Level Tournament in Santa Cruz

11. Macbeth Opera Field trip for English 2 HP; San Francisco; 4:00 – 9:00 p.m.

11 – 12 Ultimate Frisbee - Santa Cruz (Dark Meat- single gender) (wait listed)

12. Veteran’s Day; No School

13 – 14 Sixth Graders – Canoeing/Marsh Restoration; 8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.

13. Board Games and Potluck; 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

18 Ultimate mini tournament at Miramonte (to be confirmed)

21 – 23 Fall Recess

28. CCEF meeting; 6:00 p.m.

5. Governing Board meeting; 7:00 p.m.

12 Craft Night and Cookie Exchange; 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.

24 – Jan. 4 Winter Break

Wow, it’s almost November already! So much has been going on at school this year that the time has flown by. We hope everyone has settled into the routine of the new school year and that the first quarter has been a time of productive learning and community building. Everyone will get a chance to come up for a breath when school is closed to observe Veterans Day on November 12 and then again November 21 - 23 to celebrate Thanksgiving. Hope everyone has happy and peaceful holidays.

The week of October 30 – November 2, the ACLC will have its annual Freedom From Chemical Dependency week. Learners will be attending FCD sessions in their Humanities classes (English for the younger learners and Government for the older learners).

This fall, the seniors have the opportunity to work with a professional college adviser, Jennifer Kabat, to investigate possible colleges and complete applications. As of next week, all seniors will have met with Jen at least once. After this, we’ll begin "round two" to give those who need additional help further time with her. Over the winter and spring, she’ll also be working with our juniors to begin the college planning process. Jennifer has been a great asset for the kids and we appreciate the support of our Governing Board in hiring her to fill this important role.

As some of you may have heard, Syl Gibson will need to take a leave of absence through Thanksgiving break to care for her son. In the meanwhile, I will be taking over facilitating her Humanities 7/8 classes, Mike will be filling in for Environmental Studies, and Paul will cover Learning 2 Learn. We realize it can be rough for the learners to be without their regular facilitator, especially at the beginning of the year, but we hope to be able to provide more familiarity and consistency than would a sub from outside. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me.

On October 29, facilitators will be working on next year’s strategic plan which will eventually be submitted to the ACLC Governing Board for approval. There are many suggestions which include offering Spanish 2 and 3, expanding the Future Leaders’ Institute to all juniors to replace the senior project requirement, and offering other electives. There is also the need to have additional staff to try and get a few of our overbooked classes down to a more ACLC size. All of this will require more space and money. That is the challenge and the financial committee will be working on it throughout the year to come up with a plan.

In addition, I have been working with others on writing a new charter for the creation of a new K - 12 Community Learning Center in Alameda. This would require AUSD School Board approval and they would have to vote on the petition sometime in early February. If a new charter is approved, we would immediately apply for a $450,000 Planning and Implementation Grant from the state that I feel we would have a good chance of receiving and making this new school a reality, possibly as early as fall of 2008 if a facilities deal with AUSD can be negotiated. You will be hearing more about this in the near future and we will be asking for your support on this project. For more information, please read the "Introduction to the Concept of a New K-12 Community Learning Center in Alameda for the ACLC Parent Community" elsewhere in this newsletter. – Paul Bentz

The Parent Action/Asset Committee (PAC) is the parent volunteer organization at ACLC.

PAC sponsored its first Evening Community Event on Monday, October 22nd. We sponsored a Senior Information Night organized by Fran Kahane. Results from Senior Surveys were announced and we heard from guest speakers, Jennifer Kabat-College Admissions Consultant and Frances Fee-Financial Aid Advisor.

Board Games and Potluck on Wednesday, November 14th from 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. The Board Games will be organized by ACLC Leadership and the Potluck will be organized by Iris DeMello. Bring your favorite game to share with the whole community. If you are new learner parents, come and meet some of us older learner parents. We'd love to get to know you and if you have some mysterious ACLC questions, maybe we can let you know "oh, yeah, we all went through that".

Craft Night and Cookie Exchange on Wednesday, December 12th from 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. will be organized by Erin Barrett and Family. Bring your favorite holiday crafts to build and cookies to share. Last year, we had our first craft night and cookie exchange and we had some fun crafts like origami gift bags, watercolor paints, stamping gift tags and bookmarks and we got to try some great cookies. Cookie Exchanges mean if you bring some, you get to take some others home. Recipes would also be greatly appreciated.

The Graduation Committee will meet on Monday, November 5th at 7:00 p.m. at Sue Johnson's home at 1312 Burbank St.

PAC welcomes our ACLC facilitator representative Mama Maafi and our ACLC leadership representative Nicky Williams.

The PAC meetings will always be the last Wednesdays of the month at 7:00 p.m., generally following the CCEF meetings. Please join us. - Vickie Miyashiro

CLCS seeks to open a new K - 12 charter school in Alameda for all of the reasons outlined in the Charter School Law.

The new school will use (and adapt to the K-5 program) the learning model of the highly successfully Alameda Community Learning Center (ACLC) which has a proven track record of 11 years of improving pupil learning.

The new school will attract learners who come from groups who are historically academically low achieving. The 6 -12 portion of the new school will seek to recruit the 150 learners on the ACLC wait list, 63.4% of whom are non-Caucasian. The new school also will actively market in Alameda and neighboring communities to attract a diverse learner population reflective of the AUSD’s diversity. The school will attempt to obtain a facility in the geographic West End of Alameda where most of these learners live.

The new school will use the innovative teaching methods that the ACLC has developed over the last 11 years to create Alameda County’s first charter school to be awarded the coveted "California Distinguished School" award. The innovative teaching methods will be adapted for use in the K - 5 part of the program as appropriate.

The new school will use ACLC’s "Facilitator Empowerment" model and will create opportunities for teachers to be responsible for the learning program at the school site.

The new school will create expanded choices in the type of educational opportunities that are available within the AUSD public school system. The new school will double the opportunities for learners in grades 6 - 12 (280 new spaces in three years) in Alameda and create 128 new opportunities in grades K - 5 for education in ACLC’s innovative 21st Century educational model.

Being a charter school, the new school will be held accountable to the public via its chartering agency using a performance-based accountability system.

The new school will challenge the educational status quo in Alameda and will provide vigorous competition within the public school system to stimulate improvements in all public schools.

CLCS can replicate its highly successful 6 - 12 program. CLCS seeks to expand into the K - 5 grades to "Close the Achievement Gap" in the Alameda community. By sixth grade, there is a significant achievement gap in Alameda public school students between Caucasian students and Hispanic and African American students. CLCS seeks to use its innovative 21st century educational model to close that achievement gap so those underserved learners can be more successful in its 6 - 12 model (or other 6 - 12 Alameda schools) and gain acceptance into four year colleges and universities. CLCS’s proven educational model at the ACLC over the last 11 years has produced an impressive educational record where 90% of its graduates gain acceptance into four year colleges and universities.

The "Core Action Team" for this project contains expertise in running charter schools (Paul Bentz and Lowry Fenton), a new Lead Facilitator (Maafi Gueye) for the new school who has 6 years experience in working in the new learning model at the ACLC, and three elementary educators with over 75 years of experience in starting, running and teaching in elementary schools (Linda McCluskey, Betsy Weiss, and James Venable). CLCS also has available the entire staff of ACLC facilitators who will act as mentors and provide staff development opportunities for new educators in the new school.

Alameda families want additional opportunities to educate their children in the Community Learning Center educational model. There is currently a list of 156 families who desire to attend the new school and will be the core of the new 6 - 12 program.

The Public Charter School Grant Program has recently been funded for the next three years with $150 million to create new charter schools in California. CLCS believes that the new charter will be awarded a $450,000 PCSGP Planning and Implementation Grant to support the initial operations and asset purchases of this new school.

On the West End of Alameda, AUSD currently has two public elementary school buildings that are not being used to educate K - 12 students. Either of these facilities could be used to house the new charter school.

In conclusion, a highly motivated experienced staff, a potential student body that is ethnically diverse (62.4% non-Caucasian), potential PCSGP startup funds, and unused public school facilities are all available at this time to make this new school a reality.

The XYZ Community Learning Center seeks to locate in the West End of Alameda and serve this multiethnic community with a high quality, high performing 21st century educational model that will lead to a high acceptance rate for this diverse population into four year colleges and universities. As a basis for the 6 - 12 portion of the new school, the XCLC will market to and encourage applications from the current wait list of the ACLC (156 students, 62.4% non-Caucasian) and do extensive outreach in the surrounding community including local bus signage, local newspapers ads, and outreach to other community groups with informational nights at local churches and other community meeting places. The school desires to be located in the geographic attendance zone of Encinal High School which has the following ethnicity breakdown: 19% Caucasian, 24% African American, 15% Hispanic, 15% Filipino, 22% Asian, 2% Pacific Islander, and 3% other. The school will also market to the entire Alameda community for all grade levels and will market in neighboring Oakland if sufficient enrollment in Alameda is not obtained.

Thanks to every one who has turned in box tops. I have submitted $89 of box tops for reimbursement for our first submission date of October 31st. Please continue to bring in your box tops. There will be another submission date in the spring.

There is a jar near the sign in sheets where you can turn in your box tops.

If you prefer, you can mail them to me at:

Iris DeMello

1544 Fourth Street

Alameda, CA 94501

It’s an easy way to support ACLC!

For those of you who have not signed up yet, here is the information about the program.

Since the Albertson store in Marina Village has switched over to a Lucky store, the Community Partners card is no longer effective. Lucky has a S.H.A.R.E. program. 3% of your grocery bill will be donated to ACLC through the S.H.A.R.E. program. You can request 1 or 2 cards per family.

Then once you have the card, you give the card to the cashier before he/she totals up your groceries. ACLC will receive a check from Lucky’s S.H.A.R.E. program on a monthly basis. You only have to sign up one time and then every time you shop, you will be contributing money to ACLC. The card(s) are good until your learner graduates. Staff can request cards which are good indefinitely.

Any one else who has not emailed me yet and would like to participate in the program, please email me with the following information:

first and last name of your learner

their graduation date

how many cards you need (you can get 1 or 2 cards per learner)

your address

Then once you have the card, you give the card to the cashier before he/she totals up your groceries. ACLC will receive a check from Lucky’s S.H.A.R.E. program on a monthly basis. You only have to sign up one time and then every time you shop, you will be contributing money to ACLC. The card(s) are good until your learner graduates. Staff can request cards as well which are good indefinitely.

Dec. 7: Soupy Sales: Homemade soups, turkey or cheese pitas, fruit desserts

v v v v Facilitator Class Messages v v v v

Math 6: Learners are working on Chapter 3. We have been working on Order of Operations, integer operations, and conversion of fractions, decimals and percents. Learners just participated in a pig race where their pig could advance on the track if their team could hit a target number using order of operations to their advantage. Chapter 4 will focus on Geometry concepts with an emphasis on finding the area of different shapes.

To access your grades for math enter the classword: aclc.math6.period1

Your learner’s password is their student ID number. (from Patricia)

Geometry: Since our math classes are so dynamic, a monthly newsletter article will hardly do them justice. Therefore, I send frequent class updates discussing projects, due dates, tests, etc. To receive these updates please subscribe to the Listserve. Check your emails frequently and look in the subject line for "Geometry Families." (from Carlton)

Pre-algebra: Learners are currently in the middle of Chapter 3. We have been learning about Equivalent Fractions, Fraction operations and converting fractions to Decimals and Percents. We have been incorporating probability into our study of fractions. We are starting a unit that includes the distributive property, combining like terms, writing equations and factoring.

To access your grades for math enter the classword: aclc.prealgebra

Your learner’s password is their student ID number. (from Patricia)

Algebra 1: Since our math classes are so dynamic, a monthly newsletter article will hardly do them justice. Therefore, I send frequent class updates discussing projects, due dates, tests, etc. To receive these updates please subscribe to the Listserve. Check your emails frequently and look in the subject line for "Algebra Families." (from Carlton)

Bridges to Algebra: We are currently in Chapter 3 where learners are working with fractions and mixed numbers. They will add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions and mixed numbers. They will also write fractions as mixed numbers and mixed numbers as fractions. In the Bridges software learners should be finished with Unit 10 by October 24th.

To access your grades for math enter the classword: aclc.bridges.period6

Your learner’s password is their student ID number.

Algebra 2 has just wrapped up our first project focused on Real Estate and the algebra of buying their first home. Learners were to choose a career, and using the actual average salary for that career, find a home that they can afford (mortgage payments can not be above 25% of their salary) in the area in which they would like to live, and determine the principle and interest payments over the life of a mortgage. In addition, they were to research the other costs related to home ownership. A part of the research into aspects of the project included presentations from members of the ACLC community that have careers and/or expertise in real estate or related fields. We want to thank Mama Vickie Miyashiro for coming in to share her knowledge about real estate and her business of Property Appraisal. We also had a very informative presentation from Baba Fred Hollister, a commercial real estate mortgage broker. On another day, we had the always interesting master of real estate transactions, Baba Bob Boyd, who came by his expertise first hand in the buying and selling of numerous properties. Then, finally, we had Mama Lisa Maxwell, a real estate attorney who was very well received by a cadre of learners who stayed after school to hear her very informative presentation. Thank you to all of our amazing experts who really helped make the project meaningful to the learners. (from Maafi)

Precalculus: Since our math classes are so dynamic, a monthly newsletter article will hardly do them justice. Therefore, I send frequent class updates discussing projects, due dates, tests, etc. To receive these updates please subscribe to the Listserve. Check your emails frequently and look in the subject line for "Precalculus Families." (from Carlton)

Science 7/8 has just begun our unit on genetics with an introduction to genes and Punnet square crossing. Learners will be concurrently finishing up our introduction to cells with an observation on the process of diabetes that was postponed due to gas outlets being installed in our new science lab. In the observation, I will set up a section of dialysis tubing that will represent a cell and then put the "cell" in a sugar rich environment that mimics a diabetics blood after a meal. Since a cell's ability to uptake carbohydrates is affected in diabetes, learners will see why a diabetic's cells lose water, thereby creating thirst and the need to go to the bathroom. Since we have already completed an experiment where learners manipulated the process of osmosis, this demonstration will facilitate the extension of that knowledge to a condition about which they most likely know. (from Maafi)

Biology: In October we started a month long unit of genetics. We are working with the Lawrence Hall of Science in piloting an exciting new curriculum from their "Science in Global Issues" series. We are learning about mendelian and molecular genetics in the context of the controversy revolving around genetically modified organisms. (from Michael)

Science 6: Currently we are learning about ecosystems, food chains, and studying the ecology of San Francisco Bay while preparing for our culminating canoe trip and restoration project at Arrowhead Marsh in Oakland in mid-November. This week learners will make presentations to their class on their San Francisco Bay animal that they researched and made a poster about. Next week we will use science for the Freedom from Chemical Dependency Program. (from Paul)

Chemistry: Chemistry meets three times a week for a one hour lecture demonstration session or laboratory experience. Learners are busy learning the basics about atoms, the periodic table, and chemical bonding. During their laboratory period they are currently busy learning about density, separating mixtures, and chemical bonding. During the rest of the week they are reading and writing about these subjects. We are still awaiting the installation of our natural gas lines for the new room before we fire up the Bunsen burners.

All ACLC Chemistry Learners will be required to participate in this year’s ACLC Science Fair in January. They may enter either with individual or team projects, and their science fair projects can be on any topic of their choice. Learners are expected to conduct long-term experiments this year, so they will be deciding on their projects and partners in early November. (from Paul)

Physics classes have been offered the opportunity to attend lectures at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories on Physics related topics. Big thanks to Jesse Hinkle Johnston's mom for forwarding the information to make our participation possible. On Saturday, October 27, 2007, 12 learners attended the first lecture with Professor Brian Wirth, Professor of Nuclear Engineering, UC Berkeley on the topic: From Atoms to Electricity: an Introduction to Nuclear Power, Its Promise and Challenge. Learners are to prepare a lecture summary and reflective response that is due the class following each lecture. Other lecture dates are November 17, 2007 with Professor John Clarke, Professor of Physics, UCB on Superconductivity, Trains and SQUIDs and January 12, 2008 Chris Somerville, Director, Energy Biosciences Institute, LBNL/UCB on Converting Plants to Fuel. Lecture attendance (one each semester) is mandatory for honors learners and optional with credit for college prep learners. (from Maafi)

Humanities 6: 6th graders studied early hominids early in the year, and now have moved on to investigate humanity's earliest civilizations. Many learners were already aware that the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia, the so-called cradle of civilization, is located in modern-day Iraq. Learners visited on-line museum sites and are busy producing informative posters with illustrations and explanations of artifacts. The museums they are experiencing on line boast some of the finest artifacts of the Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian cultures of Mesopotamia. Soon we will move on to study the cultures of Kush and Egypt. In anticipation of our Egyptian studies, we have begun reading The Golden Goblet, a well written, fast-paced, and fairly demanding suspense novel set in Ancient Egypt. It is difficult reading for some learners, but most seem to be enjoying the story and willing to make the effort necessary to understand the story. If they do, they will come away with a rich picture of life in Ancient Egypt as well as an expanded vocabulary.

In writing, we continue to focus on personal expression. Learners should have completed five first drafts and three second or final drafts by the time you read this. My hope is that they will have enough polished writing samples by January to put together an anthology of first-semester writing. This week we have begun grammar skills unit, beginning with a focus on basic proof-reading skills and sentence structure. I will give mini-lessons in class, but much of the skills practice will be independent work which can done during project time. (from Terry)

English Language Arts Strategies 6: We’ve worked through lesson 11 in Vocabulary through Morphemes. Learners have encountered the –y, -er, -est, -ly, -hood, -ful, -less, -ible, -some, -ish, -ness and –cide suffixes, their meanings, spellings and usages. (from Carrie)

Humanities 7/8: My five year old son, Benjamin, broke his leg and so I will be off on family medical leave until the end of November. Class will be facilitated by a long-term substitute until my return. In English the kids will be reading Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, a novel about an African American family living in the South in the 1930's. In History, the kids will be learning about Colonial America. (from Syl)

Language Arts Strategies 7/8: In the 7-8 Language Arts Strategies class, learners receive help on language arts, history, and any homework requiring reading and writing. When there is no homework for the learners to work on we get together to practice reading strategies. Last week, the learners who attended worked on a strategy called "reciprocal teaching", in which learners lead themselves through a reading assignment as a group. One learner takes charge of keeping the group on task and making sure the reading is understood. We practiced using a brief article in the American history text book. This week we began reading the novel Holes. Most of the learners have seen the movie so they understand the plot; we can concentrate on the skills of reading and concepts of literature. We’re reading aloud together, working on fluent oral reading and the all-essential task of remaining focused.. It’s not as easy as it may sound. Later, we will practice the "reciprocal teaching" strategies with this or another novel. (from Terry)

Humanities 9: Learners recently completed an analytical essay about the novel Of Mice and Men. Now, we are working our way into our first degree murder trial of George Milton for the death of Lennie Small. When this project raps up we will be turning our attention to William Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet," always a winner, especially because our study of the play will culminate in a Center-wide performance of the play. (from Lynn)

Current Life: We just finished up our Media Studies project and will now turn our attention to thinking ahead about the future. Learners will be examining their short-term mid-range and long-term goals by doing research, creating poster boards and giving presentations in class.

English 10-11: We just finished up an analytical essay about the book The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Learners are currently reading an independent reading book and preparing for a debate unit in English. These debates will focus on learner-selected topics about controversial issues as well as a debate that focuses on whether or not the dropping of atomic bombs in WWII was justified.

Honors English 11: We have just finished our third novel, The Color Purple. We will soon be doing a timed writing about this work and then embarking upon our fourth novel, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

English 2 HP: We’re reading Macbeth in preparation for our trip to the Opera on November 11. We’re looking at the primary themes of the play as well as Shakespeare’s use of language and Elizabethan drama. (from Lora)

English 4: What a pleasure it is to work with this group! From our study of Transcendentalism, we’ve now moved on to dystopia with the novel Brave New World. In preparation for this work, the learners wrote expository essays on a variety of attempts at creating utopias throughout history. Next, we’ll read a disturbing tale of late-20th century dystopia, The Handmaid’s Tale. (from Lora)

English 4 HP: After surviving two essays in two weeks, the Honors group is now reading a short "companion" play to Brave New World, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In the coming weeks, we’ll be using our knowledge of the play to tie in with English CP and present some "lessons" to the regular English class. (from Lora)

Creative Writing: It’s such fun to talk about writing with this gifted group of writers! We’re currently working on short stories and exploring ways to build unique, believable characters. (from Lora)

Spanish 1: Spanish 1 classes are going very well, I am happy to say. Most learners are paying attention in class, completing their work on time, performing well on tests, and most important of all – showing enthusiasm. Since language is cumulative, I would love it if families

would encourage Spanish students to study daily, even for 10 minutes. Students need to learn 20 - 30 new vocabulary words each week in addition to verb forms and grammar. Practice is essential. This week, I told my first Total Physical Response Story to the classes. TPRS is a language teaching method that attempts to imitate the way in which we all learn our first language as children. It involves fun (yes, sometimes silly) stories accompanied by hand gestures and pictures. Students first learn the story by listening, watching and doing hand gestures, and looking at pictures, but without seeing anything in writing. Later they see the words, and eventually they will be able to tell the story on their own. The final step is the most fun -- learners will make up and tell their own stories modeled after mine. I will use TPRS, songs, nursery rhymes and poems to enhance language learning. One of these days you should ask your learner to tell you a story or sing you a song! (from Terry)

Latin 9: Learners have completed Unit 1 of Rosetta Stone and recently finished their first project, a creative piece using Latin words and roots. We’re now working on Unit 2. (from Lora)

Visual Communication - 7th grade Wheel: Learners are beginning a photo collage project which requires them to consider composition and to develop specific skills using our image editing software. They will read about and take a quiz on value, rhythm and movement – three important principles of design. (from Carrie)

Visual Communication – High School: Learners completed a self portrait project and are finishing another assignment in which they created a standards based assignment and created a work sample. Our next activity is to begin to explore text, text effects and text style in conveying a message (from Carrie)

Digital Music: Hi everyone, here’s the scoop on what’s been happening in the Digital Music classes. The Wheel learners have been working on using the Blues scale and call-and-response to compose short pieces, and are in the midst of a longer project in which they reproduce the music from a song of their choice. The advanced learners are currently wrapping up remixes of ‘My Girl’ by the Temptations, which entails creating original instrumentals to accompany the classic vocal track. Things are rolling along amazingly – I’m really impressed with how much everyone’s progressed in such a short amount of time! (from David)

DVS TV Media: This year, in an effort to give the wheel class a chance to complete more projects we started the learners on the computers and the Final Cut Pro software before they had shot any video! They gathered images, music and some video from the internet and created 30 second public service announcements covering various topics. The result was amazing as the class turned out some high quality work and generated a lot of excitement about the power of digital media. Learners will be entering their work into Cal. State Sacramento's California's Concerns, an environmental PSA contest. Award winners will earn a trip to the state capital to screen their piece with other finalists.

We just finished our camera workshops with a visit from ACLC parent and KRON programmer Art Takeshita (Nolan's dad). He shoots, edits and produces segments for the local broadcast network and he came to class to talk about the exciting world of television production. He brought in some cool cameras and videos, one shot in Costa Rica that won a prestigious Emmy award that blew our minds and had us all thinking 'field trip to the forest canopies of Costa Rica's cloud forests!'

Now, learners are all demanding immediate access to the cameras so they can get out into the center and start interviewing people for a collection of news magazine stories. We are trying to arrange a first semester movie night sometime before Christmas so stay tuned!

Art 1: We’ve been working on different aspects of drawing including drawing the face and blind contour drawing. Learners created collages using found images and oil pastels to explore composition and visual interest. Next week, we will move on to shading and shape drawing and then begin a still life. (from Carrie)

Martial Arts: Members of the Cuong Nhu class are awesome. They have been enthusiastic, energetic, and hardworking from the very beginning. While we don't have martial arts uniforms, I do have enough white belts for the learners to wear during class. It's sometimes a challenge to run a vigorous martial arts class in a carpeted portable full of tables and chairs, but I must say the learners have been very good about getting to class on time and helping to push all the tables to the wall. They then remove their shoes, put on their white belts and line up. We bow in formally and do warm-ups and basic techniques before moving on to learn and practice more complicated moves. One of the favorite warm-up and agility activities is the "belt piece game". In this game students loop a foot-long piece strip of belt over their tied belt, then compete to try to get the belt pieces from one another. Just last week most students took and passed the first Cuong Nhu test of the year. They were awarded a certificate signifying that they have learned the techniques that required for one yellow stripe. I look forward to watching these young martial artists progress. (from Terry)

Learning 2 Learn: We have spent most of October working on Mission Statements. Each learner created a mission statement and placed them on a poster that gave a representation of their future goals and who they are today. In learning to learn, each learner also was facilitated through the learner led conference assignment. In the coming month we will begin to delving into each learners personal motivators and analyze how learners actually use their time at the center. (from Michael)

Leadership: Leadership has been incredibly successful at meeting simple goals. We have initiated a new food program that has been met with great success. Each month leadership has lead a community event and has processed over 20 learner proposals. (from Michael)

November 3 - 4 - Varsity Boys Tournament in Santa Clara. Details soon from Mike.

November 10 - 11 - Women's/Men's College Level Tournament in Santa Cruz. Details soon.

November 24 - 25 "Turkey Bowl" Tournament in Oregon - Canceled.

The league has been a huge success, with over 70 people on the rosters. If you have not already, please pay Mike the $30 league fee and pick up your team t-shirt.

Weekly details, such as potential field closures, are advertised on the ACLC listserv.

Applications and a letter of recommendation are due December 31st. Any questions? Send them to:

Meredith Tosta

Director of Youth Development

Ultimate Players Association

4730 Table Mesa Dr. Suite J-200

Boulder, CO 80305

Phone: 800-872-4384 ex 115

Fax: 303-447-3483

I administered the PSAT, Wednesday, October 17. This year we used the "new" science room and it was quite a bit more comfortable. We had 35 test takers. Although the test is normed for juniors we had a few sophomores and even a freshman take the test. Juniors are able to qualify as a National Merit Scholar.

SAT I and II- Registration Deadlines

Nov. 3 Oct 2

Dec 1 Oct 30

Jan. 26 Dec 26

Mar. 1 Jan 29

May 3 April 1

June 7 May 6

ACT- Registration Deadlines

Oct 27 Sept 21

Dec 8 Nov 2

Feb 9 Jan 4

April 12 Mar 7

June 14 May 9

December is the last test score most colleges will accept for seniors. Be sure to have your scores sent to the colleges you are applying to.

I visited Syl’s 7/8 Language Arts classes last week and handed out individual folders to learners with their transcript, information about the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE), and the graduation requirements for ACLC. I then met individually with most of the learners to review their transcripts. I intend to catch those learners that I did not have time to meet with in the next week. Please go over the contents of the folder with your child and put the STAR scores that were sent to you recently in the folder. The goal is for each family to keep this folder and add to it as the years continue in order to keep an academic record of their child.

For those learners who will be applying to colleges that require letters of recommendation from a facilitator, a letter from the counselor and/or forms to be filled out by the counselor, it is crucial that these are delivered to me or your chosen facilitator(s) at least three weeks before the due date, (not including the holidays).

Please include the following:

1. All forms to be filled out by the counselor or facilitator(s) with the DUE date for each one.

2. A resume or list of extra curricular activities, accomplishments, etc

3. For EACH letter or form to be completed, include a manila envelope addressed to the specific college

4. Include postage on each envelope - it is usually more than just a regular letter stamp.

- Gail Smith-Pratt

The staff would like to remind everyone that all learners in grades 6 - 12 are required by California state law to attend school from the hours of 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Those learners who have college classes are eligible for our Off Campus Contract, but their request to leave campus to attend classes must first be approved by the Curriculum Committee of our Governing Board. The necessary paperwork has been handed out and must be returned and approved before learners can legally be away from the ACLC during the school day.

Those learners without college classes or other eligible Off Campus activities are expected to be at ACLC by 8 a.m. each school day. Those who have an unexcused tardy, will be assigned detention. Habitual tardiness may result in more serious consequences.

Please help the ACLC abide by the state laws for compulsory school attendance by getting learners to school on time and reminding them to sign in each day.

If your Learner is taking ANY courses at Encinal High school, you must call Encinal High at 510-748-4023 to report all ABSENCES AND TARDIES FOR THE PERIOD TAKEN.

Last Name        CALL

A-L                  510-748-4023 x 3108 Pat Rios

M-Z                  510-748-4023 x 3109 Theresa Lee

School Phone#’s & Emails