"Bobcat Tales"

This publication is for families, districts and other community agencies to share in the joy and education of NYSSB students.

Summer School 2007

Our mission, through day and integrated residential programming in a safe and nurturing environment, is to provide a foundation of learning to enable each student to become a contributing member in a diverse society, to achieve their highest level of independence and to afford them the ability to live in a least restrictive environment.

We will do this by providing excellence in education and in residential programming, and by promoting a learning environment that puts achievement and independence within the reach of each student.

Goal #1: Students receiving special education services will meet high educational standards.

Goal #2: Students with disabilities will integrate with their non-disabled peers and community members throughout their education experience.

Goal #3: Students with disabilities will transition into living and working in as integrated a community setting as possible.

Goal #4: NYSSB will demonstrate good stewardship of its human, fiscal and physical resources.

Goal #5: All services for which NYSSB is responsible will meet high standards and continuously improve.

SUPERINTENDENT’S CORNER

By James Knowles

An organization becomes what it believes. The vision and the culture of any group are rooted in its prevailing set of commonly held beliefs. I would ask that you consider the following beliefs for our school as we prepare for the 2007-2008 school year.

In this we believe:

Success – All people can learn and their learning should be life long. Everyone should experience success and be truly recognized. Our goal is for everyone to be the best they can be.
Service – Our students and their parents are our customers, our sole purpose is to serve them.
Empowerment - Empowering people within their area of responsibility, encouraging risk taking, practicing participatory decision making, and fostering learning opportunities are fundamental to the growth of all students and staff.
Culture – The culture of the organization is an important and powerful variable that should be nurtured and celebrated in order for our school to be a healthy, happy and productive place to live and learn.
Team work – We are each others greatest strength and are all accountable for organizational outcomes. Collaboration, congeniality, open communication, caring, listening, and loyalty are essential to success of our team.
Evaluation – Evaluation should drive instruction to meet individual student needs. Effective evaluation and the proper use of results enable us to relocate limited resources to accomplish desired goals.
The Future – The future is ours to create. It is our responsibility to model this belief for our students, their parents and ourselves.

... for excellence in teaching, learning, and growth in our school.

Thanks to all for a great summer session. I look forward to a productive school year in 2007-2008. We are fortunate at NYSSB to have Parents, Teachers, Child Care Aides, Support Staff and Administrators who care deeply about the children we serve.

YEARBOOK ORDERS

The 2006-2007 yearbooks have arrived! If you haven’t already ordered, please contact your classroom teacher, Bethany Burgess or Lancy Frongetta. The cost is $5.00 and checks should be made payable to NYSSB Misc. Receipts Fund. Don’t miss out on your copy of NYSSB’s 3^rd yearbook. It’s amazing to see how much of the work the students did!!

Happy Retirement!!

Sharry Courter is retiring as of 9/5/07. Many of you know her because she was our intake coordinator and tour guide. We wish her the best in her retirement.

If you used to call Sharry for help or information, these are the people you should now call….

Intake Coordinator - Sue Wheeler x294

Intake Education Evaluator - Michelle Ruble x233

Tours/Interns & Volunteers - Bethany Burgess x214

Welcome Back!

Welcome back to Judi Piscitello!! She has been out of work for some time but is now back with us. She will continue to work as part of the Resource Center and will also be the consulting TVI for the school.

We’ll miss you!

Melissa Schwab, one of our great TVIs has left for a job at the Olmstead Center in Buffalo. Although the students in her class and NYSSB staff will miss her dearly we wish her the best at her new job. We’ll be looking to hire a new TVI, but until then Steve Hagen, one of our retired TVIs and summer school teacher, has agreed to stay on until someone is hired.

FALL CSE OPEN HOUSE

Our next CSE Open House will be on Wednesday October 3^rd. CSEs from across New York State are invited to come to our beautiful campus in Batavia, NY to learn about our Day and Integrated 5-Day Residential Programs. We will be offering training in Orientation and Mobility, Assistive Technology, etc. Parents, TVIs, Special Education Teachers, MSCs, Related Service Staff and classroom aides are also welcome at our CSE Day. We have mailed out over 600 invitations to school districts, pre-schools, ECDCs and some PTA’s. If you need invitations or brochures please contact Bethany Burgess at x214. Please pass this on to anyone you think would be interested, we’d love to have them here.

News from our Dietitian

By Patricia Denny, RD

I have been assisting Helen Weibel from Employee Assistance in locating nutrition-packed recipes for the summer and fall for use at Helen's Employee Assistance tables. Helen prepared a hot zucchini dish and some zucchini bread for employees, which was well received by all in attendance one afternoon. Thank you, Helen!

We hope to launch a "Fall into Fitness" program for employees. The idea is that healthy employees will be more energized in their daily interactions with all our students here at NYSSB and be more aware of the body's needs for appropriate nutrition, physical activity and exercise. This will undoubtedly have a positive influence on our student population as a whole.

Also, as a school we are making a concerted effort to move away from empty calorie items, such as pop, large quantities of juice, desserts, snack items and fast foods being consumed after the school day ends. Children and teenagers' growing bodies need foods with high nutritional quality and appropriate caloric content, to maximize their health status and prevent unwanted weight gain or obesity.

As a nation, the US is facing a true epidemic in childhood obesity. NYSSB is attempting to not only react to this problem, but to move beyond the current concerns and take a pro-active role in minimizing or preventing the above problems in our student population.

What’s Happening in the Classrooms?

The classrooms have been re-numbered, so make sure to look at the teacher so you can find your child’s correct Unit number.

Unit 1

Jamie Hermance, Kathy Babcock, Tricia Severino

Summer school has certainly gone fast! Unit 1 has been involved in numerous field trips and has done many fun and educational activities. We went to K-mart early in the summer to look at various items we use in the summer. We saw items that people take to the beach, we saw items people cook with and we saw items to help keep us cool! We also went to Pontillo’s toward the end of summer. The students were able to mingle with the community and have a great meal at the same time! We practiced looking at a menu, ordering and how to behave in a restaurant. Each of the students enjoyed the outing very much! We also went outside a lot. We were able to work in our gardens and weed them. The students learned about many different types of flowers and vegetables and how to better take care of them. We were also able to feel the flowers and leaves, smell the flowers and taste the vegetables. This has been a very productive summer for Unit 1 and we are certain that it will be a productive school year as well come September!

Unit 2

Pamela Wentworth, Mary Beth Demmer, Grace West

Unit 2 has had a busy, happy and healthy summer. We're each working on our own goals; the best ones for all of us this summer have been communication and manners (“May I please”, “Yes, please”, “No, thank you”, Pardon me?”). We sing a wide variety of songs every day, many by request, which we all love! We studied butterflies and now know the four stages for a caterpillar to turn into a butterfly: egg, larva, pupa and adult. We learned the 4 major oceans of the world and the 9 planets of our solar system. We talked a lot about the weather using new words like overcast and we learned a special way to remember the water cycle. We went on field trips with our friends to the Erie Canal and to a friend’s birthday party. Lastly, for O & M we took several shopping trips into the community. It's been a great time together! This summer has been a time of individual growth for each of the students, a great time for Unit 2 as a family and a fantastic 6 weeks!

Unit 3

Jackie Cackett, Kim Hilburger, Sue McGregor, Tammy Pestlin

Unit 3 could not get enough of the beautiful weather we had this summer. We enjoyed outdoor walks as often as we could! We did lots of art projects but our favorite was making the parade floats, picking out our colors and using our paint brushes. We read a lot of stories and of course had a lot of music playing in the classroom. If you’ve ever been to our classroom you know that we always have music. We had a great time at Fun in Sun Day. Some of us enjoyed the obstacle course the most while others enjoyed the water balloons the most. Zach and Jacob both had a water balloon bounce off the parachute and then off their head, and neither one got wet!! And lastly we say goodbye to Jacob. He is graduating and moving out of the area. While we can’t wait for September, we’ll miss Jacob’s smile and beautiful eyes.

Unit 4

Reggie Neubert, Diane Bassett, Kathy O’Neil, Jolynne Rada,

Westward Expansion was our theme for July and August. Students learned about pioneer life and conflict as the United States expanded its boundaries westward. Students rode on the Erie Canal and experienced locks 34 and 35 as they filled and emptied and allowed the boat to travel on the canal. Students visited the Genesee Country Museum and experienced some aspects of pioneer life such as an open fire for cooking and heat, beds stuffed with straw and pounding corn into meal. We visited a barn from that time period and a one room school house. A highlight of this trip was listening to Larry, a musician, play music of that time on guitar and banjo. Students compared these experiences to elements found in our Literature selection Little House in the Big Woods. On Tuesday August 14 we all enjoyed a pioneer dinner. Some of our food was cooked on an open fire, like sweet potatoes and corn. We picked our own blueberries a few days before at a local U-pick farm and used them to make blueberry pie and muffins. We also had smoked turkey. Smoking meats was a way pioneers preserved food.

In science, students used inflatable models of the sun and planets to compare the size and shape of the planets and the order of their orbits around the sun. Several students explored the local library in preparation for a possible volunteer program called SAGE, where students will help select media from the library and bring it to patrons who cannot access the library themselves. We hope to have a patron assigned to us in the fall.

Unit 5

JoMarie McMullen, Rachel Ciociola, Mark Herrmann

The month of July was both busy and informative in unit 5! To start summer school off, we went on a field trip with our friends from unit 4 to Lockport, NY to take a trip on the Erie Canal. We rode the boat as it traveled through the locks, and listened to our tour guide as he described life on and along the canal while it was being built and present day. A few of us even walked along the scenic Erie Canal trail and read the historical land markers. A fine time was had by all.

We started our geography section in July and have been working on specific states within the U.S., concentrating on when they became states. The states we have discussed are Missouri, Colorado and South Dakota. Each had its own interesting points of study. With Colorado we concentrated on geography. Missouri was a study in topography as we learned of its mountain ranges and rivers. In Science we studied tornadoes, their physical make-up, how they spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and the weather conditions under which they're created. For our history lesson we discussed our 33d president Harry Truman and his birthplace in Lamar, CO. Last but not least, South Dakota started a fun math lesson in which we studied Mt. Rushmore. We used our measuring skills to measure out in the classroom, the length of one of the eyes on the Mt. Rushmore monument - 11 feet! It was great fun for all the kids

For our second field trip, we visited the Genesee Country Museum in Mumford, where we experienced what true pioneer life would have been like. We visited a pioneer schoolhouse, a blacksmith's shop and were even invited into a pioneer cabin where we ground cornmeal, and sat on a nice corn husk mattress. After our tour, we had a great picnic lunch by the carriage house where we prepared for our return trip to school. This trip corresponded with our history lesson on the movement westward, and the kids enjoyed our first - hand experience. We can't wait to see what September holds in store for us!

Unit 6

Steve Hagen, Bryan Bradt, Judy Wetzel

We had a productive and fun summer reading the Newberry Award winning book Holes by Louis Sachar. Besides the usual vocabulary, unit and chapter tests, we had periodic discussions of the author’s style, plot possibilities and personal opinions of what we might do in similar situations. We concluded that there were often no right or wrong answers. Instead, we concluded it was often personal choices and living with the consequences of our actions. We also watched and listened to the movie.

Our daily group time discussions were centered on common social situations that could occur at home, school or work and how to behave or react during them. Again we found there were often several ways of addressing them. Some were better than others. Our social studies unit included personal research and oral class reports on famous American inventors. This was fairly easy to integrate with our math practice and our science unit on simple machines. We also had a daily Word of the Day and an outdoor temperature reading. We kept track of the 8:50 AM temperature for three weeks and made a hallway bar graph chart along with some statistics and questions that were related to it. Thursday was travel day. We went out to eat and also visited area parks where we ate the lunches that we prepared. We had practice choosing the food items, writing/Brailling out the shopping list, buying and preparing the food. For Fun in the Sun Day we had Kyle be the MC and Brittney, Ams and Kyle perform for the karaoke session.

Unit 7

Steve Kocher, Ray Follett, Christine Sadler

Unit 7 has been busy this summer with plenty of ‘reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic! In addition, students planned a special lunch to prepare each week in the dorm. At the beginning of each week, meal ideas were discussed and voted on. Students capable of Brailling, Brailled the food items and ingredients onto cards. On Tuesday mornings, Unit 7 traveled to Martin’s where the cards were distributed among the students. Students then shopped for those items and ingredients on their cards. Students also had the opportunity to practice their choice-making and money skills, by purchasing their morning snack with their hard-earned shop money.

On Wednesdays, students helped slice, chop, cut, pour, measure, stir, (and taste) the ingredients they bought the day before as they helped to prepare lunch in the Upper Knight Hall dorm. On two occasions, Unit 7 got to further use their decision-making and social etiquette skills by eating off campus at a restaurant. In July, students enjoyed the lunch buffet at Pontillo's and in August, students ate at the Jackson St. Grill. The summer culminated with the annual Fun in the Sun Day, where Unit 7 enjoyed the variety of activities and karaoke.

Unit 8

George Sawyer, Amy Gromlovits, Kim Shephard

Summer school 2007 was an enjoyable time for Unit 8 staff and students. First, we welcomed back previous summer school staff and regular staff. We then oriented ourselves to the new schedule. Some of our classes that were previously held in the morning, are now being held in the afternoon. The weather was great during the summer. It was warm, even hot at times. Unit 7 asked if we wanted to go with them to practice social skills at a local restaurant. We went to Pontillo's Pizzeria and did a good job of practicing social, dining and mathematical skills.

August was a good month. Our unit was charged with organizing “Fun in the Sun 2007”. We formed a committee to plan what we wanted to do. The name “All-Star Sports 2007” became the theme for our celebration. We put a lot of work into the planning of this event. The activity took place on August 15th, 2007 and was a success. There were t-shirts made to be worn for this event that mirrored the school colors of purple and gold. These were designed by Ann, who works in Administrative Services. Thank goodness the sun was out and there was no rain. We invited students, parents and relatives to this celebration. The students had a good lunch. Our guests enjoyed a tasty staff luncheon organized by my assistant, Amy. After lunch, the students had outdoor karaoke under the tent. I thank our Art Therapist, Jacky, for organizing it all. Many people used their skills and talents. The space allotted for this report does not allow for everyone to be mentioned by name. They have been praised in person for the giving of their talents to the students. Well, it's time for vacation, since summer school is over. See you in September!

Unit 9

Tina Schultz, Patty Fernaays, Jill Harkness

Unit 9 was “chillin” during summer school. We tried to take some time to relax and enjoy the summer. We read A LOT of stories. Sometimes three a day! The stories were related to our word of the week. We also did a lot of art projects and made wagons, whales, black eyed susans and pizzas. Our favorite was a cooking project where we concentrated on the use of healthy ingredients. We made taco salad with lean beef, lettuce, kidney beans, salsa, low fat sour cream and other salad items. It was delicious! We also want to welcome two new students to our classroom: Terrence and Tommy. We’ve had a great time getting to know them this summer.

UPCOMING PROGRAM THEMES: Will be announced in September

News from the Art Room

By Jacquelyn Rease

Since summertime is when parades happen in many communities, we spent the summer learning about the origins of the parade float. The students learned about the earliest parade floats and also discussed the types of parade floats that they are most familiar with. After learning about parade floats everyone began work on their own mini parade float. Everyone is choosing colors, materials, and other elements that they feel best represent their individual personalities. Some classes have already completed work on the floats and they are currently on display near the staff lounge. Also congratulations to Jacob for being chosen as the artist of the month for July/August.

IMPORTANT DATES:

September 4^th – Conference Day

September 5^th – School begins

October 8^th – Off! Columbus Day

Editor: Bethany Burgess, LMSW

New York State School for the Blind

2A Richmond Ave.

Batavia, NY 14020

585-343-5384 or Toll Free 1-877-697-7382

Website: http://www.vesid.nysed.gov/specialed/nyssb/home.html

NYSSB is located in Batavia, NY, just off the I-90 in between Rochester and Buffalo. Applications are accepted year round and we serve NYS students ages 5-21 who are legally blind and multiply disabled in a day school and integrated 5-day residential program. Services available include the following therapies: OT, OT Feeding, PT, Speech, Audiology, Music, Art and Recreation. Additional services available include: Teachers of the Visually Impaired, Behavior Specialist, School Psychologist, Medical Social Worker, Braille, Assistive Technology, Orientation & Mobility, Adapted Physical Education, Pre-Vocational Workshop, Dietitian and 24 hour nursing services. We have a 10 Month school year and 6 week Extended School Year program available. Please call us, visit our website or e-mail us at nyssb@mail.nysed.gov for more information. Here is a list of frequently called numbers for your reference:

NYSSB Contact Information

Family Association Contacts

Carol Samborski, Chair (716) 683-4377 csamborski@bluefrog.com

Teresa Shaut, Co-Chair (607) 776-8476 teresatia@aol.com

Kelly Morris (516) 785-3995 KKellyMurphy@yahoo.com

Gary Lemke (585) 798-1435 cbpsafety@yahoo.com

Hello from the Family Association!

During our August meeting we held our elections, discussed the previous meeting with Meryl Tisch and Rebecca Cort, and quickly discussed activities we would like to do this year. First off, all Family Association Leadership positions stayed the same:

Carol Samborski, chair

Teresa Shaut, co-chair

Donna Ghodbane, co-secretary

Teresa George, co-secretary

We discussed the meeting with Meryl Tisch (Board of Regents) and Rebecca Cort (SED) and that the purpose of the meeting was to allow all of us to express how important this school is to our children. Both SED and the Board of Regents are important in setting the direction of how the school is run. We wanted them to understand our passion for NYSSB. We had a great turn out with 30-some parents and family members. Everyone who attended had a chance to speak, and those that couldn’t attend sent in letters and recorded messages that were also shared. All who attended spoke with such love for all the staff. There was one thread that wove through each one of us, our deep appreciation for all the people who work with our children. Story after story told of strides our children make here. Thank you to all at NYSSB! To continue our efforts to encourage all our officials to keep our school strong along with its programs, we voted in a committee who volunteered their time to focus on this agenda. They are Cathy Nichols, Kelly Morris and Patty Nieffer.

Our next meeting with be Monday September 24^th from 5-6 pm. We will get an update from the committee at this time, view the new school DVD and briefly discuss the year’s activities. We will be done in time to join in all the fun activities at this year’s Homecoming. I know this will be a wonderful evening and we will provide dinner during our meeting.

To help out with preparing upcoming training sessions for us, please fill out the bottom portion of this page and return to your child’s teacher. We will always have our meetings with special training sessions or a school function, to make it worth the drive since we live all over the state. Please call if you have any questions or concerns, Carol Samborski, 716-683-4377.

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Suggestions for future training_____________________________

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Best days and times (Please pick preferred time and preferred day of week)

Morning’s 9:30-11:30 _________

Afternoon’s 12-2:00 _________

Late afternoon’s 4-6 or 5-7pm _______

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