PFLASA 1/10 Meeting Recap

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Welcome back to what will be an even busier semester! Trust Principal Crescenzi when she says this time will fly by. Hold on to your hats because there is so much PFLASA and LASA have going on.

Recruiting season is winding down but it isn’t quite over. Tomorrow night 1/16 at 6 pm, LASA will open its doors for Showcase to highlight the amazing school we have. And PFLASA will be feeding the teachers who give up their time to demonstrate their classes, answer questions, and generally just be amazing. This Saturday 1/18, PFLASA sponsors a Mentoring Zoom to give any applicant help with the application. And PFLASA is holding the “Find Your Fit” Parent Panels during the testing sessions to help parents decide if LASA is the right place for their child. I’m particularly proud of these panels because we just started them last year with the advent of ranked choice applications and the move into our PFLASA portable. In addition to providing a space for parents during the tests (and a bathroom-don’t laugh it’s a valuable resource that helps ensure the integrity of the testing), our incredible volunteer panelists field insightful questions about high schools including LASA. I learned so much from my fellow parents.

But PFLASA isn’t just about recruiting, we want to support our parent population as well. In that vein, LASA and PFLASA will be hosting an online parent panel about applying for testing accommodations at 6pm Wednesday, January 22nd. If your child has an IEP or a 504 and needs accommodations for the PSAT, SAT, and AP Tests, come find out about the process from a LASA counselor and parents who have done it.

We also discussed the fantastic Master Class offerings. There are a variety of topics and something for every grade. One ticket buys attendance for anyone in your house, and I’ve never heard that anyone regretted attending one. Then we had a presentation from our “Raising Healthy Raptors” chair. If you haven’t seen the dedicated work our chair has done to support parents dealing with a variety of teenager challenges and to provide resources you really should check it out: https://pflasa.org/wellness/

Our next in person meeting is January 24th at 8:15 in the PFLASA portable (next to the Tennis courts). If you can’t make these meetings but want to participate in helping LASA please email me at president@pflasa.org. We need volunteers for things that are strictly online, that take one day, or just a few hours.

Wishing you all a winter where we keep our power,

Ellen Stewart-Klein
PFLASA President

Spring 2025 Study Groups Start Date and General Schedule

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Hello everyone and welcome back! PFLASA Study Groups will be starting on Tuesday, January 21st. We have qualified tutors to provide additional support in Chemistry, Physics, and Biology after school on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 4:15 – 6:15 pm.

Here is the general schedule for spring:
Chemistry – T, W, Th
Physics – T, W, Th
Biology – T, Th

Please see the image of the general schedule below.

In Service,
PFLASA Study Groups Committee

Call Out to Please Share your Wisdom!

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Do you have a favorite book, podcast, webinar, youtube video, website, local organization or provider that has helped you navigate parenthood, support your adolescents, or support kids with specific challenges? If so, please send an email to wellness@pflasa.org so the Raising Healthy Raptors Committee can share your gems with others in our community. If it helped you, it will help someone else, and even one more makes a difference!

Master Classes On Sale Now

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Secure your seats by purchasing now. You can find a complete list here: https://pflasa.org/product-category/masterclasses/

Here are our January Master Classes:

  • SAT/ACT Webinar | Thursday, January 9 at 6:30pm
    This is a useful resource to get your junior or prepped and ready for SAT day in the spring or for sophomore students to prepare for the Junior year PSAT.
  • Finding Your Personal Fit College Options | Tuesday, January 14 at 7pm
    Don’t just get in, fit in! How to find colleges that align with your values, goals, and budget.
  • Application Strategies for The University of Texas and Texas A&M | Thursday, January 16 at 7pm
    Do you dream in burnt orange or maroon? Maybe both: Learn applications strategies for UT and TAMU!
  • How to Get the Most Out of Naviance | Tuesday, January 28 at 6pm
    Use Naviance to level up your college research game.

Open to parents and students. Please note, you only need to purchase 1 seat per household.

Greetings from the PFLASA Grants Committee!

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In this season of thankfulness and giving, we wanted to take a moment to say thank you to the LASA community for its support of and faith in PFLASA. With your financial support we were able to award $11,160 in grants since the beginning of the school year. The grant requests ranged from the professional development courses that lend to the excellence of LASA faculty, to worthy classroom, curriculum and activity needs. The LASA faculty and staff, and your support of PFLASA grants are what make LASA the exceptional school that it is. We thank you!

Warmest wishes to you for a fun and relaxing Winter Break!

Lisa Lyons and Sarah Grubert, PFLASA Grant Committee Co-Chairs
grants@pflasa.org

Want to know more about the joy you helped to spread?

  • TCEA AI Conference: This conference focused on understanding the impacts AI is having on our students, their information seeking behaviors, and how LASA can best address its use.
  • Mental Health Conference: The conference was geared to mental health professionals who work with children and how to enhance their skills when working with students.
  • ASL Conference: This conference focuses on the new ACTFL National Standards, teaching strategies, and networking with other schools.
  • College Board Forum: This LASA college counselor was asked to present at the Forum. College Board is one of the largest education nonprofits in the country and works heavily to enhance student learning, and it is honor to have a LASA counselor be asked to present.
  • Joint Mathematics Meeting in Seattle: This conference focuses on Calculus, Cryptography, Equity and Inclusion, Diff EQ, and Logic. Basically, everything this teacher teaches.
  • Data Science Education Conference: By attending this conference, this teacher will get to collaborate and share ideas with other educators in the emerging field of data science education. LASA’s data science course is one of the first of its kind, and this is possibly the only opportunity to get feedback from other experts in the field. The standards for what data science is, and what we should teach, are still being written, so this teacher will have an opportunity to shape the narrative, and better influence national and regional policy to match what our kids need.
  • Chemistry workbooks and texts: This grant covers the expense of the LASA teacher-created text and workbooks that students rely upon to meet the rigor needed for LASA Chem.
  • Lab supplies for Organic Chemistry: This request for supplies will allow for more frequent organic chemistry laboratory projects for students, giving them valuable lab experiences.
  • Classroom printer: AP Precalculus AB, AP Physics 1. Something as simple as having a printer in the classroom is critical for decreasing the interruptions to valuable class time. Having a printer in the classroom will assist the students in printing graphs and data for their lab reports without having to go to the library. It will also assist the teacher in printing last-minute documents for students without having to go to the copy room. Because this teacher teaches 7 out of 8 sections, having a laser printer with a relatively fast print output will be invaluable to their efficiency as a teacher.
  • Chalkboard: This teacher requested an additional work surface for the students of AMR, Linear Algebra and Multivariable Calculus, BC PreCalculus.
  • 300 copies of Wilson translation of Odyssey: The request came from the Eng 2 cadre. It is a more relevant translation to our curriculum.
  • Insect boxes and Arthropod vials for Biodiversity project: Planet Earth.
  • Display case for Debate Team trophies and plaques: LASA’s Debate team is one of the best in the nation and they have many trophies and awards from this year and years past. There was not a centralized, secure place to display their awards. An amazing bargain was had on a retired display case purchased from the State Surplus Store. Debate Team students will do a little refurbishing and the case will shine!
  • Online access to Hubro Marketing Simulation, 3 month subscription: For the Entrepreneurship class. Students will have the opportunity to work in teams to engage in a real-world simulation of a globally competitive landscape. They will manage things from start-up capital, research and development, market analysis, global product placement, price strategies, hiring and firing of personnel, etc.—all while competing for many multiple simulated financial quarters against every other team, all in order to understand how real business strategy and decisions affect company financials in the global marketplace. This is the same simulation software used by colleges and universities all over the world, including Texas A&M University, Harvard, Boston College, etc.

Academic Struggles and Perfectionism in Teens

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Did you know that perfectionism can be an underlying reason for academic struggle?? The fear of handing in an imperfect assignment can lead to procrastination, failure to turn in work on time, and even a lack of motivation to try in the first place. Perfectionism also causes anxiety, stress, and burnout for teens who are high performing in academics. To learn more about how you can help, check out this webinar: “Helping Your Perfectionist Child” by the Anxiety and Depression Association of America.

Brought to you by the PFLASA Raising Healthy Raptors Committee.

PFLASA 12/6 Meeting Recap & Spring Semester Preview

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Our last meeting of the calendar year we recapped all things we did recently that went well (the Project Graduation Auction, the Giving Thanks Pie Event, New Grants awarded). We then had updates from events that are upcoming. First, the Fall Stressbuster which is this Friday in the small gym during lunch. PFLASA provides a petting zoo for students to voluntarily come by and hold a variety of animals. This brings a lot of joy and stress relief for students. I also know there are some people that do not feel we should sponsor this event as it stresses the animals. To those people, please come join the board for next year. Or if this is your favorite event of the year and you can’t imagine it going away, also come join the board. Second, yet another quick reminder that PFLASA is providing additional tutoring during finals week. See the post from last week with the table for hours.

Next, starting soon PFLASA will have Master Classes to sell. Master Classes are evening Zoom sessions on a number of topics mostly for parents but your “ticket” includes whomever is at your house on the Zoom. There are lots of college prep topics but they can be on any variety of topic so if you have a special skill to share please contact us. For those of you who don’t want to be on camera start looking at these as soon as they come out.

We ended the meeting with a preview of what the spring semester holds for PFLASA. After concluding, we another update from Principal Crescenzi. There were also some extra goodies including past-President Nicole Truelock’s amazing sausage balls. For anyone who has never been we have coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. And unlike our first meeting of the year plenty of seats. We will also have our second evening Zoom meeting in January, I hope to make it more interactive.

I attached an updated version of the slide I presented for the Spring Preview. We had more than a few questions about various upcoming events so below I provide definitions for all the starred events below.

COGAT testing and Find Your Fit Parent panels: If you remember applying to LASA, COGAT is the name of the test administered as part of the application. Last year with the advent of ranked choice admissions, PFLASA put together the Find Your Fit panels to help parents decide if LASA was the right fit for their child. If anyone has one child at LASA and has/had a highschooler at any other school, please contact me to give up part of a Saturday to come help us do this again.

Showcase: This is LASA’s open house during recruitment, but I starred it to highlight that this is one of the times we feed the teachers!

LASA Testing Accommodations Parent Panel: Should we give that an acronym? This is a joint effort by LASA and PFLASA to explain applying for testing accommodations from College Board. College Board administers the PSAT, SAT, and all AP tests. Please note this is a hard process even for applicants that have a 504/IEP in place.

New Parent Coffee: this is the event for parents of newly accepted LASA students to come and ask questions. We need lots of volunteers for this event. Also believe me when I say you know more than you think.

AP Testing: LASA will administer over 4,000 AP Tests. To pull that off we need a lot of help. We also provide breakfast and snacks to testers every day of testing. This is one of our biggest volunteer asks so please save some time to help us during that two weeks in May.

Coffeehouse: On the Friday evening of the last day of AP testing, LASA puts on a little music festival. It stars students and teachers. After a stressful couple of weeks it is heartwarming to see the talent and support these students have and give.

Senior Salute: This tradition started when LASA was still part of LBJ. It continues so that the kids have something to celebrate for themselves. They receive their magnet endorsement to validate all these years of hard work. According to Principal Crescenzi, some kids skip graduation and only attend this event.

Project Graduation: Hopefully by now you know this is the drug and alcohol free lock-in that is nationwide to provide graduates a safe place to celebrate. The senior parents fundraise really hard to pull this event off every year. And they need help for the event to have it run smoothly. Pay it forward and volunteer now so that you can relax (and sleep) after graduation when it’s your turn.

Questions after all of that? Write me at president@pflasa.org.