The Penn Boys Basketball Team defeated Elkhart Central 52-51 in the opening round of the Boys Basketball Sectional at Elkhart’s historic Northside Gym on Wednesday, March 4, 2020.

A Photo Gallery is posted below.

P-H-M is excited to offer Naviance to students in grades 6-12. Naviance is a college, career and life readiness web-based platform that helps identify and align students' individual strengths and interests to post-secondary goals, including college and careers. Naviance was built for students to learn about who they are as learners, what their interests and strengths are, and then tie their personal interests and strengths to potential career pathways and colleges.

Starting in the Spring 2020 semester, students in 6th-12th grades will be doing two to four learning activities through the Naviance platform as part of Phase I of our Naviance launch.

During the 2019-2020 school year specifically, in middle school, students will engage in Naviance during social studies, and high schoolers will engage in Naviance during English for 11th & 12th graders, science for 10th graders, and PCC for 9th graders.

Students will have access to Naviance using their Clever credentials, and parents can have access to their student's account using their child's Clever credentials as well.

Please click here to access the presentation used at a parent informational meeting on March 2, 2020 for additional information.

We are pleased to offer this robust tool to continue to support your student to reach his or her potential and set them on a path toward success!

The message below was sent out to all P-H-M staff and families the afternoon of March 3, 2020.

Dear P-H-M Families,

The health, safety and well-being of Penn-Harris-Madison students and staff are our top priorities. With the ongoing elevated discussion regarding the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the world news, we are reaching out to remind everyone in the P-H-M family about the preventive safety measures we can all take, as well as to inform you what we at P-H-M are doing.

As a school district, we are closely monitoring the situation via the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website. The CDC is providing local expert and community guidance through the St. Joseph County Department of Health and the Indiana Department of Health. We are also receiving information from the U.S. Department of Education and the Indiana Department of Education, as well as a host of other state and national professional organizations. The one good thing about this situation is that there is an abundance of expert guidance. We are following the advice and direction of the governmental entities in charge. As a district, we are focusing on the things within our control.

All of the health officials are uniformly reiterating that the best preventive measure that each and every one of us can do is practice good hand hygiene. The same precautions that we annually remind our students, at all grade levels, during the cold and flu season are the exact same practices that the CDC is recommending to help prevent the spread of COVID-19:
 

1. Clean hands. Washing your hands often will help protect you from germs. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
2. Cover your mouth and nose. Remind your students to cover their mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing. The best thing to do is to cough/sneeze into your elbow. Second best is to cover the mouth and nose area with a tissue and then throw the tissue away.
3. Avoid touching your eyes, nose or mouth. Germs are often spread when a person touches something that is contaminated with germs and then touches his or her eyes, nose, or mouth.
4. Avoid close contact with people who are sick. When you are sick, keep your distance from others to protect them from getting sick too.

P-H-M’s janitorial staff already cleans common areas and disinfects common touch surfaces regularly. We ramp up these efforts during the cold and flu season. Under the current circumstances and in an abundance of precaution, P-H-M is taking extra steps to increase our normal diligent disinfectant measures.

As stated in all P-H-M Student Handbooks if students are sick please keep them home. Students should not return to school until they are fever and symptom free for 24 hours. We are constantly reminding families to practice this ongoing safety practice year round.

As it pertains to concerns over COVID-19 symptoms, the CDC has very specific recommendations if the symptoms coincide with recent travel to specific countries on their watch lists.

This situation continues to evolve. P-H-M Administrators are staying abreast of the information, as we have since the beginning. If the need should arise to change or defer from our normal operations, rest assured we will communicate with our families and staff immediately.

Thank you for your ongoing support,

Dr. Jerry Thacker

Superintendent of Schools

Penn played Marian in Boys Basketball action on Friday, Feb. 21, 2020. The Kingsmen suffered a 63-54 loss. 

A Photo Gallery is posted below.

Penn High School Principal Sean Galiher announced that 11 Penn students have been named National Merit Scholarship Finalists.

Richard Chapple, Abbie Clay, Rajeev Datta, Andrew Kaboski, Noah Lang, Lyvia Li, Yewon Oh, David Simonetti, Seunghoon Sun, Karen Wang and Peter Wang have earned Finalist status in the National Merit Scholarship competition. 

“We are extremely proud of these students and their accomplishments,” Galiher said. “This recognition is a culmination of the great efforts of these students, including all the wonderful teachers they have had while attending P-H-M schools.  These students represent our vision of excellence and have bright futures."

According to the National Merit Scholarship Corportation, these academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million that will be offered. About half of the Finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar® title.

Three P-H-M teams (two from Penn High School and one from Discovery Middle School) took the top awards at the annual Tests of Engineering Aptitude, Mathematics and Science (TEAMS) competition at Trine University (2/18/20). The event, which included 200 students on 25 middle and high school teams, is a qualifier for the TEAMS national competition June 27 to July 1 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Penn’s “B” Team was the champion in Division I, taking the John J. McKetta Outstanding Junior Engineering Team Award. Team members were Jayden Bell, Oliver Hu, Evan Li, Allison Nguyen, Sharon Ni, Neda Stancheva, Aidan Sweeney and Grace Waddell.

The  “D” Team won Division II and the Mike McKetta Outstanding Junior Engineering Team Award. Team members included Alexander Du, Salem Fitwi, Art Haines, Jed Kim, Luca Nijim, J.R. Roach, Anitej Waghray and Matthew Zhang.

Both Teams were coached by Adam Beck.

The Penn Girls Basketball Team suffered a 56-46 loss to No. 1-ranked Northwestern in the Class 4-A Semi-state on Saturday, Feb. 22, 2020.

A Photo Gallery is posted below.

How do you take away younger students’ worries? With a worry monster of course! Bittersweet Kindergarten teacher Ms. Jenni McCarthy has been reading Rosie Greening’s book “The Very Hungry Worry Monsters” to her class.

The book is full of fun illustrations featuring friendly monsters that eat worries and make them disappear! Ms. McCarthy had all her students create their very own unique worry monster out of paper cutouts, and then she secretly worked with Penn Fashion/Textiles Teacher Mrs. Amy Rice to have her Penn students to create stuffed animals out of the kindergarteners’ designs.

The result? Each kindergartner got his or her very own personal worry monster! Ms. Rice brought her high school students over to Bittersweet this afternoon to take part in the elaborate surprise party that Ms. McCarthy planned for her students.  See for yourself …

Ms. McCarthy also had a parent helping her with all the planning; Mrs. Chrissy Harper (wife of Penn Head Wrestling Coach Brad Harper) also read the story again to the class while the kindergarten and high school students paired up to take group shots in front of an especially designed worry monster backdrop. It was a very rewarding project for everyone involved! 

Check out the full photo gallery below. To download high resolution jpg files from the photo gallery below, just simply click the “DOWNLOAD” button on the bottom right-hand corner of the photo while viewing it in the Photo Gallery function. We are happy to provide this service to you, free of charge!

Penn-Harris-Madison is pleased to introduce Naviance Student as a comprehensive website that you and your middle or high school student can use to make post-secondary plans. Naviance Student allows your student to engage in a variety of activities, such as:

• Getting involved in the planning and advising process – Build a resume, complete online surveys, and manage timelines and deadlines for making decisions about post-secondary options and careers
• Researching colleges – Review statistics regarding students who have been admitted in the past
• Researching careers – Research hundreds of careers and career clusters, and take career assessments
• Creating plans for the future – Create four-year plans, goals and to-dos, and complete tasks assigned by the school to better prepare your student for future post-secondary and career goals.

To help parents answer questions about this new tool, we will be holding a information night for middle and high school parents:

Naviance Parent Info Night (middle & high school parents)

Monday, March 2

6:00 p.m.

Penn High School, LGI-B

*Enter Door A or B

You can get started by clicking here to watch a demo of “The Student Journey in Naviance.” 

Naviance Student also lets us share information with you and your student about upcoming meetings and events, local scholarship opportunities, and other resources for post-secondary information. We will systematically introduce Naviance to your student so your child can begin engaging in a variety of  activities. 

Additionally, over the course of the spring semester, your student will have the opportunity to complete different activities in Naviance, so please talk with your student about what your child is completing and learning about themselves in preparation for college and career readiness.

*To visit our school’s Naviance Student site, you will login via Clever with your student. You will need to use your student’s Clever credentials to login.

The Penn Girls Basketball Team defeated LaPorte, 59-34, to win the LaPorte Regional Championship on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020.

A Photo Gallery is posted below.