http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=4050
Hi Everyone,
I talked to people from a few other schools at the end of last week and I’m glad to report that it was not just our school had a wild week. Keep your fingers crossed that this week will be a bit more settled and more typical of one. :)
Fourteen items of note this week:
• Staffing and Job EXPO Updates – First off, Linda has officially been hired as our CLC teacher. We’re very glad you’ll be here next year, Linda! At last week’s Job EXPO, we had some very strong teachers from around the district interviewing for the open Howard positions. For the Title 1/ESC position, AJ Hruby was offered and accepted the position. AJ is the current Title 1 Coordinator and ESC at Chavez, so she has plenty of experience with this position. For our full-time kindergarten position, we’ve hired Kealy Barrow-Srange, who is currently teaching kindergarten at Chavez and who also did her student teaching with Carla two years ago. For our full-time 1st grade position we’ve hired Justine Chunn who is currently teaching 1st grade at Corridor. Justine has experience working with CLC students, is a former ESC, and is a strong teacher who’s up to the challenge working with a higher needs population. And if i remember right, she’s also former Howard student. It’s also worth noting that all three of these folks ONLY applied for Howard jobs and didn’t apply anywhere else. We did not fill our 0.5 kindergarten facilitating position or the 0.5 5th grade facilitating position. If there are no applicants for those positions in Round 2 or 3 of the Job EXPO, those positions will be opened up to external candidates.
And you can all feel flattered that we had quite a few people wanting to come to Howard. Howard had more applicants than any other elementary school in 4J and it wasn’t because we had a lot of vacancies (other schools had just as many or more than we did). Howard is the place to be!
On a related note, I’m not going to be surprised if our 0.5 kindergarten position ends up becoming a full-time position. We currently have 20 kinder packets out, 17 more expected from Head Start, 2 are already enrolled, 12 who have us as their #1 pick through school choice and 2 possible out-of-district students. That adds up to 53 kindergartners, which is WAY more than we usually have at this point in the year. Normally our kinder numbers would be closer to single digits, so 53 students in April is quite promising for our future enrollment and for being able to maintain three classes at each grade level.
• Classroom Locations for New Teachers Regarding where the above new people will be teaching, my current thinking is that the 0.5 kindergarten will go in the portable where EEP is currently located. The new 1st grade will go into the Music Room. The Music Room would be relocated to the curriculum library in the portable. The 5th grade facilitating position would be in Room 12, where we would need to move ELD out and shrink the TSS space more. ELD would be moved to either share Room 22 with Life Skills, or to a smaller room, like the OT/School Psych room by the Staff Room, or maybe the Curriculum Library before Music starts. The new Title 1/ESC will squeeze into Room 8. If people have other ideas, let me know, but given our limited space this is the best I think we will be able to come up with.
• Writing Benchmark Update – Most everyone who weighed in on the how we should do our grading of writing benchmarks wanted to keep it pretty similar to how we’ve it in the past. When I first came to Howard, spring benchmark grading was done using a roving sub, but staff liked doing it as a group better. The preference I heard this time around was to keep that format and do as a group at the May 29th PD/Planning Day, with grade levels grading their own work and for primary grades to help with older grades’ work samples since those take longer to grade. Grades 3-5 will be using their Smarter Balanced Writing Performance Task as their work sample. I will send out the primary grade level writing sample prompts by next week so that primary grade classes can have the choice of doing the writing benchmark assessment during time that Title 1 groups are cancelled due to intermediate grade level Smarter Balanced testing.
• Fire Drill Time Change, Thursday at 9:30 – The weather forecast is now calling for rain in the afternoon this Thursday, so I’m changing our Fire Drill time to 9:30 this Thursday. If it is raining at 9:30, I’ll postpone for another time next week.
• Formal and Informal Observations Tuesday & Thursday – Larry Soberman will be subbing for me this Tuesday and Thursday so I won’t get interrupted while conducting formal and informal observations. With informal observations, I may not be able to post conference with everyone, in which case I’ll submit my comments through TalentEd and we can connect later if you have questions.
• Design Team Updates – Attached are the notes from the Design Team meeting last Thursday and here are the highlights:
• Student Desk and Chair Count – Although we’ll have more classrooms than students when we move into the new school next spring, we’ll be ordering seating for 32 students per classroom. If we do need more desks and chairs for a classroom when we move in we can pull from unoccupied classrooms. On a related note, the mock up room will have samples of 24” square single desks and 24”x48’” rectangular double desks.
• Classroom Storage – Liza from PiVOT presented different furniture arrangements in classrooms that included student desks and chairs, bookcases and mobile storage units. If you look at the attached map of a classroom neighborhood where each classroom has a different arrangement, you can see the options teachers might potentially use. It also gives you an idea of the size of the classrooms, which are pretty close to our current classrooms sizes. The second page of the attachment includes a sketch of some deeper storage than the mobile bookshelves. On the map the the booksellers are the thinner blue rectangles and the deeper shelves are the thicker blue rectangles.
• Playground Seating – It was asked at the meeting if and where the seating on the playground was located. Liza from PiVOT emailed the following playground map where you can see there is a large seating wall near the hardscape play. It’s on the opposite end from the soft play playground equipment. It’s clouded it on the attached plan.
• Teacher Desks – The Teacher desk will be a two piece sit/stand desks, where teachers can adjust to be either standard sitting desks or raise them to be standing desks. One section will have a quick adjustable design and the other section will have the “slow peg” adjustable height design to save on funding.
• Student Desk Colors – The top of the student desks will match the counter around the sink, formica “Storm” laminate. Using an artificial wood grain alongside the real wood grain in our real maple cabinets would not have looked good.
• Student Chairs – If you did not attend the optional staffing meeting last Wednesday to select the two style of chairs that would go into the mock up classrooms, it is was the light blue and light green chairs that were selected, which are still located the library. We didn’t necessarily want those colors, but those style of chairs are the ones we liked best.
• Small Group Classroom Tables – Each classroom will have a kidney shaped teaching table with a top matching the student desks.
• Specialist Furniture – For specialists (i.e. SPED, ELD, Title 1, Counselor, etc.), I’ve asked Kay to hold a separate meeting for us to discuss your furniture needs and preferences.
• Construction Updates – I was busy with things going on in the building last week and did not attend this meeting, but attached are the minutes from the last Construction Progress Meeting. Here are the highlights:
• Construction Webcam is Up – The webcam of the construction site is now up. The were some technical difficulties in figuring out how not to give viewers complete control of the camera, but the Technology Department turned the problem over to David Nelson who figured it out. These links are not on the 4J website yet and they asked that people please do not leave the link open on your browser as they are limited on bandwidth for the public viewing of this camera. The URL provides a current webcam photo of the Howard construction project, which is updated every minute.
LARGE:
http://www.4j.lane.edu/images/cameras/howardconstruction-large.jpgSMALL:
http://www.4j.lane.edu/images/cameras/howardconstruction-small.jpgAnd if you’re curious, the webcam is serving a dual purpose as school district PR and also as a security measure to monitor vandalism and mischief happening on the construction site. I know if I was a kid in the Howard neighborhood, I’d be riding my bike all over those dirt piles and exploring the construction site after hours.
• Classroom Renderings – I’m working with PiVOT to get some 3D renderings of the classrooms spaces, but below are some renderings that were done of the classrooms and the commons areas. Each wing will have it’s own accent color, which can help with wayfinding. The wing out front will be yellow. The wing behind the yellow wing, the one closest to Emerald Park, will be the blue. And the wing closest to the track will be the green below. These renderings also make me rethink that the “Midnight Black” circles on the floor might actually work and probably would look nicer than plain grey floors.
• Lane County Family Mediation Family Check-Up – Lane County Family Mediation are offering a “Family Check-Up” program developed by the UO to provide brief, family-centered interventions that identify strengths and weaknesses in family functioning and help participants become motivated to make positive changes. The services are available to parents and their children, ages 2-17, who are members of Trillium Community Health Plan. They will conduct assessments of family interactions, encourage self-reflection, promote positive family management skills, and provide referrals to community services. Families can earn $150 (provided in gift cards) by attending three appointments, which take place over a four to five week period.
Please feel free to share this information with any interested families. I will also be sending the attached flyer in our next newsletter. I did check to see if this is available for Spanish speaking families and they said it unfortunately is not at this time.
• New Mentoring Partnership in Lane County – Here’s another new resource we can point families in the direction of when appropriate. The Mentor Lane Campaign is a collaborative partnership between mentoring organizations in Lane County, who’s goal is to share resources that help to increase mentor recruitment and strengthen mentoring services for programs, clients, and volunteers. Their website serves as a hub for mentoring organizations to make mentor referrals, share information on community events, and for our community to learn about different organizations they can go to volunteer, receive a mentor, or get paid to become a certified peer recovery mentor. It’s essentially a resource for us to “shop around” for a place to send someone who needs to receive a mentor or a place to direct someone looking to volunteer as a mentor.
• Downtown Admin Updates – HR Director Sarah Brown has accepted a position in Florida, her home state, as the Chief of Human Resources for Manatee County Schools. She will be leaving April 24. There has not yet been an announcement regarding who will be the interim Director of HR.
• The 5 Bs and the Playground – A reminder from the office to not send students from the playground unless they are exhibiting one or more of the “5 Bs,” Barfing, Bleeding, Badly Bruised, Burning with fever or Broken. It’s also helpful when student are sent to the office on their own, unless they do need help, rather than sending them with an entourage (or stopping the entourages that often form on their own).
• Earth Day, April 22nd – Schools across the country will be celebrating Earth Day on Wednesday, April 22. Teach your students how to care about their world — and how they can make it better! — throughout the year with these resources from Edutopia.
• Federal lawmakers may be close to draft NCLB bill – With state testing right around the corner, I though people might be interested to know that federal lawmakers reportedly may be getting close to a new draft bill for the rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This article offers a glimpse at some of the potential changes, including giving states more flexibility on testing requirements and expunging the language inserting “portability” of Title 1 funds (which would have been a devastating to Title 1 schools like us). The education committee is expected to mark up a bill this week.
• 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:
April 13 (M)
9:00, March Book Winners (Office)
9:00-9:30, Allan at BEST Meeting (Office)
1:15-2:15, Allan to IEP Meeting (Room 20)
1:30-2:30, Title Coordinator & Principal Meeting (Ed Center)
2:30-5:00, Allan to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
7:00-8:30, Allan to River Road Community Organization Meeting (River Road Annex)April 14 (T)
Allan Conducting Observations – Larry Soberman Covering
8:00-12:00, LCC Dental Trip
9:00-9:30, Allan Meeting with Trevor White (Office)
10:30-11:10, Allan Conducting Formal Observation
2:30-3:30, Staff Meeting (Library)
4:00-7:00, Allan to Job EXPO (Ed Center)April 15 (W)
9:00-11:00, Allan to Construction Progress Meeting (Construction Trailer)
1:15-2:30, EA New OAKS Training (Room 8)
1:30-1:45, PBIS Four Square Brainstorming Session (Room 8)April 16 (H)
Allan Conducting Observations – Larry Soberman Covering
9:30, Fire Drill
2:30-4:00, Design Team Meeting (Library)
2:30-3:30, TLT Meeting (Room 7)April 17 (F)
Lori Out of Building
7:30-9:00, Allan to 4JMAPS Meeting
12:00-3:00, Allan and BAW Teacher Leaders to Being a Writer Meeting
4:00, Staff Happy Hour at Hop ValleyApril 20 (M)
8:00-8:30, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 19)
8:30-9:15, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 3)April 21 (T)
8:00-8:30, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 19)
8:30-9:15, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 3)
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Room 7)
3:45-7:00, Allan to Job EXPO (Ed Center)
6:00-7:00, PTO Meeting in LibraryApril 22 (W)
Admin Professional’s Day (formerly Secretary’s Day)
Earth Day
8:00-8:30, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 19)
8:00-4:00, Allan and Allison to LEL Meeting (Twin Oaks)
9:30-11:00, Allan to Construction Progress Meeting (Construction Trailer)
10:45, 5th Grade Class Picture (Howard Sign)
2:45-3:30, Writing Benchmark Scoring Meeting (Library)April 23 (H)
Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day
8:00-8:30, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 19)
8:30-9:15, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 3)
10:55, Birthday Lunches with the Principal (Library)
5:00-6:00, Human Growth & Development Parent Preview (Room 18)April 24 (F)
8:00-8:30, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 19)
8:30-9:15, ACTion Lab Classroom Presentation (Room 3)
Have an good week, everyone! 39 more days!
Allan
Here’s the “live” panoramic image of the Howard construction site:
