22 April 2015
Volume 1, Issue 22
Colo
r ve
onlin rsion
e!
DSST: BYERS
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CALENDAR
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THE STOOP SCOOP
150 S. Pearl St.
4/22—Wednesday—New Family Orientation
#2, 5:30-7:00pm
4/25—Saturday—Boys and Girls DSST Soccer
Cup, 8am-1pm
4/25—Saturday—Boys and Girls Tennis Match
vs. Ricardo Flores, 11am @ DSST: Cole
4/25—Saturday—Destination Imagination
State Tourney, 1:15pm @ Auraria Campus
5/1—Friday—Staff Professional Learning—No
School for Students
5/1—Friday—Slice of Pi Fundraiser (Stapleton
Campus), 6-8:30pm
5/4—5/8—Teacher Appreciation Week
5/6—5/7—Wednesday & Thursday—PARCC
Testing (morning)
5/7—Thursday—SPRING CONCERT, 3-5pm
5/16—Saturday—Falcons Without Borders
Multicultural Night, 5-7pm @ DSST: Byers
303.524.6350
[email protected]
FRIDAY, MAY 1ST, 6:00PM
at DSST: Stapleton High School (2000
Valentia St.) Interested in attending the
fundraiser? Please contact Denise Queen
at 303-524-6395.
As a reminder, there is NO school-wide advisory
get together for Trimester 3 since many
advisories are planning special events or parties
to celebrate the upcoming end of the school
year. Please contact your Advisory Parent with
questions about your students end of year get
together.
UNIFORM UPDATE
FOR 2015-2016
For the 2015-16 school year, we’re
going to be adding an additional
color option for uniform pants. In
additional to khaki dress pants,
students will also be allowed to wear
navy dress pants. To the left, you’ll
find a guide for pants that are OK
and will m eet th e un iform
expectations, and styles of pants
that will earn students a Refocus (NO
WAY).
All khaki or navy pants
should be mid calf or longer, and
may NOT be denim material. To
clarify, khakis are the only pant
option for the remainder of the 14-15
school year.
Questions regarding the new uniform
bottoms? Please contact Mr. Boyd.
RESPECT . RESPONSIBILITY . COURAGE . CURIOSITY . INTEGRITY . DOING YOUR BEST
A Note from Mr. Lang
SPRING CONCERT
Thursday, May 7th
DSST: Byers Gymatorium
3:00—5:00pm
The vision and mission of music at Byers is first and foremost to further the vision
and mission of DSST. DSST exists to create college bound, values driven students,
and helps students realize their full potential. Music at Byers aids toward this end
in extraordinary ways. In addition to providing a strong creative outlet for our
students in our highly structured middle school environment, music helps foster
the kind of well rounded, liberal arts educated people that STEM seeks to provide.
Mike Lang, Music
STEM education at its heart seeks to provide students with the ability to apply high
quality critical and creative solutions to thinking and problem solving in our world. In our study of music at Byers
our students are constantly critically and creatively thinking to analyze, sing, improvise, and solve music
questions and problems. This creative outlet helps foster the love for a creative and critical approach to art,
music, and life. Music at Byers will also open a myriad of scholarship opportunities and doors to universities
and colleges for our students that their non-music-taking counterparts might not otherwise have available to
them.
At its core, music is a performance art and a performance is central, in many ways, to every music class. It is
here that students get an opportunity to showcase their creativity and performance skills that are so highly
transferable to the rest of their adult/career lives. There are days when we just aren’t “feeling it” or frankly have
had a terrible day/week/month/season of life. Yet to remain a professional and still accomplish what we are
responsible for (work, marriage, parenting, family, etc.) we depend on our ability to adapt, improvise and act
when needed. These are the skills we seek to demonstrate and eventually master throughout our tenure of
music at DSST: Byers.
Come ready to see, perhaps through tear filled eyes, the age old wonder that is live music performance. Each
homeroom will sing their own song and a demonstration of each grade level music conceptual mastery will
follow the performance. 6th graders will demonstrate their ability to read, understand, analyze, and sight music
for the first time. A select group of 7th graders from each class will give you a crash course and demonstration
in keyboarding and improvisation skills.
In an effort to keep a high bar of musical excellence in our concerts, we wanted to make you aware of the
criteria that is required to perform in our concert. Please bear in mind that every student is fully capable of
meeting these criteria and we encourage you to discuss this with your student at home. If, at any point, it is
determined that a particular student is not meeting this criteria he/she will lose the immense privilege of
performing at the annual spring concert.
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A consistent and proven track record of performing in a supportive way during song rehearsal in class
Physical movements, hand gestures, and facial expressions that are engaging and supportive of the
overall performance
Demonstration of a solid memorization of the lyrics of the song being sung
Regular participant in class, or has shown that he/she is fully capable of being an engaging and
supportive performer
Demonstration of commitment to the class and to the art throughout the year.
As a final note this is a PA (performance assessment) for all students who are in music class and has the same
weight as a summative test for the course.
RESPECT . RESPONSIBILITY . COURAGE . CURIOSITY . INTEGRITY . DOING YOUR BEST