February 25, 2013

By Allan  

Howdy Everyone,

It’s going to be a busy week with Literacy Night Thursday and professional development Friday morning on top of field trips and all our regular meetings, but you will thankfully have a quiet Friday afternoon to yourself for planning.

Ten items of note for this week:

• March 1 PD Day, 8:30-12:30 – Equity and Data Dive – This Friday will be a Howard PD day. All staff, both classified and certified, will be meeting in the morning for a race and equity training and then we’ll take an in-depth look at our student data, focusing primarily, though not exclusively, on our school-wide and classroom benchmark data.

• Racism Alive and Well – Related to our work around race and equity this Friday, if you need a reminder that our society has a long way to go, take a look at this article about the public response to a simple ESPN post on their Facebook page, asking people to celebrate Black History Month. It’s pretty shocking how openly and casually people are posting racist comments.

• Caring for Kids Pictures or Videos? – If any of you have pictures or videos of Caring for Kids activities (Morning Meetings, Buddies, Class Meetings, Closing Meetings) please send them my way. There is going to be a presentation to the School Board next week, so they’d love to have pictures of the curriculum in action if you have anything. Please send anything you have to me by the end of this week by email, zip drive, linked or on a disk. Thank you!

• Literacy Night Burrito Orders – If you are working at Literacy Night and haven’t done so already, be sure to get your burrito order to Lori before the the end of the day this Tuesday. Here’s the order form.

• Staffing Survey Due, Monday, February 25th – And if you haven’t done this one already either, please return your staffing survey to me by the end of today (Monday). You can reply to me via email or by returning a hardcopy to my mailbox (although I prefer email). There will be future discussions, but this will give us a place to start.

• Lane ESD Science Fair – The Lane ESD is hosting a Lane County Science Fair for grades 3 – 8. Projects will be on public display at the ESD May 6 – 7, 2013. All students will receive recognition and there will be an Awards Ceremony May 7 at 4:30. Information on registration is attached.

• Robert Marzano on Four Levels of Classroom Questioning – Here’s an interesting article summary that lines up fairly well with our work with Jon Saphier.

• What are the characteristics of great teachers? – Great teachers love children, have mastered classroom management and are knowledgeable about their subject matter, suggests Annette Breaux, an internationally renowned author and speaker. In this blog post, Breaux writes that most great teachers are not born, but rather develop over time as a result of hard work. Always humble, top teachers also are patient, have a sense of humor, are problem-solvers and always work hard to ensure learning is fun.

• Smithsonian goes online with activities for students – The Smithsonian Center for Education and Museum Studies has started a program to encourage research, discovery and creative collaboration with project-based learning. Called Smithsonian Quests, the online resource awards digital badges to students upon completion of their activities. The projects are aimed at students of various grade levels, and can be done as part of classroom lessons or independently. It’s a pretty quality looking site.

• Schedule of Events for the Week – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for this week:

Feb. 25 (M)
School Choice Visitation Week
Reading and Math Progress Monitoring 10
Book Fair (MTWH)
12:15-1:15, Allan to Formal Observation Post-Conference

Feb. 26 (T)
8:30-12:30, LCC Dental Clinic
9:00-11:30, Rooms 13, 14, 16, 17 to Symphonic Safari
9:00-10:00 Allan Leading School Choice Tour
2:30-3:30, Site Council (Staff Room)

Feb. 27 (W)
1:15-2:15, Allan to Formal Observation Pre-Conference
2:15-3:15, Allan to HR Meeting
3:45-4:45 Allan to All Administrator Meeting (Ed Center)

Feb. 28 (H)
9:00-10:00 Allan Leading School Choice Tour
11:00-12:30, Birthday Lunches with Mr. Chinn (Room 2)
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Room 10)
5:30-7:30, Literacy Night

Feb. 29 (F)
Howard PD Day – NO STUDENTS
8:30-12:30, Equity & Data Dive! (Library)
1:45-3:45, Allan to Superintendent Cabinet Meeting

Have a great week, everyone!

Allan