SEM’s own, Amanda Ashmead, is a Dallas ISD Teacher of the Year Finalist!!! The Dallas ISD Teacher of The  Year Ceremony will take place Thursday, November 10^th. GOOD LUCK Ms. Ashmead

Admissions Preview- Thursday, November 10^th,  6:30-8:30 pm in the Townview Theater (see below)

The Junior Class Bowling Night scheduled for Friday, November 11^th, is canceled until further notice.

SEM will issue Report Cards Monday, November 14^th. Students will be able to pick up report cards from the office during lunch.

SBDM Meeting Tuesday, November 15^th at 5:00 pm, in room 211. Please email Ms. Huitt @thuitt@dallasisd.org if you are interested in serving on the Board.

PTSA Board Meeting Tuesday, November 15^th at 6:30 pm, in room 211

Support Staff Appreciation Day, Wednesday, November 16^th,

SEM Support Staff:

Mr. Peak- Teacher’s Aide Room 216

Mrs. Martinez- Office Clerk Room 216

Ms. Bell- Office Manager Room 216

Mrs. Davila- Attendance Clerk Room 201

Ms. Batrez – Attendance Clerk Room 201

Ms. Brown-Registrar, Room 201

Ms. Randel- Registrar, Room 201

Ms. Granger- Data Controller, Room 237

Ms. Bailey-Data Controller, Room 237

SEM Admissions Preview 11/10

SEM will host its Annual admissions preview on 11/10 in the Townview Theater from 6:30 pm-8:30 pm. Students and families will be invited to come out and hear from a panel of SEM experts including students, staff, parents and alumni. Please invite families interested in attending SEM. In addition, we are looking for a diverse panel of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students with the personality to share their SEM experience with an audience of 200+. Please have interested students sign up in the front office. We will make selections for the student panel by Monday 11/7.

Coffee with the Principal

Ms. Huitt, Ms. Kashyap and Ms. Russell will host Coffee with the Principal for SEM parents on Friday November 11th from 8:15-9:15 am in Room 211. A light breakfast and coffee will be provided.

November Topics:

• Standardized Testing- How you can help your child at home.
• Reducing Test Anxiety at Home.

The New Worlds Initiative: Cities in Space Competition is about creating a structure that can enable the human race to survive and thrive into a new civilization in space. Students come together to present, compete and learn from one another about building a new world beyond Earth and how to create a surviving and thriving community. In addition to the colony model students must present a written work with a minimum 10 pages double spaced, which describes the project, the specifications and requirements of their chosen location and what issues they chose to dedicate their time to solving for long-term success of a colony.

Winners will also have their project sent to the surface of the Moon in an upcoming Astrobotic mission! The team's digital work will be sent on an SD card aboard the Peregrine Lunar Lander designed by Astrobotic as part of its goal to win the Google Lunar X-Prize. Also there was a documentary being filmed and we are all going to be in the film!

Our students competed in the 3-D model category and placed 1st in High School in our group for the second year. Our students were:

1. Jayesh Sharma
2. Rachel Clinger
3. Grant Hawkins
4. Yosiah Fetahi
5. Alvaro Vazquez
6. Zachary Openshaw
7. David Johnson
8. Caitlin Rogers
9. Omar Ramirez

Jesus Cantu and Darshan Patel also contributed

A copy of their presentation can be found at this link.

SEM debate attended The Diplomacy Tournament at Thomas Jefferson High School where they competed against other DISD schools. Once again, your soaring eagles took home lots of awards! Please help me congratulate the following students:

Novice Team Awards:

12th Leslie Jaramillo and Alejandro Maldonado

10th Saul Correa and Akshay Jaitly

5th Mariam Joseph and Oziel de la Fuente

*Honorable mention: Eduardo Heyer teamed up with another student from Trinidad Garza HS because we had an odd number of kids - they went undefeated and would have won first place if they were not disqualified due to being a hybrid team.

JV Team Awards:

3rd Olivia Northcutt-Wyly and Sophie Rahman

2nd Ethan Helfman and Juan Diaz

*both teams had an undefeated record, and the top 3 teams' winning tie was broken based on speaker awards.

Novice Individual Speaker Awards:

18th Leslie Jaramillo

13th Renee Merrick (This is her first time competing!)

9th Akshay Jaitly

JV Individual Speaker Awards:

13th Sophie Rahman

8th Ethan Helfmann

We also won 3rd place overall as a school, closing losing out to our friends from Irma Rangel (2nd) and Garza (1st).

What a great weekend for the SEM debate eagles! Special thank you to Ms. Zhuge for assistant coaching and Storm Lasseter for judging debates and helping coach the younger debaters. Attached is a photo with the new hardware - the trophies are on display in the office.

Last stop - fall city championships next month - hoping to keep this momentum going!

~Ms Gregg

Please help us meet our goal of 300 PTSA Members!  We want to continue our long term tradition of having strong PTSA engagement at SEM.  We currently have 55 members and want parents, students and the community to become members of our organization and work together to increase the opportunities for every child to succeed! 

• Organizing and subsidizing many SEM social events, including Comic-Con, Yearbook party, awards night
• Sponsoring the SEM Yearbook
• Monthly Coffee with the Principal to give parents an opportunity to network and get updates from our principal
  
• Monthly staff breakfasts and other meals to show appreciation for our teachers and support staff

WRITE-A-CHECK FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN

Are you ready to do your part to support the SEM students and teachers? Here’s your chance! The PTSA at SEM is kicking off our easiest, most pain-free fundraiser of the year: the Write-aCheck Campaign. 100% of every dollar donated goes directly to supporting the SEM students. To participate, simply write a check to SEM PTSA and send to the school, or use our online form to indicate the amount of your donation and proceed to checkout. Your donation is used to provide special programs, activities and events for the students, and to provide for the academic and social needs of the SEM students and staff. Want to DOUBLE the power of your contribution? If your company provides matching donations for charitable contributions, please indicate that and we can provide assistance in making the application to our employer. Thank you in advance for your support and participation in this important fundraiser!

SCHOOLA RESALE CLOTHING FUNDRAISER

Great news! We just kicked off a clothing drive with our fundraising partner, Schoola. What’s Schoola? It’s a great new way to raise funds for our school. Schoola collects pre-loved women’s and children’s clothes, preps and sells them online, and gives 40% of the proceeds back to our school to help fund programs for our kids. That’s $2 out of every $5 earned back to our school! Schoola will deduct the inbound shipping from our earnings so be sure to send items they can resell. As a rule of thumb, this means items in good shape that originally retailed for more than $30.

How you can help:

Fill a bag with gently used kids and women’s clothes and accessories (clean clothing in new or like-new condition), attach the sticker we sent home and bring to school no later than 12/1/16. We’ll be collecting clothes outside the SEM office in the Schoola box.

One more way you can help:

Spread the word!

The GRAMMYs are coming to Dallas, and we have availability for an upcoming GRAMMY Camp® on Saturday, November 19.

The Camp is being held at the Juanita J. Craft Recreation Center in Dallas.  This email gives you information about the program should any of your students be interested in this rare — and completely free — opportunity.

The program, tailored for high-school age students, takes place from 10am-6pm on November 19. Click here for a flyer

GRAMMY Camp® is a one-day non-residential music industry experience where a small group (25-40) students gain an introduction to the business of music and how they can become successful in it.

We still have plenty of availability in all the Tracks – please call or email me with any questions. This is a wonderful opportunity and experience for the kids!

We are offering three tracks in Dallas:

• Video Production
• Electronic Music Production
• Vocal Performance

Info and Registration available at this link