Taking over the helm from former principal Yvette Mayer, who went to the Alpine Union School District as its Human Resources coordinator, first grade teacher, and now Shadow Hills Elementary School Principal Meghan Meris was chosen for the newly opened position. Meris said she has taught at Shadow Hills for five years and Mayer and she had similar leadership styles, so things “just kind of clicked” as she took on more responsibilities.
Starting at the first full year of the SHES Dual Language Program, she said as a first grade teacher, she was the introduction into the program with all new students and parents. This program is something Meris said she is proud of and believes it gives students an educational advantage starting at an early age.
“We are a 50/50 dual language school,” she said. “We follow the Utah 50/50 dual language model where students spend half their day in English and half their day in Spanish. Every other week they start in the morning with an English teacher, and finish their day with a Spanish teacher, and vice versa the next week. They start with Spanish and end with English. Mayer saw the need and started the program.”
Meris said first through third grades spend most of their day in English Language Arts, with a mix of math, science and social studies, with the rest of the day in Spanish Language Arts, math and science. She said this method of study “flips” in fourth and fifth grade and on to Joan McQueen Middle School.
“Every student that goes through our program gets a California State Seal of Biliteracy on their promotion at fifth and eighth grade, and then it is a straight line all the way through high school,” she said. “We have our first group of dual language students in tenth grade now and they are in various high schools like Granite Hills and El Capitan high schools. At Granite they can take the AP exam to test out of their dual language high school requirements.”
Meris said its curriculum, Wonders and Maravillas, each student gets the exact curriculum that an English only student would, just half of their information is in Spanish, the other half in English.
“Here we believe with students learning Spanish, that students are constantly engaging in blocks of learning where there is no student that does not have a partner, and all students are participants in their education,” she said.
Meris said the school is proud of its Differentiated Instruction, which started at Creekside Early Learning Center as well.
“We have a period at Shadow Hills in the morning in their first 90 minutes, we have three homogeneous groupings of students,” she said. “They get their direct instruction during that time. They will get an I-ready assessment or working on their computer, then they rotate and go with a teacher on a small reader or go with an instructional aide and get decoding skills. So, every morning, all students are receiving direct instruction at their level in both languages.”
Meris said the school just implemented its HAWKS (because its mascot is a hawk) behavioral intervention support, which is positive phone calls home to parents.
“Teachers can set up a slip with a student to myself or my dean, and we will give positive phone calls home, promote the student, and help the parents as well. At the classroom we are always rewarding positive behavior and helping to mitigate negative behavior,” she said.
Meris said something good that came out of COVID is that the school now has a social worker on campus three days a week who runs small and large group instruction on various social/emotional topics. “Anything along the lines of what students may be feeling, like anxiety. This has been a big positive change on our campus,” she said.
“Once a month we have a meeting with our teachers and we ask them what they are seeing, what and they need help with,” Meris continued.
“Teachers will tell us and once a month we hold an assembly, and we focus on the topics the teachers are seeing an increase of to help mitigate them. Like telling them different ways to cope. It gives out strategies and is helpful.”
Meris said parent involvement this year has been “through the roof.”
“We are so very blessed,” she said. “We had our Fall Festival, and it was huge, our biggest attendance ever. It was magical, incredible to see everybody running around, we were outside, we followed all COVID procedures, and it was perfect. So, we are continuing going on with all our Shadow Hills traditions like assemblies, Spirit Days, visitors on campus, field trips which have been so fun to have again. We have a wonderful parent group.”
Meris said another thing the school is proud of is that it houses all the self-contained Special Day Class classes, so the campus is huge on mainstreaming its special education students, pushing them into English language only classrooms daily.
“It has been a nice transition coming into the principal role as I did teach essentially half of the school already. My first group is now in fifth grade, so I know half the parents. It is such a nice transition moving from the classroom up here. The same with staff,” said Meris.
