Leadership In Our Community Begins Now!

Leadership within the community will be the major theme embedded within the 7th grade gifted and academically talented coursework for our new magnet program during the 2008 - 2009 school year. Michael Alexander, one of our assistant principals, has gotten a jump start on these theme by giving back to our community during several recent literacy events!

The first event which Mr. Alexander participated in was 'Real Men Read'. This event is hosted by Spring Park Elementary School each year. The purpose of this event is to bring in male leaders from our community to model the notion of lifelong literacy to the students who attend Spring Park. Mr. Alexander had the privilege of reading a book about recognizing colors with a group of Pre-K students. The picture above was taken while he was participating in this event.

Mr. Alexander also participated in a reading program entitled 'Celebrity Readers' at Paxon Middle School. During this event he read an autobiography of Jay Z to a group of 8th grade students. Mr. Alexander used this book to illustrate how Jay Z grew up in a challenging environment and has now established himself as an entrepreneur.

Mr. Alexander's participation in these activities just goes to show how 'Leadership In Our Community' is already becoming a central part of our work at Julia Landon College Preparatory and Leadership Development School!

Celbration Activities For May

Okay, so it has been another very busy week for us at Julia Landon! We continue to work towards getting things ready for our incoming students. We have 'Celebration' activities scheduled for the middle of May. This will be an opportunity for parents and students to be on campus and find out more details about next year's program. We have just finished putting together a mail out to parents about these activities. Please expect this information in your mailbox by Thursday or Friday of the last week of April. We have also posted the dates and times on our website!

We are trying to use the website as a means of continual communication with our magnet parents and students. Each Thursday we are updating our website with any new information which we believe will be helpful for our community. Last week we posted the 'Celebration' and Summer Orientation dates. This week we will be posting the summer reading lists.

We encourage you to continue to call if you have any questions regarding the new program! If I am not available, please ask for Ms. Fenton (Magnet Lead Teacher) or Mr. Hafner (Curriculum Integration Specialist) and they will be happy to assist you.

Have a great week!

Magnet Letters Are In The Mail!

WOW! What an incredible week this has been for Julia Landon! The letters for magnet acceptance to our program have gone out this week and the phones are ringing all the time!

We filled all openings for the 2008-2009 school year entirely with students who put us as their first choice. We do have waiting lists at all three grade levels. In total, we accepted 330 sixth grade students, 110 seventh grade students, and 110 eighth grade students.

You should expect to receive a mail out from us during the beginning of May. This mail out will include information about our Spring Celebration with students and parents, a calendar for the upcoming school year, and other general information.

Please note that our Spring Celebration will be held in the evening during the middle of May. Each grade level is scheduled for a specific evening. This will be an opportunity for parents to receive more detailed information about our program, volunteer opportunities, summer reading and summer orientation. While the parents are taking care of 'house keeping' items, our students will have an opportunity to meet their classmates and new members of our teaching staff.

We encourage our parents to call the school if they have any questions about this upcoming school year! You may call me directly with your questions. If I am not available, Ron Hafner (Curriculum Integration Specialist) and Reni Fenton (Magnet Lead Teacher) may also assist you.

I cannot begin to express to you how excited I am about the development of this new dedicated magnet program. I thank each of you for being willing to send your student to us for their middle grades experience. I look forward to working with each of you as we create this new program.

Our Last Evening Recruitment Tour!!!

Okay, so I am a bit late posting information to my blog tonight! We stayed late tonight answering questions from parents and students. After all the recruitment activities were over many of our new staff stayed to celebrate our last evening of recruitment! Wow - have we had a great time meeting so many amazing students during January and February!

I really enjoyed talking with the students and parents tonight! I had some great questions from students who currently attend Stockton Elementary and Holiday Hill. It appears students tonight were interested in what it was like to have lockers! In my group we talked about how students at Julia Landon will be able to go to their lockers at the start of school, before their lunch period, and before 6th period. We talked about the fact that students don't go to their locker after school, because we want to make sure that they are not late to their buses!

My group also had some discussion about the slushy machine in the cafeteria! Students continue to be excited about the snack bar line in the cafeteria! It seems that some of our prospective students are more interested in ice cream and pizza than choosing a well balanced meal from our hot lunch line!

I continue to be so appreciative of all the parents and students who have expressed an interest in our program at Julia Landon! I am so excited that we are creating a school that will encourage students to grow academically, while also developing their leadership skills. I continue to encourage parents to call us if they have any further questions! Also, don't forget to get those magnet applications in on time!!!

Have a great weekend!

Valentine's Day Recruiting!

We continued our recruiting this evening with a Valentine's Day Open House! We had some great students on our tour. I was particularly entertained by the number of students wearing red and pink for the holiday! I also had fun listening to the various activities they had done in their elementary schools today to celebrate the holiday.

The group this evening saw our program overview presentation and took a tour of our school. Once again, the television production studio was a big hit! It has become very clear that everyone wants to have this elective during their middle school experience at Julia Landon College Prep.

The students on my tour were particularly entertaining this evening! I especially liked the students from Jax Beach who reminded me about the "slushie machine" discussion during the Jax Beach 5th Grade Parent Information Night! It appears that middle school students are excited about having slushies during their middle school lunch.

I also had some students on my tour who I can tell are going to be great in the athletics program at the middle school level. In particular, I had some fun discussion about playing football at the middle school level with a few of the prospective applicants.

As always, I continue to appreciate the many students and parents who are considering our program. We hope that we have answered all the questions from the tours this evening, but if you have any additional questions please give us a call!

County Spelling Bee and More Recruiting Activities!

This week Julia Landon was excited to host the annual Duval County Oral Spelling Bee! Contestants from throughout the county came to our campus to be a part of this tremendous event. I was amazed with each of the students who participated!

We continued a good number of recruiting activities this past week. We were excited to speak at the Awards Assesmbly at Holiday Hill Elementary. What a great group of 5th graders they have at their school!

We were also excited about the students who came on our tour this past Thursday! Due to the Spelling Bee, we had to do our program overview in the gymnasium. The students and parents seemed to enjoy this venue. After the tours we even had some students who decided to shoot some hoops and see what it is like to play ball in a middle school gym!

We have two more evening tours left. They are at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, February 14th and Thursday, February 21st. Anyone who has not already checked out our new program is invited to come see what our new dedicated magnet program is all about!

On Thursday, February 14th I will be posting a new question for my blog. This week it will have to do with the types of clubs and extracurricular activities which students would like at the middle school level. Be sure to log back in on Thursday to cast your vote!

Planning For Our New Program Continues!

This week we had another great week meeting potential students for the new Julia Landon College Preparatory and Leadership Development School! We were fortunate to meet some wonderful parents and students during the Magnet Open House events sponsored by Susie Tolbert Elementary and San Jose Elementary.

We also hosted another evening Open House on our campus on Thursday evening. It was fun to see so many eager 5th grade students! They all seem so excited about making the transition to middle school. I had the good fortune to give one of the tours during our evening event! The students on our tour seemed to take particular interest in our television production studio and computer lab. There also seemed to be a good bit of interest in seeing what a middle school locker room looks like! The one area that we didn't include on the tour was the cafeteria. Several students did ask what it looks like after the tour, so I will be posting a picture on my blog during the next few days.

Our design team continues to make plans for our program next year. We met again this Friday morning. There was a good bit of discussion on how to shape the 7th grade leadership component. This portion of our program is entitled, "Leadership in the Community." Additionally, we began discussion on upcoming technology purchases. We continue to look towards Mac wireless laptops. I will continue to update my blog as we make those decisions!