http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=5746
Hello Roadrunners,
We get a bit of a reprieve this week, with our first four-day student week and the first Howard PD Day of the year this Friday, though on Thursday a number of staff will have a longer day with Curriculum Night.
And remember to give Crystal and Mike a pat on the back this week. Sunday was National Custodial Worker Day.
Eighteen items of note for this week:
• Fire Drill Debrief – Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on how to improve our fire drill evacuation. Linked here is an updated Fire Evacuation Lines Map. I didn’t get a chance to run all these proposals by everyone effected, but we do have some time between now and Safety Week at the end of October. Please let me know your thoughts on these proposed changes:
• PE/Music to Playground – PE classes will exit out the west gym doors and Music out east gym doors. Both PE and Music will walk around to the playground. This will get have them further from the building and there will be fewer students in front of the building.
• Bus Loop Lines – 2nd and 5th grade, instead of lining up along the bus loop side by side, will form one big line. I marked spots on the map for each classroom, but whichever class reaches the bus loop first should move to the furthest end of the bus loop.
• Second Floor Exit Route Changes – Upstairs yellow and blue wings should go down the library stairs by their wings and exit the building out the main entrance. This will help with the congestion of too many classes trying out exit out the courtyard doors. I’ve also moved some of the spots where 2nd and 3rd grade line up, so their lines are now closer to the main entrance. For the green wing, we’ll have the Title 1 classrooms also go down the library stairs as well and we’ll have Jessy and Justine’s classes exit onto the courtyard using the library doors at the bottom of the stairs. This will lessen the number of classrooms using the green wing courtyard door. Linked here is an updated 2nd Floor Evacuation Route map of the routes I’d like upstairs classrooms to take.
• Yellow and Blue Wing Courtyard Gates – Yellow wing classes should exit the courtyard using the gates to the left (north) and blue wing classes should exit the courtyard using the gates to the right (south). Once on the sidewalk, classes can walk side by side (yellow on the left, blue on the right) to their designate spots.
• Remind Student to be Silent – This isn’t a change, but an important reminder to ALL staff to make sure students are silent during an evacuation. For safety reasons, it is critical student practice and learn there is NO talking during an evacuation.
I’m very open to suggestions on all of this, so please send me your suggestions. The main goal is to come up with a plan that quickly and safely gets all students out of the building. Once we have our routes and lines how we like, I’ll make maps for individual classes that we’ll post in each classroom, just as we did in the old building.
• Elevator and Evacuation Plan – Related to the above, I’ve already shared this with staff most directly involved, but just so everyone knows, the Fire Marshall has allowed us to use the elevator during a fire or other evacuations for students in wheelchairs or who otherwise cannot use the stairs. The elevator will work as long as the smoke detectors in the elevator shaft have not been tripped. If they have been tripped, the elevator will shutdown until it is unlocked with a fire key. Any students in wheelchairs or students who cannot use the stairs should instead go to the “Primary Area of Refuge,” which is by the windows on the second floor facing the front of the building (right by the elevators) so fire fighters can easily see that someone is still in the building. If that location is not safe, adults should have those students go to one of the “Secondary Areas of Refuge,” which are located on the second floor of each wing facing the courtyards, which would be the next easiest place for fire fighters to spot someone in the building. This plan was deemed safer than trying to carry a student down the stairs. Linked here is a map of the evacuation routes posted around the building, which include the areas of refuge.
• Staffing Updates – Corianne Rice Heinke, our new Title 1 Coordinator, will be starting this Monday. Corianne is still recovering from her knee surgery, so she’ll be here half-days in the mornings and Phyllis Ryan will continue subbing for Corianne in the afternoons. Please welcome Corianne to the Howard Team!
• Licensed Shared Building SMART Goals, Due Oct. 15 – For licensed staff, you need to complete your Goals Development Form in TalentEd by October 15th. I also need to meet with each of you for the “Standards Overview Conference” this month. Please let me know a time that works for you to meet. I can meet before, after, or during school. If you offer to meet during a prep time, I promise to keep the meeting short. I should be able to meet most anytime that you don’t see me in a meeting on the calendar at the bottom of my announcements.
Linked here are the shared building goals that were reviewed by a few teachers at the optional Shared Building SMART Goals meeting last week. The two student growth goals are for math and reading using easyCBM and the professional goal is around science. However, one change HR sent out since that meeting on Friday is that all SMART Goals should be growth goals and not achievement goals (i.e. goals should NOT be: All students will achieve X%. Goals should be: Those students who scored 0 – 20% will increase by at least 40%. Those students who scored 21 – 50% will increase by at least 30%. etc.), so I adjusted the two student growth goals accordingly, though, as always, staff are welcome to craft whatever goals you would like to use.
• Sub Folders to Office – For both classified and licensed staff, if you haven’t already, be sure to give your completed sub folders to Lori. If it helps in completing your folder, linked here is a list of suggested sub folder information/items HR said staff should consider when making lesson plans. Lori has extra folders if you’d misplaced the one put in your mailbox at the start of the year.
• Back-Up When Allan is Gone – For times that I’m out of the building, please contact Matt or Erin if there is a situation and you need an available staff member. Erin is here in the mornings and Matt is here all day. With Matt, I do not want him to be in situations where he is expected to hand out discipline and consequences, because I don’t want our school counselor to have that dynamic or relationship with students, but he would be available for example, to provide a student a break, take them to another space, or process a situation. Erin, however, can dish out consequences just short of suspension. Thank you Matt and Erin for being my back-ups!
• State In-Service Day, Friday, Oct 14th – Friday, October 14th is State In-Service day. This is a regular work day for administrators and 192 & 196-day classified staff. This is a non-contract day for licensed staff. For classified staff, this would be a good day to take any accumulated comp time. Let me know if you have any questions about this day. And a reminder for all staff, if you are ever wondering about work year dates, most all of your questions can be answered on the 4J Employee Work Year Calendars webpage.
• Updated Master Schedule (Again) – Linked here is an updated 2016-2017 Master Schedule (XLS and PDF). Those effected by changes already know, but there were some changes to PE times with Chrisanne now teaching PE on Wednesdays and there was a change to kindergarten ELD times.
• Curriculum Night Date, Thursday, 5:45-6:55 – Linked here is the Curriculum Night Flyer that went home last Friday. There was a typo at the bottom of the one that went home saying conferences would be later in October instead of November, but we did have the correct date go out on the School Newsletter. Child care will be in the cafeteria (with pizza and a movie) and we’ll also do open gym next door to help spread kids out.
• Office Copier is Dying – The color copier in the front office is on it’s last legs, so please limit your use of this copier. If you need to make class sets, use either the workroom copier or the upstairs copier. And speaking of the upstairs copier, Peggy is continuing to pester Network Services to activate the port upstairs so we can print to the new copier. Once the port is activated, Peggy will send out the copier address and directions on how to add it to your laptop printer list.
• New Building Updates – Here are the items of note regarding our new building:
• Floor Mats for Entry Doors – Carpets to go by entry doors are on their way and can’t come soon enough with rain in this week’s forecast. The plan is to do built-in carpets by the the single door courtyard entrances and also by the library entrances near the stairs for classes coming in off the playground. The doors on the east side of the library will have regular mats that will go on the floor. In the meantime before these are installed we’re getting some temporary mats to keep things safe.
• Updated Map (flipped) – We noticed earlier maps were confusing for families when giving them directions, so we flipped the map around so people can read the map facing the building (rather than facing the street). Linked here is the updated flipped school map, just in time for Curriculum Night.
• Rainbow Playground Piece Being Replaced – I don’t have a timeline for this, but we’re taking out the one rainbow piece of playground equipment that originally had the two rubber balls in it that were supposed to be rolled back and forth. According to the supplier the rainbow piece isn’t meant to be for climbing. That’s pretty much what it’s being used for and it’s already very wobbly, so it’s a safety issue. It’s being replaced by another small piece of equipment called the Beat Club, which is basically a group of hard plastic bongos. Since this is Eugene, we need to get kids ready for Saturday Market drum circles, right?
• Bike Cage at Playground Area – If you missed it in the October Newsletter, for students (or staff) who would like to use the covered bike cage area located off the playground, it will be available starting Monday. I’ll open the bike cage in the morning at 7:30 and will lock it at 7:50. The bike cage will be opened at the end of school at 2:05 (1:05 Wednesdays). We did let parents know no staff are available after school to supervise this area, so bikes should be locked, and also that staff are not available during the school day to unlock the bike cage if families have plans to leave mid-day.
• Projector Brightness Issues – Some of the Technology Department folks are really going to bat for us with the Facilities Department in trying to get the projector brightness issue resolved. Technology Department folks really GET that this is a major issue for second floor classrooms and also in the gym/library/cafeteria. My own feeling is it’s the architects fault since they reassured us all through the design phase that all of the natural light would not be an issue. A solution hasn’t been landed on yet, but I did want staff to know that this problem is being taken seriously by people besides us. A couple of us have actually suggested just painting over the front skylight to cut down on the sun, since no matter how bright a projector we install, it’s not going to be brighter than the sun. More to come on this.
• Network Down at 6:00PM One Day This Week – The Tech Department is running some tests sometime this week after 6:00PM to try to figure out why the screens in A-Wing will not display the Fire Alert, Weather Alert, or whatever picture or video we want to push out to all classrooms. I told the Tech Department not to do it on Curriculum Night this Thursday, but it will be happening some other day this week.
• Potential Phone Outage Friday, Oct 14th at 5:00PM– As stated earlier, October 14th is State In-Service Day, so it’s a non-student day and also a non-work day for some staff, but Blackbox is scheduling a test of High Availability on the phone system at Howard and Roosevelt at 5:00pm that day. They’re basically planning to disconnect network interfaces on the system located downtown and see if it fails over to the standby instance. If things work correctly there should be no outage. If it doesn’t work, phone service will temporarily drop until they correct the issue. The system is designed for redundancy so the hope is that it all works.
• Hour of Prep Conference Week – To follow-up on a question asked at our Staff Meeting a couple weeks ago regarding moving our Wednesday early release day to Monday the week of conferences to make up for the lost hour of uninterrupted prep that week, HR has not given me a final answer. Their initial answer was “no,” but they are still considering it, so I’ll keep you all posted if anything changes.
• Artist in Residence Possibility – I’ve been working with LaneArts to see whether they knew of any grant fund to help us get another Artist in Residence this year. They knew of a matching grant from Market of Choice and I spoke with Brandi, our PTO President, who thinks the PTO could probably afford a thousand dollars or so (pending approval at a future PTO meeting). With 18 classrooms, we’d need a 3-week residence, which would be about $2,450 without prep or materials, though if we chose a performing arts artist, they are significantly cheaper, more around $1,400. We’ve usually done our artists at the end of the school year, but we’ll probably want to settle on one sometime before January so we can get our preferred dates. If you’d like to start looking at artists, here a link to the LaneArts Artist in Residence webpage.
• “Promise of Oregon” Student Portrait Opportunity – This is a repeat of an email I sent last week about a very cool opportunity from the Promise Oregon campaign for our school to interview some of our students. District office staff were very impressed with a kindergartner in Kealy’s class who visited them at the school board retreat and are hoping to interview him for this video series, along about 15-20 other Howard students of various backgrounds, ethnicities, ability, gender, etc. to share their dream. A few examples are:
• “I am the Promise of Oregon because I want to build a robot that can test the soil and help farmers find ways to use less water.”
• “I am the Promise of Oregon because I’m going to be a wildland firefighter like my dad.”
• “I am the Promise of Oregon because when I grow up I want to be like Spiderman and help people.”They’ll also do a more in-depth interview with 3-4 students, like the student in Kealy’s class, who have particularly interesting, poignant, or powerful stories. Please let me know by Wednesday if you know of students who you think would be good to interview or share their dream and I will contact their families about setting up a time for them to be interviewed here at school.
• UO International Cultural Service Program (ICSP) – UO international students are again available this fall, winter, and spring to visit classrooms to share their culture. They are available to give talks, presentations, panel discussions and performances, or work with song, dance, crafts and games. For an up to date list of available ICSP students, please visit the ICSP website. If you’d like to request a visit ICSP Student Request website. You can also see them in action at this short film.
• 211 App – I just learned about a 211 iOS app at last Wednesday’s CARE Team meeting. You probably already know about the 211 website, which is great for directing families towards different community resources, ranging from housing, to food, to counseling, to just about every possible social service. The app does the same thing, but I could see it being very handy if you’re ever talking to a parent and you quickly want to reference potential resources to share.
• Fidgeters of the World, Unite! – In this New York Times article, Gretchen Reynolds has advice for teachers who tell fidgeting students to just sit still: let them tap their toes and jiggle their legs. Why? Because fidgeting is good for their health.
• 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:
October 2 (SU)
National Custodial Worker DayOctober 3 (M)
Bianca Out through 10/14
12:20-12:35, Allan & Matt at Safety Patrol Training (Community Room)
2:30-5:00, Allan to Pay Grace Evaluation Meeting (Ed Center)October 4 (T)
8:15-11:15, Allan to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
1:15, Allan Reading to Class
2:30, Allan Meeting With BestOctober 5 (W)
Cookie Dough Sale Fundraiser Ends
No Title 1 Wednesday
4:15-5:15, Allan to North Region Administrators’ Meeting (Kelly MS)October 6 (H)
9:00-11:00, Allan to ILT Meeting (Ed Center) CANCELLED
9:30-10:00, Allan Meeting with Pacific University (Office)
5:45-7:00, Curriculum Night• 5:45 Childcare Drop Off
• 6:00-6:25 for Session 1
• 6:30-6:55 for Session 2October 7 (F)
Howard PD Day
8:00-10:30, Staff Meeting (Mellissa’s Room, B203)
10:30-12:00, First Aid Full-Course Part 1
12:30-3:30, First Aid Full-Course Part 2
1:00, Allan to Principal Standards Overview Conference (Ed Center)October 10 (M)
BEST Starts
Strings Academy BeginsOctober 11 (T)
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Mellissa’s Room, B203)October 12 (W)
Wacky Wednesday – Favorite Color DayOctober 13 (H)
Regular DayOctober 14 (F)
State In-Service Day (non-contract day for licensed staff, regular work day for classified and admin staff)
Enjoy your first of two four-day weeks!
Allan
