January 12, 2015

By Allan  

MLK-Intelligence-Character

Hi Everyone,

We survived our first week back and to help ease us into work again we have a nice thee-day weekend we can look forward to.

Eighteen items of note this week:

• DanceAbility International Assembly, Tuesday, 1:00-1:45 – This Tuesday from 1:00-1:45 is the DanceAbility Assembly. The dancers have requested the audience sit in a crescent shape, so although the assembly map doesn’t really show it, we’ll angel the rows towards northwest and southwest corners of the gym. Here’s a link to the DanceAbility’s website and also to their teacher’s guide and curriculum that goes along with the performance if teachers would like to use it before or after the program.

• Berman Visit to Howard Tuesday, 1:00-3:30 – Dr. Berman is continuing his annual visits to school and he’s scheduled to be at Howard on Tuesday 1:00-3:30. He will also be here after school for our Staff Meeting at 2:30.

• Fire Drill, Wednesday at 8:30 – The weather forecast is dry and not too cold this Wednesday, so we’ll plan to hold our January Fire Drill on Wednesday, January 14th at 8:30. If we’re rained out, we’ll try the same time next week.

• Welcome Additional CLC Staff Member – Ryan Sullivan will be joining the Howard CLC Team as a temporary one-on-one for a new 2nd grader and also helping some with one of our current 4th grade CLC students. It’s temporary for now, but there’s a good chance it’ll become a permanent position. Please make Ryan feel welcome as he joins the Howard team!

• Schools Showcase Volunteers, Sat. Jan. 24th, 10:00-12:00 – The School Showcase will be held again this year on Saturday Jan. 24th at the Ed Center, 9:00-12:00. Last year there was an informational presentation about the school choice process from 9-10 and then the showcase from 10-12. This event is for interested families to learn about all 4J schools in one place at the same time. Last year they provided breakfast, including a vegetarian option, for staff helping at the event. Let me know if any of you are willing to help me promote Howard and tell families why they should come to our school!

• Superintendent Search Updates – We should know who our new superintendent will be by spring break. The school board had a work session last Wednesday to review all of the staff, students, families and public input. They plan to do a first round screening of candidates soon and will then do site visitations. In March, they will have different stakeholder groups conduct interviews with the finalists. That input will then go back to the board who will announce the new superintendent by spring break.

• Call for Student Presenters on Digital Learning Day! (Feb. 4th, 2015) – Ketterer sent something out to cert_all, but Kellyclare Gardner sent a Digital Learning Day flyer to principals specifically calling for student presenters for Digital Learning Day that I thought I would forward. If you have any trouble accessing the link to our online sign up form through the PDF, here you can follow this link if you’re up for giving Howard a presence at this event.

• Process for Requesting District Behavior Support – Howard staff are already good about going through the building IPBS process for challenging students before calling in ESS behavior consultants for, but ESS has now created a Tiered Intervention Flow Chart of steps that are to be followed before calling in one of the behavior consultants. Our rock star IPBS Team already follows these steps, but feel free to look at the chart if you’d like.

• PBIS Focus: Be Your Best – I forgot to include this in last week’s announcements, but the January PBIS monthly focus is Be Your Best. Take a look at the PBIS/CFK cheat sheet which matches our monthly themes with the canned Caring for Kids class meeting lessons, which is a nice way to tie the two activities together.

• Howard Student Care Team – Attached are two documents regarding the Student Support Team that I’m hoping to start later this month. I’ll review this at Tuesday’s staff meeting, but the first document is The Student Care Team Overview, which summarizes how the team will work. The second document is the Student Care Team Referral Form (PDF and MS Word), which should be completed by the referring staff member. I’m still working out a date with DHS that works for both of us, but we should have that soon. I’ve talked with one staff member who has one situation that would make a good referral, but feel free to check in with me regarding any potential referrals.

• Jan. 30 Educational Assistant (Professional Learning) Extravaganza – Back by popular demand, downtown will be hosting a variety of instructional workshops for all educational assistants who wish to participate. This all day event (8:00-3:30 at the Ed Center) allows for classified staff to choose presentations within your scheduled work day while teachers are working on report cards. They will be presenting multiple workshops at at time, in order to give you choice and flexibility to fit within your daily schedule. A schedule of the workshops and more details will be sent out soon.

• Construction Updates – Attached are the minutes from the last Construction Progress Meeting, but here are the main highlights:

• Spring Break Move – The Spring Break move in is now official. Now we just need to work out the details on extra days for moving out and moving in. Facilities staff said at other schools that have done this, staff were given two days for packing up and two days for unpacking, though it occurred to me that those schools moved over the summer, so those schools actually had at least three days when you include the non-student days at the start and end of the school year. More to come on this, though it sounds like downtown is ready to go along with extra non-student days. The other piece we discussed with the Spring Break move is that the new building is set to be completed by Feb. 1st, which means we could potentially start moving things over long before Spring Break if we wanted to.

• Visits to the Construction Site – The district and PiVOT are working on buying us a class set of hard hats and vest so classes can visit the construction site. I’ll keep teachers posted about this, but hopefully we’ll get them soon.

• New Project Manager – Ryan Spain is our new project manager, so he will be the 4J Facilities person making sure the new schools is getting building according to plan and staying on schedule. Ryan has been working for Turner Construction, which is one of the bigger construction firms in the northwest. He lives in our area and with this move to the school district allows him to better say in one place with his family. I also think I heard him say his wife is a teacher, but don’t quote me on that yet.

• Color Scheme – This one was outside of the construction meeting minutes, but one I thought people would like to know too. The district and architects were pretty cagey about opening this discussion up to too many people (the architects said they actually had a very contentions discussion among their own staff trying to decide on the colors of their offices), but the color scheme for the new building are attached here. I was part of the color discussion and I did keep in mind previous staff thoughts on avoiding garish colors, trying to have more natural colors, and to definitely NOT have the Holt and Chavez colors. The main colors are a fairly subdued blue, yellow and green that serve primarily as accent colors in various places. I’ll try to get a copy of the mockup that show where these colors go. I have one with the wrong colors, but I’ll try to get one that shows the final color scheme.

• HM Journeys CCSS Updated Materials – The updated Houghton Mifflin reading materials will be delivered sometime this week. For staff who were not at the last staff meeting, the district got a highly discounted offer from HM to upgrade our old HM reading materials to their current CCSS aligned version. This also came with a 6 year subscription to the online version of the curriculum, which can be accessed from laptops or iPads and includes the leveled readers. The materials are going to be stored at the end of the 1st grade hallway and will stay there until the district organizes their the teacher trainings, though teachers can get them earlier if you’d like. I’ll plan to also give teachers prep time with the materials on some of our PD days following that training as well.

• Howard Leadership Plan Approved – JCAC approved the Howard Leadership Plan at their January meeting, so our plan is now official.

• DonorsChoose.org Opportunity – Most of you are probably familiar with DonorsChoose.org, but it’s an on-line charity that connects the public to easily fund grants for public schools. For the College Football National Championship game, all attendees at the game will receive a $25 DonorsChoose.org gift card to use on a classroom project that inspires them. While there’s no way to predict how many recipients will use the funds, there will likely be a bunch of folks from our community looking to support a classroom, so it this may be a good time to put up a low cost grant (headphones, curriculum materials, class supplies, etc.) on their website. Here’s a link to the teacher section of DonorsChoose.org to submit a grant if you’ve never put one up before.

• Title 1 Newsletter – Here is the latest district level Title 1 Newsletter that went out to all Title 1 Coordinators and principals. This month’s issue is again mostly coordinator specific information and tasks, but there is some information about summer school for staff who work there and are wondering when it will be this year.

• Two Articles on Student QuestioningEinstein’s 55 Minutes (Follow these seven precepts to practice purposeful questioning that engages students and teachers in the dialogue of learning) and Three Questioning Strategies for Any Lesson (Question stems that align with Bloom’s taxonomy of learning, cards that target student interests and total student participation, and mnemonic devices will enhance your questioning techniques at any point in a lesson.)

• Schedule of Events for the Week – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for the next two weeks:

January 12 (M)
Reading and Math Winter Benchmark Testing Week

January 13 (T)
1:00-1:45, DanceAbility International Assembly (Gym)
1:00-2:30, Berman Visting Howard
2:30-3:30, Staffing Meeting with Berman (Library)

January 14 (W)
8:30, Fire Drill
9:00-11:00, Allan to Construction Progress Meeting (Construction Trailer)
2:30-3:30, Allan to Taking It Up Training (Ed Center)

January 15 (H)
1:30-4:30, Allan to HR Training (Ed Center)
3:00-5:00, Allan to Title 1 Meeting (Ed Center)

January 16 (F)
7:30-8:30, Allan to 4JMAPS Meeting
1:30-3:30, Allan to Super Boundary Meeting (Ed Center)

January 19 (M)
No School – Martin Luther King Jr. Day

January 20 (T)
8:30-12:30, LCC Dental Clinic 5 students w/Robin W. (gym)
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Room 7)
6:00-7:00, PTO Meeting (Library)

January 21 (W)
Wacky Wednesday – Career Day
9:00-11:00, Allan to Construction Progress Meeting (Construction Trailer)

January 22 (H)
8:00-9:00, Allan to Super Boundary Meeting (Ed Center)
2:30-3:30, TLT Meeting (Room 7)

January 23 (F)
10:55-12:20, Birthday Lunches with the Principal (Room 11)
6:00, Staff Winter Party (Mellissa’s House)

January 24 (S)
9:00-12:00, Elementary School Showcase (Ed Center)

Have a great week, everyone, and try to have as much fun as this baby elephant is having with that huge ribbon!

Allan