This year at FRCHS we will be continuing of the tradition of taking Selfies with Our Elfie. His name is Ramsey, and RenCrew has been hiding him around the building. Our students and staff are encouraged to take pictures with the elf and post them to Twitter for Class Spirit Points.

Each year, our Photography class participates in the Take it Outside Nature and Wildlife Photo Contest sponsored by the Nature & Land Conservancy. Teacher Brandon Reaume was pleased to announce that one of last year’s contest winners, a piece entitled Whispers in the Wind by FRCHS ’16 grad Kassidy Wilson, was featured in this year’s contest poster. 

The FRCHS Auditorium played host to the 26^th Annual Band-O-Rama featuring the Simpson Middle School bands as well as our high school students marking the official end to the marching band season. As always, the program featured program standards (i.e. Hey Baby) as well as a medley of Elvis Presley tunes from this season’s show. The show was another hit played to a packed house. Congratulations to our new Drum Majors for the 2017-18 school year; Jarek Doros & Aubrie McCleery. Thank you to our outgoing Senior Drum Majors; Corbin Boettcher & Madison McQuiston.

The 2^nd Annual RenCrew Thanksgiving Turkey Hunt took place on Tuesday, November 22. Teachers hid feathers, hats, beaks, eyes, etc… in their classrooms so that between classes students could get in the holiday mood by building a turkey for the class spirit point championships. A big thank you to FRCHS Senior Ed Stock, the Welding Class and Woodshop for making awesome reusable turkeys out of sheet metal (the plasma cutting table is amazing!) & painted brown (Mr. Masserant led the paint project). Seniors were victorious and currently lead the overall competition for the year, but the Freshmen are close behind! 

This year, in response to student requests, we expanded the existing chorus program at Simpson to create a gLee class here at FRCHS. They held their first performance on Wednesday. The performance featured songs and scenes from a variety of musical favorites such as Grease, Phantom of the Opera, Rent & others. Instructor Chelsea Hutchins has even more planned for the Spring performance with the inclusion of new show tunes as well as contemporary pop. Great job gLee!

The annual Writing Marathon took place on Tuesday, November 15^th. A group of highly motivated and creative writers gathered in the FRCHS Auditorium under the guidance of teacher Amanda Alverson. The students spent the day immersed in the writing process and then ended the day with an open mic to share their work with an audience. This is a much anticipated event each year and has produced some amazing work while helping support a love of writing.

The 2^nd Annual FRCHS Dodgeball Tournament was an overwhelming success last Wednesday night. The students had a wonderful time and hope to challenge the teachers to a showdown later in the year. Winners this year were the Primadonnas. 

On Wednesday, I was invited along with a small group of students to attend a session of oral arguments before the Michigan Supreme Court. As part of their Community Connections Program, the Court travelled to River Rouge High School for this session. The FRCHS students met with an attorney mentor, Dawn Blanton (a former Flat Rock student), to discuss court procedures and the case to be argued. The students who participated (including my daughter) did a  phenomenal job, researching the case, learning about the law, etc... One student, senior Haylee Molnar, went so far as to ask questions during public comment and Chief Justice Young even sought out our students' opinions on the case. Senior Rouan Salim & junior Corey Rice engaged Justice Bernstein in conversation and he was so impressed that the Justice offered to visit our school to see the wonderful things we do at Flat Rock. We are currently working with his staff to co-ordinate a visit.

On Friday we started our Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) Testing. This test is in three parts; math, reading & language. The results will give us baseline data to show how much your children learn each year. With that data we can set growth goals for every child so that we can assist and push each one towards reaching subject mastery. I am very excited to share all the composite data with you all. I know that our teachers and students do an awesome job each year, and now I will have data to show how much they all help each other learn! All 9-11 graders will be testing over the next 3 weeks. Each test takes only about 20-25 minutes on average so it will not be a significant interruption to student learning.

Karen Boonenberg’s CTE Health Science class spent the afternoon at the Kinghaven Assisted Living Breast Cancer Awareness Walk. They all had a wonderful time helping raise awareness while making connections with the community. The residents look forward to our student’s visits and the students enjoy taking a break from their hectic schedules to spend time sharing stories with an energetic group of people young at heart.