Attention Citizens of Gobles!

Do you have yard work that needs to be done this spring, but are unable to get out of the house to complete it? Do you know someone that would appreciate a helping hand with their yard work?

On April 29th, Gobles Middle High School students will be participating in the 3rd annual community and school wide Service Learning Day event. Students 6-12 will be available to assist anyone with outdoor activities and/or projects such as: weeding, planting, cleaning, pruning and other spring cleaning projects.  Anyone who is interested in having students volunteer at their home or residence should contact the school and leave a message with Veronica Peterson at 269-628-2113 ex1505. Your message should include your name, a phone number where you can be contacted at, and your address. Your message will be returned with a follow-up call to confirm at the beginning of April.

This summer all of Gobles is invited to participate in a community-wide reading event that will get students and their families on the same page for rich discussions about a variety of topics, from the challenges and responsibilities of citizenship, to poverty, opportunity, respect for others, the impact of sports on teenagers, and the ways in which people who are different learn to live together as neighbors.  

For the first time any and all who live in Gobles are invited to take part in reading a book together and discussing the book and the lessons it contains. The book will be distributed in late May and early June, and then in August the English teachers of Gobles MS/HS will host a series of discussions and activities, plus host a community potluck and picnic on August 27.

The book Outcasts United: The Story of a Refugee Soccer Team that Changed a Town, by Warren St. John, tells the true and ongoing story of a small town in Georgia that was transformed when it became a center for the relocation of refugees from around the world. Families from communities all over the world were placed in Clarkston, Georgia, by the United Nations to escape from violence and persecution, and suddenly found themselves living in the United States in a community with other refugees, many of whom did not speak the same language, or share culture, history, or country of origin.

Luckily, a spirited young woman and former college soccer player came upon teenagers kicking the ball around one day in Clarkston, and from the population of refugees formed a soccer team that would help the kids and the entire community begin to think differently about the places they all now called home.  
 
Though there is an edition of the book written for adult readers, we will be reading the youth edition, which is written for middle school level readers.

Community members will be able to donate their copies of the book to the school library to be added as a classroom set for use in English classes by future students.

Community-wide reading events have been taking place in larger communities across the country for several years, and Outcasts United has been used several times, including in San Diego, California. In an email to Gobles teacher Corey Harbaugh, author Warren St. John indicated he was "thrilled, and very humbled" to learn that Gobles had selected his book for a community-wide read along. He offered to help our school and community get the most out of his book with successful activities that have been held in other communities.

In recent years English teachers at Gobles Middle/High School have stressed summer reading, even assigning books to be read by students during the summer to be finished by the start of the school year. Students who read during the summer have been found to start each school year more than half a grade level ahead of non-reading students, on average, and for some individual students who do not read, the impact is even more drastic: they can see their reading skills fall by as much as an entire grade level.

Teachers are hoping this year that the entire family will get in on the summer reading, doing what smart communities and successful students do all over the country: read together, talk about it, learn, and celebrate learning all year long.

Please contact or stop by the district or high school office to pick up a flyer and order form. Contact event planner, Gobles English teacher Corey Harbaugh (628-2113, ext. 1708; or charbaugh@gobles.org) for more information, or if you have any questions about this program.

You can download the flyer by clicking here.

The future took center stage today at Gobles Middle/High School, as Michigan Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley joined school leaders, Representative Aric Nesbitt, and Senator John Proos to announce the establishment of a special program in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education, STEM for short, that promises to change the way students prepare for the future at Gobles Public Schools.

STEM programming in Gobles will focus on the biomedical sciences, an area where Gobles is already an established leader. Biology students in Gobles Middle School participate in hands-on science through a long-standing partnership with the Michigan State University Kellogg Biological Station, and students in Gobles High School are able to take advanced and AP classes in biology, participate in Biology Club activities, and even travel to the Bahamas to do field research on tropical ecology on coral reefs.

Lt. Governor Calley told Gobles students and administrators he was impressed with the vision the district has for STEM programming. According to Calley, STEM middle and high school students are the individuals our state will look to invent and discover and create a prosperous future for all of Michigan.

“I am excited about the scientific inquiry process that is being used and developed here,” Calley said. “STEM is going to open up doors for all of us, and this program is going to open a lot of doors for students in Gobles Public Schools.”

According to Principal Phil McAndrew, the assembly to kick off the STEM program in Gobles was a great opportunity to show the public about the past and present of biomedical programming in Gobles, and that the future is going to be very exciting as well.

“STEM is the way education needs to go, because it’s the way the world is going,” McAndrew said. “At Gobles we are always working to be at the leading edge of instruction, and we are now partnered with The State of Michigan and corporate partners to be at the leading edge of innovation in STEM, all to better prepare our kids to be the ones to solve the problems of the future that don’t even exist yet.”

The Gobles middle and high school cross-country teams hosted their first event of the season Saturday, August 24, with teams from ten schools competing in traditional races, plus an extra event called "The Spartan Relays" which included an obstacle course and a twenty-yard crawl through mud.

Pictured here senior Micaiah Grossmann and sixth-grader Justin Chilla show off their post-race form. It was a great event to kick off the athletic season at Gobles High School.

Be sure to watch the "Calendars" section of the website for schedules, and look here and in the Van Buren County Advertiser for highlights of all Gobles teams; contact the athletic office to pick up your all-sports pass today at 628-2113.

Go Tigers!

A face familiar to Gobles middle and high school students can be seen as part of the special features included on the edition of Schindler's List released in March to mark the 20th Anniversary of the historic, Academy-Award winning film for Best Picture. Gobles English teacher Corey Harbaugh was one of a small number of teachers from across the country included in interviews about the importance of Holocaust education.

Harbaugh was interviewed in Los Angeles last summer about Holocaust education by The Shoah Foundation, the organization created by director Steven Spielberg when Schindler's List came out in 1993. A short clip from that interview was used as part of the special features of the disc in which Harbaugh talks about the importance of showing students testimony of actual Holocaust survivors.

Harbaugh teaches about the Holocaust as part of the English class offered to seniors at Gobles High School. He is also Co-Director of the Holocaust Educator Network of Michigan, and runs a seminar for teachers from across Michigan each summer. This summer the seminar will take place in early July at the Holocaust Memorial Center of Farmington Hills, and teachers Jim Wiseley, Veronica Peterson, and Loriann Harbaugh are participating.