We are now looking for sponsors for the 2021/22 school year! The deadline to get your business logo on the school banner is October 8th. Please email us at ptc@truckeecharterschool.org for more information.

Co-Chair - Heather Fairbairn

Co-Chair - Tiffany Connolly

Treasurer - Stacey Tsuda

Secretary - Saira West

Board Liaison - Danielle Gallagher

Our first meeting of the year was a great success. We met new families and discussed our upcoming plans for the year. The minutes from that meeting can be found here.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 13 at 5:30 PM (location TBD). Please stay tuned and check your email for location and Zoom link.

Together We Are Crew, Not Passengers

-The SELS PTC

The Bell Crew has had a wonderful start to the kindergarten year! These youngsters are full of energy, enthusiasm, and wonderful ideas. We have spent the first weeks getting to know one another and becoming accustomed to the routines and expectations of kindergarten. The children have spent time exploring various materials and math manipulatives, all while learning to share and work cooperatively.

The kindergartners illustrated their first big book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? We are using their homemade book to practice rhyming and learn beginning reading skills. The students are learning to “read” books by telling about the pictures and recalling familiar stories. They have become skilled at several foundational protocols: Read to Self, Read to Partner, I Notice/I Wonder, and Back-to-Back/Face-to-Face. All of these will prove useful as we progress through our expeditions.

Most of all, we love seeing them caring for each other and establishing a sense of CREW.

The Seaborg Crew is off and running in their expedition, "I’ve Been Working on the Railroad." In this expedition, students will not only learn the story behind the creation of the transcontinental railroad, but will also hear the personal stories of those involved.

We kicked off the expedition at the Truckee Regional Park, where they rode the mini train while rotating through stations that highlighted different aspects of the railroad.

The excitement of the beginning of the school year cannot be contained in the Welch Crew. Students are very excited to be back on campus all day with their friends. Learning in class is just a bonus.

We have jumped into the collection of data for a math exercise to learn about our crew mates. You will find us writing good survey questions, collecting data from students, sorting the results, and graphing our findings.

Students have worked hard to learn about our favorite books, ice-cream flavors, pizza toppings, etc. We already have learned so much about our new crew, and we look forward to continuing the learning process.

Eureka! The Search for Gold! Students in the Akers Crew went on their first Field Work Friday, where they played a simulation of the "three routes" game on the way to the park, where teams gathered or lost gold chips depending on the action of their card. Then, the time came when we made it to the gold fields and the search was on! The Gold Discovery was so much fun!

We also did a protocol called Give One, Take One where students learned about a new Gold Rush vocabulary word and then shared it with another person. They then switched cards and shared it with someone else. This was a great way to gain new knowledge of the Gold Rush. We then played Alibi with, “Where were you on the night the gold was stolen?” and topped it off with playground time and lunch before we came back to school.

The Brisbin crew walked in the footsteps of migrators hoping to strike it rich with the discovery of gold out west in the mid-1800s. Students are studying the three routes that prospectors took to get to the foothills of the American River. The final project for this case study will be to create a map of the three routes. Everyone is excited to participate in outdoor learning again as a crew!

How are a surprise disc golf course fieldwork and entering 6th grade at SELS alike? Both are full of challenges that will require individual demonstration of SIERRA norms and support from peers and teachers. Worster crew members went on a surprise visit to the Sierra College disc golf course. They were asked to grapple with learning the new-to-most skill of throwing a Frisbee, working in partners taking turns every other throw, and meeting the pace of the group to keep the crew moving through the course.

It was a fantastic metaphor for the challenges 6th graders will face in the Worster crew. Students journaled and shared out some profound connections and highlighted fellow crew members who pushed themselves to overcome the challenges of the day.

The Santos Crew is happy to be back together for the start of a new school year. We have been learning to work together in math with some fun games. The students have also been learning how to navigate by using a compass and create their own maps, much like the cartographers throughout history. Making accurate maps isn't as easy as it looks. For our first fieldwork of the year, we got a feel for what it was like to sail on a boat and how the wind pulls the sails to arrive at the desired destination. Thank you to Tahoe Sailing Charters for the educational experience!

While the smoke and fires have been a bummer, we came up with a way to help. Our crew is organizing and leading a Seed Collection Project with the participation of the entire school. They collaborated on a flyer to help teach others how to identify trees and taught other crews how to find and collect the seeds. Let's see which crew can find the most seeds!

8th-grade is off and running...or I should say biking and paddling? We kicked off our science expedition, "Planet Earth," with a geology bike tour along the Legacy Trail, from the downtown end all the way to the dreaded Glenshire hill. We sifted soils and examined evidence of fault lines, volcanic remnants, and glacial activity.

In Language Arts, students are presenting book talks on characters that demonstrate strength, producing personal narratives, and publishing photo essays.

Eighth-grade math class has been exploring math connections to chess and delving into mathematical inquiry. We paddled Lake Tahoe as our adventure day, challenged by our facilitators with yoga poses, headstands, and donuts, which was filled with laughter and play. What a beautiful beginning!