http://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=7223
Howdy Fabulous Howard Staff,
I hope you all enjoyed your well deserved three-day weekend! We have a full week this week before conferences next week and then the Thanksgiving holiday break!
Fifteen items of note for this week:
• Staffing Updates – I’m excited to announce that we’ve hired Mariah Phifer for the 2nd grade job-share with Mellissa. Mariah is a familiar face around the building because she is currently student teaching with Ashley and will officially begin job-sharing with Mellissa as soon as HR helps her obtain an emergency teaching license. She will finish up her TSPC required work sample in Ashley’s room this week and will then switch over to Mellissa’s room to finish her student teaching, but will teach the regular job-share hours with a licensed sub in the classroom as the teacher-of-record. Please welcome Mariah to the AMAZING Howard Team!
• Updated LEL (Learning About Elementary Learning) Schedule – Linked here is the revised LEL Classroom Visitation Schedule for the LEL visit to Howard this Wednesday. The LEL group will meet in the Community Room and will break into four groups who will visit four classroom each for one 20-minute chunk between 9:00-12-50. Let me know ASAP if you see any problems with the schedule.
• No Parking at River Road Park & Rec – I received an email from River Road Park & Recreation (AKA Emerald Park) asking that Howard staff refrain from using their main parking lot. Parking on the street is perfectly legal and I do appreciate staff leaving parking spaces in Howard’s small parking lot, but Emerald Park does need their main parking lot available for their users.
• Care Team Referrals – The November Student Care Team is in two weeks and any new referrals to the team are due the Tuesday before Thanksgiving Break. Families tend to share a lot at conferences, so you might want to have some of the 4J Release Forms (editable PDF and non-editable PDF) on hand to get signed if any situations come up where the Care Team might be able to provide assistance. Common referrals, though not limited to, are:
• Homeless or impending homelessness
• Medical concerns about the child or other family
• Counseling or mental health needs
• Death of a parent
• Incarcerated parent
• Unknown if open child welfare case
• Domestic Violence
• Extreme behavior issues
• Specific resource needed but unknown where to referTry to get a signature on the 4J Release Form, but if you can’t, you can also refer “hypothetical” student or family situations. Let me know if you have any questions.
• Holiday Resource Guide – Related to the above, our Self Sufficiency Program contact at DHS shared with me the 2017 Holiday Resource Guide in both English and Spanish. There may be additional holiday resources, so please encourage families to contact 211 as well (online, phone, text or email). Some of the deadlines for holiday gifts are coming soon!
• Howard Staff Social: Potters Quarter, Friday – Howard’s Social Committee (Katie, Linda, Ashley, and Shelley) have set up a time at The Potters’ Quarter (110 Oakway Center) to paint pottery Friday the 17th at 4:00. Get it on your calendar and come join the fun!
• Conferences Items of Note – Several items related to conferences coming up next week:
• Specialists & Classified Staff – The district expectation for licensed specialists (Title, SPED, ELD, Music, PE, etc.) during conferences is they need to be working during conferences in some capacity and are to be available to families if they would like to meet. For classifieds staff, Tuesday, Nov. 21st and Wednesday, Nov. 22nd are regular work days unless you have trade time saved up (see below for one opportunity). Let me know if you have any questions on this.
• Allan Available for Conferences – If teachers have any tricky conferences and would like me to attend, just let me know and I’ll put it on my calendar.
• PTO Provided Dinners – Our awesome PTO is again providing dinner for teachers working late during parent teacher conferences. I believe the plan is for a Taco Bar one night and a Soup & Salad dinner the other night.
• Title 1 Compacts – Corianne shared this information last month, but please remember the following:
• PLEASE DO NOT SEND COMPACTS HOME TO GET THEM SIGNED
• If we can only get you and the student to sign, then make a photocopy for Title 1, and THEN the original will be sent home to be signed. If it comes back, great! If it doesn’t, no biggie. We’ll have the copy showing we tried.
• PLEASE have families sign these at conferences.
• Once you have signed compacts, please return them to Corianne• Parent Reports – 4J has wisely put an end to using Quickbase, but they have not yet finished putting together a replacement parent report, which compiled attendance and standardized test scores into one report. I know most teachers liked to use this at conferences, but I suspect it will not be ready until the next report card grading period, so please plan accordingly.
• Parent-Teacher Conference Tips from NEA – There are quite a few resources available on the NEA website to assist teachers in preparing for and conducting conferences. My own favorite advice is to just listen to parents, which is something I learned from my mentor teacher back in my student teacher days. He started every conference by saying “How do things look on your end?” which I copied and always thought was a good way for families to share whatever was on their mind, instead of me launching into my spiel and making them wait to share.
• Thanksgiving Classroom Reminder – As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, I wanted to send out my annual reminder regarding how Thanksgiving is taught in classrooms. Keep in mind that student perceptions of Native Americans often come from classroom activities around the First Thanksgiving. The conception of Native Americans gained from such early exposure is often both inaccurate and potentially damaging. When planning activities, be aware that what most of us learned in school about the “Pilgrims” and “Squanto” and the “First Thanksgiving” is a mixture of both history and myth. Thanksgiving activities should avoid reinforcing historical myths and should avoid stereotypes (ie. NO warbonnets). It’s best to shift the focus away from the “First Thanksgiving” and instead focus on items children can be thankful for in their own lives and on their families’ celebrations of Thanksgiving. Some resources on what to avoid and what to teach can be found at Teaching Tolerance and Education World. Here is a good article with a Native American perspective on Thanksgiving as well as one on The True Story of the First Thanksgiving. Also, the 4J Natives Program is available for classroom presentations year-round and can offer an accurate picture of Native American culture.
• North Region Visioning Process Events & Volunteer Opportunity – There has already been one community visioning meeting and one staff visioning meeting, and both were sparsely attended, so 4J is making a much more concerted effort to get a better turnout at the two remaining meetings by providing childcare, offering food, and wider advertising.
SPANISH/ESPAÑOL: Childcare will be available and light meal will be provided to attendees
Thursday, November 16 / jueves, 16 de noviembre, 5:30–7:30 p.m.
River Road/El Camino del Río Elementary School, 120 W. Hilliard Lane.
(RSVP or invite friends on Facebook)ENGLISH: Childcare and meal information TBA
Tuesday, December 5, 5:30–7:30 p.m.
Kelly Middle School, 850 Howard Ave.
(RSVP or invite friends on Facebook)We’re particularly wanting to reach out to Spanish speaking families for this Thursday’s Spanish language event, if teachers can make any personal contact by phone or in person with your Spanish speaking families. Minimally, please send home the linked Spanish Event Flyer, which I’ll put out copies of by staff mailboxes.
Additionally, we’d love too have any staff willing to volunteer at the Spanish Language Visioning Event, whether you are bilingual or monolingual, we can use help welcome families, to help direct folks, serve food, assist with child care, etc. I can offer trade time for classified staff members, which you might want to cash next week during conferences Tuesday or the teacher comp day on Wednesday. Please let me know by the end of this soon if you’ll be able to help. I’ll be there!
• Safety Reminder – Folks likely heard about the fire at Corridor last week. The fire was caused by a science kit being too close to a baseboard heater. Howard doesn’t have baseboard heathers, but it is a good reminder to keep anything combustable (papers, boxes, books, wood shelves, etc.) away from anything that might heat up (electronics, power strips, and especially space heaters). With space heaters, keep anything that can burn at least three feet away. Linked here is a Safety Reminder Email principals were sent by the Facilities Department and below is a 30-second PSA regarding portable heaters.
• Classroom Temperatures – Speaking of heaters and cold weather, I’ve heard from a number to staff that rooms are too cold. Not that we can do much about this, but as an FYI, the heating set point is 69 degrees, which is actually a degree higher than the board-directed 68 degree minimum. However, if you think your thermostat is off, we do have a laser temperature gun to check classrooms surface temperatures. Also, don’t forget the string cheese trick.
• REPEAT: PTO Meeting, Tuesday, Nov. 14 – This Tuesday is the November PTO meeting. Meetings are now back to the small group of dedicated regular parents, so it’s great if we can have staff volunteer their time to come show support. This is the meeting where they’re finalizing plans for staff meals during conferences!
• Workshop Opportunities – Principals were asked to share the following workshop opportunities:
• Dr. Monty Neill at EEA – Tuesday, Nov. 28, 3:45-4:45 at the EEA/SEA Building, 4J staff are invited to join Dr. Monty Neill, Executive Director of FairTest. The National Center for Fair & Open Testing has been working for over 30 years to end the misuses and flaws of standardized testing and to ensure that the evaluation of students, teachers and schools is fair, open, valid, and educationally beneficial.
• Careers in Our Community Workshop – The linked Careers in Our Community flyer outlines a professional development opportunity to explore local industries. The goal of the course is to inform educators of job opportunities and skill sets needed in our local economy, so that educators can inform students of these opportunities.
• Free TAG workshop for Teachers: Writing TAG Plans – Erin shared this earlier, but on Tuesday, Nov. 14 at 3:30 at Holt will be a workshop for teachers to learn about effective classroom strategies for teaching TAG students. This will include resources and time for collaboration for writing TAG plans, which I know many teachers are in the midst of writing to go over with families at conferences. Speakers will share ideas, books, resources and strategies. Linked here is the TAG Workshop flyer.
• Handy Links – Here’s the registration link for Instructional Technology Workshops. Contact Misty Jackson (x7567) for help. And visit the Lane ESD Workshops and Trainings webpage for a list of upcoming workshops and trainings.
• Calling All Learners and Teachers for Hour of Code 2017 – An hour of coding is a fun beginner’s experiment for teachers or parents to do with kids and is actually a great activity for students to do all year long. Running December 4–10, see this Edutopia article for many Hour of Code resources make it easy as well. If you have any favorite you’d like me to add to the “Links for Learners” on the Howard website, just let me know.
• Schedule of Upcoming Events – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for the next two weeks:
November 13 (M)
TAG Testing Window Opens (Nov. 13-17)
3:15, Allan to Truancy Hearing (Office)November 14 (T)
11:50-1:45, 3rd Grade to Symphony (Hult Center)
12:00, Allan Covering Classroom
3:00-7:00, 4J First Aid Class (Library)
3:30, Free TAG workshop for teachers – Writing TAG Plans (Holt)
6:00-7:00, PTO Meeting (Community Room)November 15 (W)
Title 1 Progress Monitoring Day – No Groups
8:00-3:15, Learning About Learning (LEL) Visit (Community Room)
9:00, Deadline for Conference Spanish Translations
2:30-3:30, PBIS Meeting (Rae’s Room, Room 1)November 16 (H)
No BEST After School
3:30-5:30, 4J Kinder Core Team Meeting (STEAM Room)
5:30-7:30, Spanish North Region Visioning Community Engagement Event! (River Road)November 17 (F)
No BEST After School
7:30-9:00, Allan to 4JMAPS Meeting
4:00, Howard Staff Social – The Potters’ Quarter
5:00-8:00, PTO Family Movie Night – “Cars 3” (Cafeteria/Gym)November 18 (SA)
10:10, 5th Grade Optional “Wonder” Movie Event (Cinemark 17)November 20 (M)
4:00-8:00, Parent/Teacher Conferences
4:00-5:30, Allan to All Admin Meeting (Ed Center)November 21 (T)
8:00-8:00, Parent Teacher Conferences
Student Care Team Referrals DueNovember 22 (W)
No School – Teacher Comp Day for Conferences
Regular Work Day for Classified StaffNovember 23 (H)
No School – Thanksgiving BreakNovember 24 (F)
No School – Thanksgiving Break
Have a fab week, everyone!
Allan
