Welcome to Raven's Call, your digital newsletter to keep you up to date on all things Raven. This quarterly newsletter via SMORE will have an overview of highlights from each of our 6 Raven offices. Within this electronic version​ of our newsletter,​ you have easy access to your local office news and resources by clicking on links within each section.

​We are looking forward to another successful year and hope you will share​ pictures of your learning adventures with your local offices to be included throughout the year.

If you have questions, please contact Maegan, mmascagno@yksd.com.

- Raven Homeschool

Dear Raven Families,

With the holiday season upon us, it is my hope that your home will be filled with family traditions, cherished memories, excitement and love for your family and friends.

The holiday season is a time of joy, reflection, and gratitude. No matter what you face this time of the year, please know that you have the ability to share your thanks, joy, and love with others. It is wonderful to see homeschooling families supporting and lifting each other up throughout the year. Whether it’s been through volunteering, participating in Raven events, or simply offering a kind word, your contributions have made a significant impact on your students’ lives and their education.

I want to wish our Raven Family, students, parents, and staff a wondrous holiday season. Each of you are part of our collective family and the reason we continue to push for innovation and excellence each day.

I know that many of the students and families that I have chatted with over the last couple of weeks have been wishing for more snow for their winter learning activities. Snowflakes are each different from the other as is each member of our family and our collective Raven families. This individuality is what makes homeschooling so unique. Please be sure to share some of the unique learning adventures you have been doing with your advisory teachers. Just as we celebrate this holiday season we would like to celebrate your children’s successes with you.

There is much to look forward to in the new year as we begin planning for the next school year. We would greatly appreciate your input as we will begin our planning at the Raven Parent Advisory Council meeting on January 29th. We look forward to lots of participation in this conversation as it impacts each and every one of us.

I wish you all a very happy holiday season. Enjoy this time with your loved ones, and let’s look forward to a bright and successful 2025.

With gratitude,

Kim Bergey

Raven Homeschool Director

Alaska Performance Scholarship - it’s not just for college bound students!

In June of 2024, Alaska State Legislature made significant changes to qualify for the Alaska Performance Scholarship (APS) requirements. These changes will allow more students to take advantage of this scholarship. The legislature also increased the amount awarded based on students' GPA or Test Scores. In the coming month, a newsletter will be sent to all 9-12th grade students with general information about the scholarship. In addition, the counseling team will reach out to 11th graders individually to review ways they may qualify for the scholarship.

Alaska Advantage Deadlines:

Students who are interested in or planning to take college classes through the AK Advantage program (UAF and UAS) should be aware that spring class enrollment is open. Students should enroll in their spring classes before the holidays. All paperwork must be submitted to your Raven office before Friday, January 10th, for YKSD to pay the university directly.

FAFSA Update:

The Department of Education opened the FAFSA on December 1st. If you have not filed your FAFSA yet, please do so as soon as it’s available. Get started by creating studentaid.gov accounts now.

Why is it important for families to file the FAFSA as soon as possible? Doing so will help ensure students’ financial aid offers are based on accurate information.

Documents you need when completing your FAFSA

• Your Social Security number
• Your parents’ Social Security numbers
• Your driver’s license number, if you have one
• Federal tax information, tax documents, or tax returns, including IRS W-2 information, for you and your parents

• IRS Form1040

PLEASE CALL YOUR COUNSELOR WITH QUESTIONS!

Brendon Conway | Anchorage, Eagle River, Wasilla | bconway@yksd.com | 907.644.8590

Ryan Tilbury | Delta, Fairbanks, Juneau | rtilbury@yksd.com | 907.374.9432

Megan Rosendall | Graduation Coach | mrosendall@yksd.com | 907.622.6631

My name is Brendon Conway and I am a school counselor for Raven. My primary support will be to assist students and families in the Anchorage, Eagle River and Wasilla offices. My passion is supporting students' social emotional and career development goals. Prior to working for Raven, I was a school counselor and business education teacher at Kodiak High School for five years. I have a master's degree in education and in communications, along with a bachelor's degree in business management. My work experience includes being in the Air Force for six years. My wife is also an educator and we have a three year old son.

I look forward to working with you in this great program. If you have any questions, please reach out to me!

The Anchorage office has been enjoying the festive season! From parties to field trips, to a plethora of workshops, there is never a dull moment.

Halloween Party: We had an incredible turnout for our Halloween party this year. We played games, trick-or-treated with neighboring offices, and had a costume fashion show for our students. This was also the first year that we had enough staff to make two teams to compete in a staff costume contest. The Rocking Raven Roller Coaster won by a landslide!

Christmas Season Celebrations: Our office has been getting ready for the winter holidays in a variety of ways. We had families come in and decorate office doors and vote for their top three favorites. We are hosting a craft surprise workshop where students can make presents for family members in secret and have a placemat workshop coming up where the placemats will be delivered to local fire stations for their holiday meal. We are all buzzing, getting ready for our annual holiday party at the Bear Tooth, where we will eat delicious local pizza and watch Elf along with the Eagle River office! We will wrap up the semester with an in-office cookie decorating workshop with Northern Wings Café.

First Lego League: And this year, we have not one, but three Raven teams ready to compete! This year's theme-Submerged. Many of our students also competed with other teams around the Anchorage area. One of our teams has already competed at the Anchorage Qualifier, where four teams will qualify to go onto State Championships. Our other two teams will be competing in January at the Anchorage Qualifier Two. We are so proud of Terri, Savannah, and our participating families. Best of luck to all our Raven FLL students on all teams!

Workshops and Clubs: Students in the quilting club have completed or are near completing their projects. The annual Spelling Bee kicks off this week. The D&D club has been having a blast on their adventure, and auditions for Drama Club were a huge success! We have one of the largest Drama Clubs this year, and the students are busy working on ten new plays. Students have been busy creating lovely pieces of art with Beading Club and Art Club. Our regular writing, Spanish, technology and handwriting workshops have also been in full swing! In science with Ms. Fancher, students exploded pumpkins, explored with microscopes, and are getting ready to learn about DNA.

Field Trips: We are so thankful for our family liaison, Savannah, and all the new field trips she has been bringing to our office. In October, our students learned outdoor survival skills at the Campbell Creek Science Center. November’s field trip took our students to the Performing Arts Center to see Alaska Junior Theatre’s production of 360 All Stars. And for our most recent field trip opportunity for older students, Broadway Alaska gave discounted tickets to our students to attend Mean Girls.

We’ve also welcomed our new counselor, Brendon, and our new advisory teacher, Katie, to our Raven family! Our office is cheerfully growing and always ready to support our families. We look forward to spending time getting to know you at some of these exciting events. Our next semester’s workshops have been selected, and the more participants we have, the more we can continue to offer! Give us a call to see how you can be a part of all the fun! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year from everyone here in the Anchorage Office!

Congratulations to The Kidz! They did an amazing job at the FLL qualifiers! Words can’t express how proud I am of them! They faced some technical difficulties, like the robot dying right before the second round. However, these kids handled it with such grace and joy! They won Best Innovative Project and will be going to the state competition!

A special shout-out to Terri for being an outstanding coach and leading the team to the State!

This team was even highlighted on the local news! Watch the videos below!

Students and families have settled into school. We had plenty of activities to keep us busy. We had a field trip to the Ft Greely Fire station learning how to get out of a house that is on fire, how to work a fire extinguisher and exploring the fire trucks. Art Club, Game Day and Lego club have been meeting weekly. Game Day takes a break one week a month for students and families to go bowling together. Vision and Hearing screenings were offered. Everyone enjoyed browsing the books and incentives at the Scholastic Book Fair. There were lots of good reads to choose from. Mr. Dean Lambert visited and showed us pictures and videos of the animals that visit his trail cameras including a bear that tried to eat a camera! Thanks to Ellie Mason of Fish and Game, students were able to see and touch bear, wolf, fox, lynx, wolverine and marten hides and view an exhibit of skulls, scat and tracks of the animals that live in our area. It was an informative and fun wildlife presentation. Our Academic Counselor, Ryan Tilbury, visited, meeting with students and attending the monthly Senior Meetings. Students got to play in the paint for our Fall craft in October. We made turkeys from painted hand and footprints and disguised turkeys to keep them safe from the Thanksgiving tables. Our November Thankful craft included making booklets to show what our students are thankful for. Ms. Jessica Patton stopped by the office to take school photos. She had amazing backdrops and was wonderful to work with. Thanks, Ms. Jessica!

December continued with holiday activities. On December 4th we inducted two new members into the National Honor Society. Our December craft included making wooden ornaments, cards and holiday word ornaments. We had a fun time creating gifts to share with our families. The stockings were brought in and hung by the chimney with care. Then we all got together to see what goodies were shared in our Stocking Stuffer Gift Exchange. Lots of fun things and candy, of course! Families came together to share good food and conversation at our Annual Holiday Potluck. Amber Badinas played piano and sang for us. Nissi Dorshorst shared a piano piece with us as well. There were door prizes and a scavenger hunt with Harlan winning the snowball maker and shield. His mom said she could see family snowball fights in the near future! The quarter will be closed out with a final bowling meeting on Friday, December 20th.

We wish you all a very happy holiday – Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa and may 2025 be the best year for all! Happy New Year!

See you next year!

Coming up in January 2025

• Jan 10 - CPR Class 9 am-noon, Sign up by January 3rd
• Lego Club and Game Day resume January 10th
• Jan 15 International Day – Let us know if you want to present a country
• Jan 16 Parent Advisory Meeting, 1:30 pm
• Jan 17 Bowling instead of Game Day, 11 am
• Jan 22 Heidi will be in Inservice and not available
• Jan 23 & 24 Math Workshops for parents and students. Call for individual tutoring.
• Jan 28 Ryan will be here. Call if you would like to meet with him.
• Jan 28 Senior Meeting, 12:30 pm

Hello from the Eagle River office! We are always trying to stay fresh and add variety to our education offerings through different avenues and have several activities; Each teaches our students skills they will use for years to come.

New Faces

We are pleased to introduce Katie Conway as our new teacher! She and her husband, Brendon, recently moved from Kodiak. Katie is certified in elementary education, K-12 reading, and special education. She has taught preschool, kindergarten, first, fourth & fifth grades. She has also been a reading specialist, homeschool teacher and adjunct faculty at UAA. She enjoys hiking, fishing, reading, baking and music.

Things that bring her joy are fostering curiosity, the joy of books & learning, helping students grow, laughing and being silly, and building community. Katie lives in Chugiak with her husband, Brendon, three-year-old son, Jack, and their Golden Retriever, Bear.

We have a new counselor as well; say hello to Brendon Conway!

Brendon is passionate about supporting students’ social and emotional career development goals. He worked in Kodiak for five years as a high school counselor. He has a bachelor’s in education and communications, and another in business management. He was with the Air Force for 6 years.

Clubs

There is rarely a dull moment in this office, and we have several clubs that kids get excited about! Inventor’s Club, Lego Club, Recess Club, Little Learners, Book Clubs, Social Studies Club, Culinary Cook-Off and Outdoor Club all have great involvement!

Activities

In the last couple months, we have also had several field trip adventures. We toured the Wild Scoops ice cream shop for those with a sweet tooth, learned fascinating facts when we went to the Campbell Creek Science Center, saw a production of 360 Allstars at the theater, practiced the art of teamwork while making our way out of an escape room with Escape! Alaska, and even tried our hands at archery at Screaming Eagle Archery.

As teachers and staff here at Raven, we are grateful for the Sanchez family. Alana and Remi are absolute joys to be around. They have impeccable manners and are very engaging to talk with. Earlier in the year we had such with them at Social Studies Club. The kids each gave a presentation on a concept related to our election process. When Alana and Remi spoke, even their teacher, Anna, was wishing she had taken notes! Alana excels at storytelling, art and soccer, and is passionate about making everyone around her feel welcomed and cared for. Remi is an accomplished runner who frequently wins awards at 5K events in his age group, is very polite and gentlemanly, and particularly loves social studies and language arts. Their favorite clubs are Lego Club and Inventors Club, as it helped to shape their learning, their friendships, and their needed group involvement / presentation skills.

Great kids, great family - Raven is lucky to have them as a part of our homeschool family!

It is always such a delight to share in the celebration of accomplishments our students achieve, whether they be awards, scholarships, and even the birth of a dream career, but occasionally there is another reason to celebrate. Emmalyn P. is a student we have the honor to showcase in this newsletter. Emmalyn may not have a plethora of medals, but her teacher, Stephanie Buen, has been consistently impressed with how she handles frustrating tasks that don’t necessarily come easily. When faced with a frustrating assignment – sometimes even to the point of tears, she perseveres, spends extra time, etc. and her work ends up being among the most beautiful. Keep up the good work, Emmalyn; that’s the kind of mindset that will serve you well throughout your life!

It's already close to the end of the year… how time has flown by! Quarter 2 at the Fairbanks office started off with the Halloween Party, which packed the entire bottom floor of the district office. We had plenty of games, a dinner featuring spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad, and a costume and pumpkin carving contest, where the winners won adorable SquishMellow prizes.

In November we had a lot of Thanksgiving themed activities in the office along with some CTE classes. Pie Night was on Wednesday November 20th and featured so many good pies that were brought in to be shared with family and friends. We did sneak in a Christmas activity in November with a paint night led by our own Lisa Cavan, where we painted a chilly reindeer with mittens. The CTE courses we had offered in November were a Toyo class and a Welding course. In the Toyo, students learned how a Toyo heater worked and to take it apart and clean it. In the welding course, students created a fire pit out of metal to take home and keep warm. We also had the opportunity to bring reptiles in the building! We had Reptile Education come in and bring 3 geckos, 4 ball pythons, and 1 turtle. The kids learned about each reptile and how to care for them.

Coming up we have our Christmas party and bazaar the office is very excited about! We have about 7 people signed up for the bazaar to sell their items. We will be eating ham, brisket and cheesy potatoes along with a cookie exchange to share with everyone! We will have many games and many prizes throughout the party. The party will be on December 18th, with the bazaar set up at 4:00 and the party running from 5:00 to 7:00.

These first two quarters have been so busy but incredibly fun. Everyone at the Fairbanks office is very excited for the second half of the school year!

It is hard to believe how fast this year is flying by and that we’re already finished with the Second Quarter. Our Scholastic Book Fair went really well this fall and we earned $1,280.63 in rewards to add to our student activities fund. Our Monthly Parent Workshops and Parent Advisory Committee meetings have been well attended and are providing a great opportunity for parental involvement and engagement to support their homeschooling endeavors. All of our regularly scheduled monthly and weekly student events are going well also with fun being had by all who attend chess, Pokemon, board games, movies, show and tell, girls’ gathering, Lego club, and more. The kids learned a lot around town at the DIPAC fall salmon education program, police station tour, and fire station field trip. Our Fall Costume and Craft Party was also a ton of fun on Halloween while we enjoyed treats, games, and crafts together. We are starting to do monthly rentals of the Field House for Family Fun Fridays where the kids can just run and play together despite the weather. We are excited to have four Battle of the Books teams at our office this year and they are already reading the books and diligently practicing in preparation for the competition this spring. It is also fun to have kids coming into the office to claim their reading brag tags as they earn points through Accelerated Reader. Our National Honor Society students did a service project in November to help assemble Thanksgiving food baskets to hand out to families in need, and in December they welcomed new members into our chapter during the Induction Ceremony. Both our Turkey in Disguise and Holiday Door Decorating Contests had great submissions to get us into the holiday spirit. We also had a good turnout for our December senior meeting as well as the Math Parent Workshop and Student Math Games Activities led by Steve Duby. We are looking forward to more fun holiday activities this December as we wrap up the first semester and head into 2025.

Class of 2022 Raven Graduate Samuel Jones graduated from Marine Corps Boot Camp in November. We’re proud of his hard work and accomplishments!

SNOW MAN

He started with a ball of snow that grew into a boulder.

A carrot for his pokey nose, a scarf around his shoulder.

He has a funny crooked smile (a Red Delicious slice).

His body is compacted snow as firm and cold as ice.

He stands guard outside our house; he wears not pant nor belt.

He will stay until comes spring, but then he’ll have to melt.