October 29, 2018

By Allan  

 

Howdy All,

We survived last week’s full moon, so now it’s on to surviving Halloween!

Fourteen items of note for this week:

• Charis McGaughy, 4J Assistant Superintendent, Visiting Howard Wednesday – Charis, 4J’s Assistant Superintendent, is visiting Howard on Wednesday from 9:00-11:30 (yes, on Halloween). She’s planning to meet with me for a bit and will then wander the school and visit classrooms. And I did warn her that since this is Halloween things are going to be nuttier than usual.

• PBIS and SEL Reminders – Four PBIS and Social Emotional Learning reminders:

• Roadrunner Tail Feather Reminder – Write those tail feathers! Remember that we are in the midst of a tail feather challenge, culminating in a school wide pumpkin hunt on Wednesday, November 7th. Classes need to earn at least 12 tail feathers before then. All staff should challenge yourself to write at least 2 tail feathers this week. See Rae’s earlier email for Pumpkin Hunt details.

• Second Step: Nov. is Bully Prevention Month – I do realize Second Step is one more thing, but I’m a believer in explicitly teaching kids about social emotional topics in order to make them kinder humans, so teachers should know that you have my full permission for skip even core subject areas to make time for Second Step lessons (I think being a good human is more important than fractions). If you’ve been able to keep up with the Second Step Pacing Guide, classes should be moving into the Bully Prevention Units this month. If you haven’t gotten though all the prior units, I’d encourage teachers to skip ahead and teach these important lessons.

• November PBIS Focus: Appreciations – The November PBIS monthly focus is Appreciations. The PBIS team created a PBIS/CSC Cheat Sheet that matches our monthly PBIS themes with corresponding Caring School Community class meeting lessons, which is a nice way to tie the two activities together.

• “Star Student” Bus Slips = Beep, Beeps – Teachers, remember that the “Star Student” bus slips can be used by students just the same as Beep Beeps. “Star Student” bus slips are one of the few tools bus drivers have for encouraging positive behavior. On a related note, the 5th grade Safety Patrol positive slips also count the same as Beep, Beeps.

• Planting Seeds of Empathy in Classrooms – If teachers need some reasons to make the time to teach Second Step: “Empathy is at the core of everything that makes a school caring, a teacher responsive, and a society civilized,” says educational psychologist and speaker Michele Borba in this Educational Leadership article. “When empathy wanes, narcissism, distrust, aggression, bullying, and hate rise – and schools suffer.” Borba cites research indicating that American teenagers are 40 percent less empathetic than they were three decades ago. Kids today may seem smart and self-assured, but they’re also more self-centered, competitive, individualistic, sad, and stressed than any previous generation. Hence the focus in many schools on social-emotional skills, including empathy – the ability to understand the feelings and needs of others. A high level of empathy has been linked to better behavior, classroom engagement, communication skills, and academic achievement. Borba believes that empathy consists of nine teachable competencies, which you canreadin the above linked article.

• Names for October Book Winners – For newbies to Howard, we do a monthly book winner from each classroom, where the teacher picks one student who met their monthly reading goal and those students get to come to the office to pick a free book. October Book Winners will be Wednesday, November 7th at 9:00 in the Conference Room. We’ll make an announcement at 9:00 for teachers to send students down. Teachers should write your winners down on the sheet by staff mailboxes, so we can have their certificates ready.

• Parent/Teacher Conference Updates – Several items of note for conferences:

• 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, Nov. 8th and 9th are regular work days unless you have trade time saved up. 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.

• Title 1 Compacts – Teachers will get class sets of Title 1 compacts before conferences. 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 Report Update – Instruction Department data folks let me know we will have parent reports in time for conferences on Monday, November 5th. They said the reports may be missing SBAC scores, but should include the other information from last year. I’ll put these in teacher mailboxes as soon as I get them.

• PTO Provided Dinners – Our awesome PTO is again providing dinner for staff working late during parent teacher conferences. I believe the plan is for a pot-luck the first night and P.F Changs the second night.

• REPEAT: FREE Massages! Sign-Up by Friday – LCC Massage Therapy students will be on hand Wednesday (two students 4:00-7:00) and Thursday (one student 9:00-12:00) to give teachers doing conferences FREE massages. I forgot to put up the sign-up sheet on the Staff Room whiteboard, but will do it on Monday. Put your name down by Friday, Nov 2nd if you’d like one (or two).

• Student Care Team Resources – Below and also on the Google Team Drive are several resources that came out of last week’s Student Care Team meeting:

• Resources for Veterans – Linked here are Resources for Veterans and their families, inclining assistance with housing, employment, counseling, health care, education, and other services.

• Aging and Disability Resource Connection of Oregon (ADRC) – They will help anyone, regardless of age or income, if you are looking for information about services to address aging or disability needs, connecting people with local public and privately paid options. Contact ADRC of Oregon by calling toll-free 1-855-ORE-ADRC or 1-855-673-2372, or by contacting a local ADRC office or by visiting the ADRC Website.

• Ready to Rent – Ready to Rent (flyer and website) is for those finding it difficult to locate housing due to barriers such as eviction or credit. It’s is a renter’s education course open to low income members of the Lane County. Participants attend 6 session housing readiness education classes, where they work closely with housing specialists and peers to identify and address common barriers to obtaining rental housing, create a workable budget and prioritize housing needs, develop a housing search plan, understand the housing application and rental process, as well a learning their rights as a tenant and how to ommunicate effectively with your landlord, avoiding common behaviors that lead to evictions or lease terminations.

• Rental Assistance: Moving Forward with a Past – Those with a section 8 voucher who are having difficulty due to poor rental history, credit, criminal background can work with Travis Baker, Landlord Liaison, at Homes for Good. His phone number is 541-682-2602. The linked document Moving Forward with a Past has extensive tips for people in this situation.

• State Report Cards Released – ODE unexpectedly released the new state report cards (now rebranded “at-a-glance school profiles”) last Wednesday. They were originally delayed until November until ODE had plans in place for selecting comprehensive and targeted schools for improvement and how they wanted districts to address improvement. Generally speaking, our scores are about the same as similar 4J schools. See the district Oregon Publishes 2017–18 School Reports webpage to view report cards for all 4J schools.

• Library Update – The latest update on the library from Julie:

Library News! – Update on my return date. Sadly, downtown has decided that there is potential for injury with my weight limitations. They have pushed my return date out to November 24th. I am working on coverage for the library for the majority of November. Cheri will be covering a good portion of my days including library classes :) I know she will take good care of my library and she know everyone! Thank you Cheri! An update list of who is covering for library I am hoping to have out to you by Monday or Tuesday of this week. Thank you for being patient with me and my healing process. Miss you all!

Monday Ailson & Cheri
Tuesday Cheri
Wednesday Cheri
Thursday Brande :)
Friday waiting for replies

If your kids have over due library books, please – please remind to return their books. I will send out over due notices via email in the next couple of days. With new students coming in I would appreciate it if they would keep their books at school for now. If you have students who are moving possibly, let’s have them keep their books at school also. I have lost a couple already this year. :)

OBOB – Oh, boy do I feel out of touch with the kids. Please encourage them to keep reading even though I’m not there. Sadly, the OBOB lunches will not resume until November 28th. Students should think of making up teams. If some students have teams formed shoot me an email, this will give me an opportunity to see who may not have a team. As I am working on OBOB at home. We made up folders for the kids. Maybe, Cheri will have time to finish them up and can put them in your mail boxes. Priscilla and I are working on study questions.

I do check my emails frequently during the day if you need anything. I am running things from home. :) while resting.

Have a great week! Happy Halloween!

• Blinds Updates: Nearly Fixed – 4J Facilities staff have narrowed down the issues and have a temporary fix. There are two motherboards that control the blinds and one of them went bad. See this email if you want the detailed explanation, but all blind controls should be working, although the response time will be slow until we get the second motherboard replaced. Facilities also changed the timer on the blinds so that only the blinds in front of the school will go down at night and custodial staff will manually close the other blinds, which should lessen the issue of furniture obstructing blinds when they come down and causing them to jam. Interior blinds will stay up all the time, although we can still drop them with the panic button in the office.

• Class Dojo and Code.org on Clever – A highlight from last week’s Technology Leadership Team (TLT) meeting is that we learned both Class Dojo and Code.org will automatically roster your students through Clever. If you need help setting this up, email Peggy at 4jdesktop@4j.lane.edu

• Monthly Walk + Roll to School Day – Safe Routes to Schools is trying to promote more walking and rolling to school, and are trying out a Monthly Walk + Roll to School Day. We’ll send home information in the newsletter about the event, although it won’t be as big of a production with prizes or the walking school bus, but it will be a way to encourage students to find safe alternative ways to school that do not involve driving.

• REPEAT: Halloween Costume Parade, Wednesday @8:10 – Linked here is the Costume Parade Route & Directions, but note that we are NOT GOING INTO CLASSROOMS. Upstairs Buddy Classrooms will join their downstairs Buddy Classrooms at 8:05. At 8:10 Suzy’s class will lead the Parade Train. Families may watch from the courtyards or commons areas (or join the parade). Classroom parties may be held at teacher discretion. And staff, remember to keep your costumes on after school for our staff picture in the Library Story Cove!

• REPEAT: Texas Roadhouse Lunch, Nov. 2nd! – The Texas Roadhouse is providing us with a Staff Appreciation Luncheon this Friday, so mark your calendars for 10:30 this date and bring your appetite!

• 21 Things Teachers Do Every Single Day But Don’t Get Recognized For – Everyone is aware of the usual teacher responsibilities, such as grading papers, writing lesson plans, and attending staff meetings. But anyone who has been in the classroom knows there’s a whole lot more to the job. Not everybody knows about the numerous day-to-day duties that sometimes overwhelm teachers and interfere with actual teaching. Take a gander at this List by WeAreTeachers. I need total a nap just reading it.

• Schedule of Upcoming Events – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for the rest of the year:

October 29 (M)
Lori Out
2:40-3:30, Site Council Meeting (Conference Room)

October 30 (T)
2:40-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Erin’s Room, RM22)

October 31 (W)
8:10-8:40, Halloween Costume Parade
2:40, Staff Costume Photo! (Library Story Cove)

November 1 (H)
PBIS Monthly Theme – Appreciations

November 2 (F)
Title 1 Progress Monitoring Day – No Groups
10:30-1:00, Texas Roadhouse Catered Lunch (Staff Room)
1:25, EA Supervisors Meeting (Title 1 Room, RM26)
2:30-3:30, Early Release PD – Behavior Framework Module 5 (Erin’s Room, RM22)

November 4 (SU)
Daylight Saving Time Ends “Fall Back”

November 5 (M)
Regular Day

November 6 (T)
Regular Day

November 7 (W)
PBIS Tail Feather – Pumpkin Hunt
Monthly Walk & Roll to School Day
9:00, Monthly Book Winners (Conference Room)
2:30, Howard Ukulele Ensemble Begins (Music Room)
2:30-4:30, Allan to Pay Grade Evaluation Committee (Ed Center)
4:00-5:00, Allan to North Region Principals’ Meeting (NEHS) SKIPPING
4:00-8:00, Parent/Teacher Conferences

November 8 (H)
8:00-8:00, No School – Parent/Teacher Conferences
2:00-2:40, Allan to his kids’ conferences

November 9 (F)
Regular Work Day for Classified Staff
No School Licensed Staff – Conferences Comp Day

November 12 (M)
Veterans Day – No School

Have a spooky week, everyone!

Allan