The Buzz

In order to gather insight and feedback on behalf of Zephyr Elementary students, we created a Zephyr Elementary Student Forum. In creating the forum, we asked all 5th-grade Teachers to nominate students to participate on the forum. Teachers were asked to nominate students who represent the characteristics of our Zephyr BEEZ (Be safe, Encourage others, Excel in all you do, and have Zephyr Pride). Additionally, we asked that they nominate students who would be outspoken and able to speak on behalf of their class. The forum members listed below exceeded all expectations and absolutely impressed the Zephyr Staff during the forum sessions.

Zephyr Student Forum Members:

Anglada, Carlos

Atiyeh, Abram

Burton, Joshua

Casey, Sophia

Divirgilio, Lilliana

George, Kaden

Mckenzie, Jamie

Miles, Legacy

Nafiza, Maisha

Nammous, Khadijeh

Seunarine, Joshua

Shaulis, Madelyn

Vasquez, Makaela

Amy Dorward (5th-Grade Teacher Leader), Amanda Kusko (Asst. Principal), and Gabriel Dillard (Principal) led student forum members through 2 interactive forum sessions. During the sessions, we challenged students to imagine themselves walking across the stage as 12th-graders. We asked them to describe the characteristics they want to be good at by the time they graduate. We further challenged the forum to divide into 4 groups to rank 15 competencies into their top 10. The results are depicted below:

Ultimately, the collective rankings of the 4 groups were added up to form the Zephyr Elementary School Top Ten Competencies depicted below:

Our Top Ten Competencies ranked and added up are as follows:

1 - Leadership, 2 - Collaboration, 3 - Responsibility, 4 - Adaptability, 5 - Confidence, 6 - Critical Thinking, 7 - Empathy, 8 - Financial Literacy, 9 - Goal-Directed, 10 - Creativity.

As a community, the district plans to take feedback from the various schools, community members, local partnerships, parents, and staff to create a Graduate Profile consisting of our most valued competencies. These competencies will be integrated into artwork and shared with the community in the coming months. They will later serve as a guiding light for our district decision making and curricular pathways.

When we asked our Zephyr students how they would like to see these competencies depicted with art, they described the following: "I imagine a Z-Train with 10 train cars travelling down a track to 'Success' and each train car is named after 1 of the competencies."

Time will tell how the Graduate Profile shakes out and comes into existence. While the work continues, we thank our Student Forum Members and parents for their creativity and dedication toward improving our district.