Week of September 2nd
Week of September 1st Schedule of Events
Monday, September 1st
Labor Day
Tuesday, September 2nd
Teacher Planning-8:00-2:45 PM
Open House 2:45-3:45 PM – See note below.
Wednesday, September 3rd
First Day of School-2014-2015
Early Release at 1:40
1:40-2:40 Collaborative Planning Time with your Grade Level Team or Specialists
Thursday, September 4th
School Wide BBQ 6:00-8:00 PM
Friday, September 5th
Green Team Meeting at 2:45 with GPS
Happy Friday
Hi all,
I had a great three day weekend and I hope you did too. I have not had a chance to get all of our PD materials listed in the tabs above yet, but will work on this during the day tomorrow. You can expect all the materials from PD sessions to be up with the exception of some of the Caring for Kid’s Planning materials. I have those in paper in case you missed it. Erin Gaston will probably get those to me in electronic form by the end of the week. I hope you all get settled in nicely to your routines. Enjoy getting to know your students. I am especially excited to get to know them this fall. In fact, I haven’t been this excited for the start of school since well, maybe 1984 when I started 5th grade.
I changed my blog address this week to remove the Awbrey Park reference. We are now Camino staff! Please bookmark this new address.
Here are some items of note for the week:
• Open House Procedures: Staff should greet families in your classrooms from 2:45 to 3:45. I will come on the PA to thank families for their visit at 2:40 and encourage them to go home. Please collect fees in your classroom of $ 25. This will help reduce the lines in the cafeteria for paying fees. Provide a receipt for them and keep track on a roll sheet. Edna will get these to you tomorrow before the open house. If families choose to, they can pay in the cafeteria. Families can pay for more than one child at once in your room IF you keep track of all payments. Edna, Yasmin, and any licensed specialists (Sarah, Karen, Bryan, Aline) available are encouraged to support fee payment and bus information distribution in the cafeteria.
• Supervision First Week of School – All available staff should help supervise in the morning out front and in the hallway areas. Students and buses generally start arriving at 7:50. Staff should also help out at dismissal in the bus area and by the front of the building near the sign. Even if you are not on the supervision list, please make yourself very visible on the first few days. It makes a big difference to relieve all those new school jitters and it’s just helpful.
• Staffing Updates – PE Position to be interviewed this week. We have not hired a Temporary PE position yet due to a lack of applicants. Still, just this weekend, a couple new applicants were referred in NEOGOV. Allan Chinn and my self will be reviewing these applicants and most likely doing interviews within a week. In the meantime, there will a a guest PE teacher to begin the PE schedule. The first day for PE is Thursday and a PE teacher should be here. Music also begins this week with David Adee.
Due to a large kinder class (85 at last count), I am lobbying the district to increase staffing for our kinder EA’s. I will keep you all up to date on how we are doing with that and if we get more hours to support kinder soon.
• PBIS Focus: Virtudes de Ganas PRIDE Focus is Respect– The September PBIS monthly focus is a great connection to your CFK Morning Meetings. Once you get beyond names and greetings, consider using respect as a theme for the month of September/October for conversation.
• Classroom Newsletters – Please forward me electronic copies of classroom newsletters (electronic version preferred) when teachers send/email them home to families. This helps me keep up to date on what’s happening (or going to happen) in classes, and also lets me know details of any class activities that I might be able to get the local media to come out and cover. I love promoting our school!
• District Mandatory Policy Review for all Staff – Attached and linked here is the District Back-to-School Memo, which ALL staff must review and sign & return the acknowledgement form to Edna no later than Friday, September 26th.
• Camino del Río Staff Handbook Review – Attached is the updated Staff Handbook for 2014-2015. All staff must review the handbook and sign & return the acknowledgement form to Edna by Friday, September 26th.
• Principal Visits to Classrooms to Read and Greet – I’d like to again visit every classroom sometime during the first couple weeks of school to greet students. I’ll read a favorite story to your class and chat with the kids a bit. Teachers, please let me know a good 15-20 minute block of time to come and visit in Spanish or English. Thank you!
• TAG Identified Students – Jennifer and I will be reviewing any TAG identified students in the next week. We will send you an email to ensure you are aware of the student needs. We may be meeting to revise TAG Plans as needed.
• Information Supplied for Guest Teachers – In this email from HR is a list of suggested information/items that teachers should consider when preparing lesson plans for Guest Teachers. With the goal being seamless transition and a successful day when our permanent staff are out, it is essential that our Guest Teachers receive the best information possible.
• 4J Admin Updates – Maddie Ahearn is the new Math Curriculum Administrator for the 2014/15 school year. Maddie was previously a math teacher leader in 4J, working at North Eugene and Roosevelt. I was on the interview team that helped hire Maddie into 4j in 2010 and am happy to see her take on such an important role in our district. Before coming to Eugene 4J in 2010, she worked in Baltimore Maryland as a math instructional coach and teacher. Randi Bowers-Payne was just hired for the Risk Manager Administrator position. In Lansing, Michigan, Randi acted as the entire Human Resource department for a Regional Education Service Agency.
• Dept. of Ed. projects public schools will be ‘majority-minority’ this fall – If we needed an additional reason to focus on issues of race and equity, a milestone is expected to be reached this fall when minorities outnumber whites among the nation’s public school students for the first time, U.S. Department of Education projections show. This is due largely to fast growth in the number of Hispanic and Asian school-age children born in the U.S., according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.
That’s all for now. Have a great week.
Joel
Announcements, Back to School, Equity, Open House | Comment (0)