July 15, 2025, 11:13 a.m. – Jeannette Bill Email
Life Skills Day: Can we meet with you to further plan this event? Being the first one, there are alot of decisions to be made…What are the priority classes we want to offer? Class sizes? How many classes are we going to offer for each set of kids (Senior high schoolers and then middle school?)? I have attached a first start at options using what the Phoenix Rotary Club did as a basis.
July 17, 2025, 1:01 p.m. – Holly Johnson Email
Hi all,
We had a great meeting. It was wonderful to have so many visitors. It is amazing to see all the many activities we are involved in. Please see attached for the report write up.
August 9, 2025, 2:17 p.m. – Jeannette Bill Email
Hey, Dave. I’m looking at my notes from the meeting with Heather Isom about the Skills Day. I am trying to remember what we decided…
I know we decided to just do it for 165 middle school and that you would be the lead. We moved the date, right? I wrote down Mar 6 and Feb 27. Did we decide on one or the other?
The Career Day…did we decide to skip it this year?
August 9, 2025, 2:35 p.m. – Dave Potter Email
Hi Jennette. I don’t remember being picked for the lead for skills day, but I can do that if that’s what you want. I think we were going to skip the career day so that we had time to get feedback and digest the learnings from the skills day and then plan to run both in 2026. I certainly don’t want March 6 for skills day as that’s Paula’s birthday, so Feb 27 is the date I want so long as everyone else thinks that’s okay.
Have we conducted a skills day before or anything like it? If so, I’d like to know who was involved so I can pick their brains. Do you think that’s in Clubrunner somewhere?
August 9, 2025, 3:01 p.m. – Jeannette Bill Email
Dave If you have the will to lead on this project, we will stand with you and make it happen! You certainly had great ideas…such as doing it for a smaller group this year…a test group, so to speak. And February 27 sounds fine to me. Especially if we don’t do the Career Day.
A group of us heard about a Skills Day that was held in Phoenix when we were at district conference. We were modeling this one after the Phoenix one that was held on a weekend in a park. We are fortunate that our school is willing to let us hold it during school hours, on campus.
Here is the web site for it; https://www.rotary100.org/lifeskills/
The person who presented and organized it was Angela Lopez:
August 11, 2025, 10:02 a.m. – Jeannette Bill Email
Good morning. Tomorrow is our monthly Youth Services Team Meeting…8AM at my house (20 Coburn Court). Please find an agenda and minutes from the last meeting attached. We’ll want to be sure that we are prepared for the youth oriented program that we are presenting on Thursday, August. 21.
August 12, 2025, 1:46 p.m. – Jeannette Bill Email
Hello, Angela. Fellow AG Jennette, here.
We were so taken with the presentation you did at district conference about your Life Sills Day that you did with Phoenix 100, that we are in the process of planning an in-school one here in Sedona. This year, we will be starting with just the middle school students, expanding next year to the high school.
We can see your web site and the classes you offered. A question…what would you say are the top 5 lessons that you learned or would do differently? Are you offering the day of activities again this year?
August 16, 2025, 11:45 a.m. – Jeannette Bill Email
FYI…got this in a zoom Youth zoom meeting this morning.
August 17, 2025, 6:21 p.m. – Angela Lopez Email
Hi Jeanette and company,
I’m excited to hear you’re going to do an in-school Life Skills day!
Phoenix 100 is doing one this year on Saturday 15 November and Mesa West is doing one out by them on 1 November. You’re all welcome at either to get a sense of the day!
I think doing this event at a school is already eliminating our biggest challenge which is getting kids to show up at a park on a Saturday. I think doing it at a middle school is eliminating another challenge we have which is modifying schedules and class content for different ages.
A lesson I learned from being a teacher: if you can do something in 15 minutes, they’ll (hopefully) be able to do it in an hour. Particularly important for super hands-on classes like making pasta and sewing. I’m not sure I have lessons that would pertain to you doing this in a school but I’d have a lot of questions which I’ll write here if it helps you coordinate with the school:
- How many kids will be participating? If they are shutting down the school for a field day-sort of event then you’d have the whole school. Or, is this just a reward for some?
- If it’s for the whole school will you be outside in a field, or in a gym or are you able to use classrooms?
- Sometimes there are shortened days where teachers stay longer for professional development. That might be a good day if the whole school was going to participate.
- There are 150 students at Sedona Red Rocks Jr. High if the internet is to be believed which I think is a really great number. They are also 55% Latino. I would ask if there are any students that don’t speak English. When you create your schedule you might take language into consideration.
- I’d also ask if the teachers will be there to assist and if any speak Spanish then they could be a great help.
- I’d also ask if the teachers will be there to assist and if any speak Spanish then they could be a great help.
- We try and keep class sizes to 10 people but I would argue a super involved class like sewing, where each student is possibly going to need assistance threading a needle, 5 would be better. Unless, you have helpers. 20 people can be in pasta making if you have 1 facilitators and 3 helpers.
At the Phoenix 100 Life Skills Picnic, we offered 19 classes and we had 120 participants. Each participant chose the classes they wanted to take.
Knowing the size of your school, and if you wanted to do this once a year. I would even think it’d be interesting to say:
- 3 classes for 6th grade: Sewing, Gratitude (and letter writing), First Aid
- 3 classes for 7th grade: Nutrition, Table Etiquette, Conflict Resolution
- 3 classes for 8th grade: Pasta making, Time management, Fitness
If I were teaching Sewing, I’d still deliver the content 3x in one day, each time for 1 hour. I’d see all the 6th graders that way as they rotated and took each class. This would greatly reduce the pain of scheduling. And if you did this next year you could be sure you weren’t repeating content.
But giving them a choice is nice if you’re willing to solve the scheduling puzzle!
August 18, 2:28 p.m. – Paul Bowles Email
Jennette & David (Angela removed from CC) – Let’s see what input we get from Heather on Thursday. I have some questions for Angela (they taught sewing and pasta making in a park?!?), but they can wait until we get a little further along. Sometime in September would be fine.
When we are together with Heather, in addition to course content/topics, I suggest that we discuss the facility for each of the planned classes, as this could impact the content and/or way each is delivered. For example, are we thinking classrooms with projectors? Should speakers prepare presentations?
Anyhow, this is just some food for thought.
At a high level, I’d suggest an agenda (mental… not formalized) of:
1. How did the school year start for Heather? How did she solve the teacher shortages she was facing?
2. Have her talk about what she did to get student input and what came of these efforts.
3. Based on what she has seen so far (from our discussions and what came of #2 above), Is Heather forming some opinions or desires on how this event ought to take shape? Is there anything materially different from what we discussed previously?
4. Discussion about whether a prescriptive agenda by grade makes sense, or whether we should have a ‘menu’ and students indicate their top 5 choices (of which they will get 3).
5. Narrow down the list, as appropriate, to classes that we can then go about getting people to come and teach. This will be our homework.
September 7, 2025, 1:15 p.m. – Paul Bowles Email
Jennette, Dave, Brad,
Attached is the Pareto of the Jr. High student responses to the skills day interest survey from a couple weeks ago. Highlighted in green are the top 16.
Any thoughts on this data so far? There seem to be a few themes, which is fine. I do wonder how we would go about delivering some of the desired content (e.g. how to start a podcast), as well as the right way to present some topics to a young audience (e.g. how to invest in the stock market).
Good progress so far!