**5 days of school this week. Next week too.**
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March Principal Update
Counting: The action of finding the number of elements of a finite set of objects. We spend a great deal of time beginning in 4K educating students on how to count, first by ones, then tens, then fives and twos, both forward and backward. Students quickly become so adept at counting that very early on they are taught how to subitize, which is the ability to know how many items are in a set
without
even counting them. Of course our students don’t need us to count the important things in life, where seemingly not a day goes by that a new locker birthday decoration doesn’t appear in one of our hallways, marking the changing of the number that records the years on earth of a good friend. People in general have been good at counting for a long, long time. There seems to be evidence of counting systems going back 50,000 years, which I guess means that there are people whose work is to count the number of years we have all been counting.
We begin each year counting and counting. We count the days in the week, days in a month, and the days in each quarter and semester, all of which then correlate to the counting of the minutes in the day and the resulting oddity of a daily dismissal time of 2:42pm—we have to make sure our total number of instructional minutes across the school year add up. This time of year in early spring I spend a great deal of time with members of our Hamilton staff in activities that include counting. We count the number of kids matriculating to high school and the number of incoming sixth grade students anticipated to take their place. We count the number of teachers slated to be at Hamilton in the fall, and count the number of sections we will need across each curricular area, unified arts, music, and physical education classes. As we plan for next year, I have been counting the number of seconds a morning bus takes from the time it stops at our curb on Waukesha to drop off students to the time it departs: 20 to 55 seconds for those of you counting along at home. And while we don’t always readily admit to it, we do at times take a moment to count the number of days until Spring Break.
As we move into March, know that there are 15 school days until the end of the third quarter and 61 school days until summer. We count on these days to be productive and meaningful for our students as this is a time of year that academic growth tends to accelerate. We will continue to do our best to meet the needs of each and every one of our students over these remaining days, weeks, and months of the school year—you can count on it.
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Meet Bob Wiedholz
Last week we learned that Bob Wiedholz was awarded a Kohl Teacher Fellowship Award. So who exactly is Bob Wiedholz? Mr. Wiedholz is a sixth grade teacher who has been working here at Hamilton for 30 years. In addition to his love for teaching sixth grade, Mr. Wiedholz also runs after school clubs including Fishing Club, Outdoor Club, and Soccer Club.
Mr. Wiedholz is married to Tracy and has three kids: Kayla (21), Ryan (19) and Ben (17). Kayla is studying Biology at UW and wants to be a high school teacher. Ryan is at Madison College studying electronics, and Ben goes to Oregon High School. The last member of the immediate family is their dog, Tucker. When not at Hamilton, Mr. Wiedholz reports spending most of his freetime outside walking the dog, exercising, hiking, biking, fishing, camping, canoeing, and hunting. Mr. Wiedholz also has a couple of side hustles including a lawn mowing business, being an apartment building manager, and doing handyman work.
Mr. Wiedholz truly enjoys having a classroom full of students who have fun learning and who enjoy each others' company. He has made many lifelong friends over the years, and feels lucky to have been at Hamilton for so many years. He would like to say, "Thank you to all of the wonderful families who send great kids to our school and support teachers in their efforts."
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Call for PTO Board Members
Here at Hamilton, our entire school community benefits from an active PTO with a strong PTO Board. As fate would have it, a majority of our PTO Board members are moving on next year as their children matriculate to high school. As such, we are in need of new board members for our PTO. If you are interested in joining our PTO Board, please join us at our next meeting on Wednesday, March 11, 6pm in our LMC, or
see this link to contact information for members of our current PTO Board
. Thank you!
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