Week of April 27

April 30th is el día de los niños, also known as el dia de los libros. Celebrate with our young ones by making time to read to them.

 What’s happening in our school and district?

• Downtown Admin Updates – Interim Directors for HR and Finance have been announced. HR Director, Sarah Brown’s last day was last Friday and Howard parent Cydney Vandercar will be serving as the Interim Director of Human Resources. Cydney has over 22 years serving in 4J, as both a teacher and as an administrator. Simone Sangster also had her last day this past week and Andrea Belz will be serving as the Interim Chief Financial Officer/Director of Support Services. Andrea has been Associate Director of Financial Services since September of 2013.

• Risk Management Bulletin – If you’re interested, attached is the April Risk Bulletin that was sent to principals. Highlights include Safety Smarties, Form reminders, Work Comp trends and Free Trainings.

• Learning to Be “Good” – Can kindness be taught? If so, whose job is it to teach it? Read what scientists and educators have to say in this Teaching Tolerance post. Grant advocates an approach for dealing with uncaring behavior by express disappointment in the action rather than the person, explaining why the action was wrong and how it affected others.

• Story Telling Schedule for Wednesday: Thaston Riklon will return this week. He is a resident of the Marshall Islands who tell stories of his culture. His stories were well received by the students and connected closely to Earth Day and oceans last week. He will continue to share in classrooms once a week on Wednesdays throughout the Spring. Sessions are a half hour each.

8:30-Skoubo

9:00- Screen

9:30- open for a 3,4,5 session -dependent on SBAC testing, approach me for a session.

10:00- Randall

10:30- Hellman

SST Focus this week – The focus in SST this week will be to describe our plan for AIMS4S3 implementation, discuss dual language fundamentals consistency for next year, and next steps in literacy for 2015-2016. We will also discuss how staffing will support sustainability of the program.  SLD staffing will be discussed.

ATDLE Reservations– We have gotten all the confirmations for ATDLE and will begin to schedule teachers for the trip. Edna will be sending the forms required for out of state travel to the Superintendents office this week.

OABE Registration– We will begin to register staff for OABE Conference this week. Edna will contact you if you indicated that you wanted to go.

Moving the Garden and other Design Updates– Like I mentioned last week, the garden will have to move due to the construction happening this summer.  All the property west of the 5th grade wing will be off limits until the new building is complete.  This area will be fenced off with a construction fence in the first or second week in June.

Busing changes due to construction– Jon Lauch and other facilities employees came by this last week to help with our busing issues and to support us during construction. The buses will pick up and drop off our students in front of the school next year. The buses will be routed so there is no need to turn around on Hilliard and they can leave straight from campus.  They will be putting in gravel driveways in our lawn space for the buses over the Summer in order to accommodate this change.  This will be temporary until the new building is completed. The current bus drop off zone will become an area for our families to drop off.   This will create more space for our parents to drop off students and keep them contained from the busy end of the building during construction. The plan is to have two lanes for drop off. It will also mean an increase in students entering school through the front entrance. Here are the notes from our Design Meeting on April 23. Our last design meeting of the year is May 21.

Fiesta is on!– As you all know, Fiesta is on this upcoming Friday.  If you have any forms or information about parent help, please pass it on to Maja so we can make this event a big success. This last week we were concerned that we would not have enough volunteers but our parents came through with the help we need.

Dia de los Ninos Activities – Here is an article by the famous author Monica Brown in the New Latina article .  Last month, some of you had the opportunity to meet Monica. There will not be an assembly this week for dia de los niños as there was in the past, but that does not mean you can’t celebrate this week!  Take time to read books to your students and have some fun with them listening to stories. It will be time well spent and help students connect to an important tradition in many Latino countries.

What is coming up on the calendar?

April 27 (M)
Smarter Balanced Testing Continues

Joel doing informal observations all morning.

10:15-11:15, Joel in Formal Observation

1:00-2:15- Title 1 PLT Session   (Ed Center)
2:45-3:45, Site Council Meeting (Conference Room)
3:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)

April 28 (T)
8:00-12:00, ODE SST Meeting

12:20-1:00,  Joel in Formal Observation

1:00-2:00, Joel, Carmen, Jennifer, John Lockhart Meeting (Joel’s Office)

2:45-3:45, Staff Meeting

Agenda:

1. Joel shares about the conference with Anthony Muhammad: Transforming School Culture
2. End of the year Calendar Events
3. Leadership discussions for 2015-2016
4. Scheduling Committee Formation

5:00-6:00, ACE Awards Reception (Hult Center Lobby)
6:00-7:00, ACE Awards Ceremony – Ticketed Event (Hult Center, Silva Concert Hall)

April 29 (W)

12:00-1:00, Joel in a formal observation

1:45-2:45, Grade level PLC time (all teachers in the library)

2:45-3:45- Uninterrupted Teacher planning time.
3:45-5:15, Joel and KG Teachers to Full-Day KG Implementation Meeting (Ed Center)

Extended contract paid to the teachers who attend.

April 30 (H)
8:30-11:00, Kindergarten Field Trip

8:00-3:30, Joel at the ODE Coaches/Principal Meeting – (Eugene Hilton)

4:00-6:00 PM- Kelly/ ECDR Interviews at Kelly MS Conference Room ( 1.0 FTE -a combined 0.4 elementary position and 0.6 MS position), Dinner will be provided. I will pay extended contract to participants as well. Invited are: Jill Torres, Megan Murphy, Nikita Brougher, Aline Baissac, Karen Ramirez Guttierez plus the Kelly Team.

May 1 (F)
No School – PD Planning Day
8:00-10:00, Professional Development  with Robyn Duran and Carmen Urbina (Library)

10:00-12:30, Planning time and lunch.
12:30-3:00, Senderos Training

3:00-4:00, Planning time

3:00- Joel meets with Randi Bowers Payne at ECDR.

Fiesta begins at 5:00!

May 4 (M)
Teacher Appreciation Week
Smarter Balanced Testing Continues

10:15-11:15, Formal Observation

3:00 -4:00, School to Garden Planning Meeting (Conference Room)

May 5 (T)

8:30-9:30, El Gato Assembly for all students, a Spanish language play put on by the Upstart Crow Company

May 6 (W)

Oregon Substitute Teacher Day
8:00-12:00, Joel, Karen, & Aline to Title 1 Coordinators/Principal/ESC Work Session (Ed Center)

1:45-2:45, Grade level PLC time (all teachers in the library)

2:45-3:45- Uninterrupted Teacher planning time.

4:00-5:00, Joel to North Region Principals’ Meeting (NEHS)

May 8 (H)

2:45-3:45, Mod Squad Meeting (IPBS)

May 8 (F)

Joel leaves at noon to attend his niece’s Jewish naming ceremony.
Have a nice four-day week, everyone!

Joel

Week of April 20

Administrative Professional Day is Wednesday, April 22 2015.

What is coming up?

April 20 (M)
8:30-9:20,Joel observes bilingual teacher candidates at (Buena Vista Elementary)
10:15-11:15, Sara Green Meeting about Super-boundary

April 21 (T)
Smarter Balanced Testing Begins
9:00-10:00, CAP Budget Planning (Conference Room)
10:30, Joel in Formal Observation of Teacher
12:00-1:00, River Road Math Follow Up with Maddy, Reid, Kathy L. (Conference Room)
3:00-4:00, PLT Meeting- Main topic End of the year calendar and planning 15-16 calendar.
4:15, Informal Interview of Bilingual Teacher (Kelly Middle School)

April 22 (W)
Earth Day
Administrative Professional’s Day (formerly Secretary’s Day)
8:30-11:15, Joel in formal observations at 8:30 and 10:15 AM
1:45-2:45, Math PLC Time (Library)

April 23 (H)
Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day

2:45-3:45, Mod Squad Meeting (IPBS)
3:00-5:00, Camino del Rio Design Committee

6:00-7:00, New Kinder Orientation

April 24 (F)
Hop Valley Friday at 4:00

April 27 (M)
2:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
2:30-3:30, Site Council Meeting (Conference Room)
7:00-8:30, Joel to River Road Community Organization Meeting

April 28 (T)
8:00-11:30, SST Meeting with ODE (Library)
2:45-3:45, Staff Meeting
5:00-6:00, ACE Awards Reception (Hult Center Lobby)
6:00-7:00, ACE Awards Ceremony – Ticketed Event (Hult Center, Silva Concert Hall)

April 29 (W)
12:45-1:30, Fiesta del Niño Assembly
1:45-2:45, Math PLC Time (Library)
3:45-5:15, Joel and KG Teachers to Full-Day KG Implementation Meeting (Ed Center)

April 30 (H)
Joel and Kathy Larson at the ODE/ Ed Northwest Principal -Coach Meeting All Day (Eugene Hilton)
2:30-3:30, PBIS Meeting (Room 21)
Fiesta Setup after 3:00 PM- 8:00 PM

May 1 (F)
No School – PD Planning Day
8:00-10:00, Professional Development (Library
10:00-12:00- Planning Time
12:30-3:00, Senderos Training
3:00-4:00, Planning Time
Fiesta begins- 5:00 PM

What is happening?

• 15/16 Specialists and Teacher Prep Time – The EEA contract requires that elementary teachers receive additional prep time next year. The plan that was shared with principals last week is that schools will continue to get one semester of PE and one semester of Music, each providing two 30 minute sessions per week during their semester. What is being added is that during the Music semester, which is first semester for Camino del Río, there will be a third 30 minute prep which will be provided by a once a week PE class. So first semester there will be two sessions of Music and one session of PE per week. Camino del Río was spoiled this year getting a full year of PE, but I did want to let everyone know that I plan to apply for this grant again next year. I will see if we can get a more quality prep time for all teachers to provide the best level of PE our building can provide.

• News from the Emerald Empire Reading Council – Here’s the April Newsletter from the Emerald Empire Reading Council. This month’s newsletter includes professional development opportunities, grant opportunities and other items, like their Annual Whine and Wine event. If you’d like more information, visit their (un-ironic 1990s style) website.

• McKinney-Vento Identified Student Count – I thought staff might find this report interesting. Deborah Dailey, the 4J McKinney-Vento (homeless) Coordinator shared a report with principals that had the total number of students identified in the district by region and by school. Camino del Rio has less than 20 students who are McKinney-Vento. Howard has very high levels of McKinney-Vento students in their school. I am concerned that the super-boundary unevenly effects our schools due to parents deciding to go to a non-language immersion program. This puts a lot of pressure on Howard and creates a barrier for these students when they have no Spanish speaking skills and are older than 7. This will be discussed in the superboundary meeting with Sara Green and Allan Chinn in early May.

• Helping Young Students Feel Positively About the Color of Their Skin – Here’s an article with some ideas about how to open the topic of skin color with young students. The activities are some that I have seen in variation, but the activities expand to include poetry writing which I believe will touch on the creative side of students’ thinking. Allowing space for this type of learning is necessary and can develop conversations and results for learners of all ages.

• May 1st PD- I am very excited that Dr. Robyn Duran will be joining us for a conversation about race and our dual language school. She will be Skyping with us from 8:00-10:00 AM on the morning of May 1st.  Carmen and Jennifer will also be helping us facilitate this ongoing conversation.

• The First Construction Pains-  I was informed that prep of the school site will begin as soon as school is out.  This means that the earth works will start right around June 15.  Unfortunately, the school garden will be razed at this time.  We will need to begin a transplanting plan for the garden as soon as possible. Also,  there will be a construction fence put up near the 5th grade wing as soon as school is out.  There will not be access to this part of the school until the new gym is completed. The new gym is expected to be complete in Fall 2016. We might have a small lapse in PE in a gym for a short period of time in 2016.  We may need to place the PE classes on portions of the playground in September and October 2016.

Spanish and the indigenous language of the region are incorporated in the curriculum (teleSUR)

I hope you all have a great week.

Joel

Week of April 13

Guanajuato, Mexico

What is coming up?

April 13 (M)

1:30-2:30, Title Coordinator & Principal Meeting (Ed Center)
2:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
7:00-8:30, Joel to River Road Community Organization Meeting (River Road Annex)

April 14 (T)

10:15-11:15, Joel and Sara Green meet about the super-boundary (Joel’s Office)
2:50-4:50, Staff Meeting (Library)

Agenda: A Conversation about Race in Dual Language Program

6:00-7:00, Parent Group Meeting in (Room 9)

April 15 (W)

8:45-2:45, Visitors from Guanajuato, Mexico (In classrooms)

1:45-2:45, PLC Collaboration Time

April 16 (H)
Joel out of the building- at the COSA Workshop “All Means All” with Anthony Muhammad

2:45-3:45, PBIS Meeting

April 17 (F)

Joel out of the building -at the COSA Workshop “All Means All” with Anthony Muhammad
12:00-3:00, BAW Teacher Leaders to Being a Writer Meeting (We need someone to go to this.)

12:00-3:00, 504  Training Meeting- Jaime  Jones attends.

6:00-8:00, Peace Jam Conference  with Rigoberta Menchu Tum- Camino del Rio Marimba Band Plays!

April 20 (M)
8:00-2:30, Fluoride Varnish Clinic at River Road

April 21 (T)

3:45-5:15, Joel to Full-Day Kindergarten Meeting (Ed Center)

April 22 (W)
Admin Professional’s Day (formerly Secretary’s Day)

Earth Day

1:45-2:45, PLC Collaboration Time

April 23 (H)
Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day

2:45-3:45, (IPBS) Mod Squad Meeting

April 24 (F)

4:00, Meet up at Hop Valley

What is going on?

• Spanish Spelling Bee A Success–  This last Friday was a very exciting day for the Spanish Spelling Bee team. Those students who participated went to Forest Grove and began the competition around 10:00 AM. Leslie and Aiden represented El Camino del Rio and 4j in the competition. In addition, we had 5 other students attend. Aiden’s father, George, and Megan Murphy brought the students all the way to and from Forest Grove. Leslie was able to place in the final 12 students of the 60 or so who competed. I am so proud that our students made it to this event.  This event is good for  our students, our program, and providing opportunities for students to have their language skills be seen as assets in the public eye.  A big thank you goes out to Hannah Golden, the Spelling Bee Coach, Megan Murphy, and the Birns family for their support.  Here is an article with pictures of our team included!

 Summer School Update –  It is a priority for parents to hear from you about Summer School. The office needs all teachers to communicate the need for Summer School directly from you.  When they hear from you it makes a huge impact on the importance of the program.  Please make those calls for your students so they can take advantage of this valuable resource.

• Expo Process Update–  I am proud to announce that we have made a permanent hire for our 1.0 ELL Position. Nancy Schaal McHarry will continue in her position for the next year.  Nancy has done a great job in her ELL classroom and has jumped at the chance to help us integrate technology in ELD lessons, create an inclusion model in kinder, design a FLOSOM oral language proficiency model for our building, and participate in our PLT.  Her team player attitude  and hard work fits nicely with the changes our dual language program has made.  Please congratulate her if you see her on Monday on staying with the Camino del Río team.

The 1.0 and 0.5 FTE positions in 1st and 5th grade are still open. We did not find a viable candidate on Thursday last week. If there are candidates who apply, I my attend the 2nd round of EXPO. At this time, I am actively seeking external applicants.

• Attendance Pilot is in Full Swing- This last week we sent out our second set of attendance letters.  We sent 23 letters for the month of March.  For this last week the attendance letter list dropped to 10 students. That is good.  Parents are responding to the letters and we have seen a drop in unexcused attendance in the last couple of weeks. Soon, I will be making referrals to Mark Barr, the truancy officer.  This practice will continue on a weekly basis now that the office is trained and the system is set up.  We will also use this system in the Fall as well. Thank you to Yasmin for her persistence and hard work on this project.

• Guanajuato, Mexico Visit –  Armando Morales will be guiding the Guanajuato students to visit our school this Wednesday.  There will be 19 students and 3 teachers. They are very interested in how the United States education system works, and will be especially interested in the dual language program. Several are used to visiting a high school environment so the age level will also be new to many of them. Expect to have 2-3 guests in your classroom visiting and observing. They are all very excited to visit our school. I will begin the day with a presentation to them about how our program works.

• Staff Meeting PD Session with John Lockhart – On Friday, John and I met for a couple of hours to plan and discuss the professional development we will be having at our next staff meeting. The topic ties closely to the conversations we have had in our Taking It Up Equity meetings. We will discuss the dynamic between Anglos, Latinos, and other racial groups in the context of our dual language program. A precursory question to think about is:

“In your role, how does your cultural sense of self and others both allow you to and inhibit you from helping students of color and white students develop healthy racial identities?”

We will reflect, share observations, and formulate ideas together. The meeting will run from 2:50-4:50. You will be paid an extra hour for attendance.  Carmen Urbina  and Jennifer Harris will follow up with us on May 1st in the morning to help us continue the conversation.

• 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 to families. I did check to see if this is available for Spanish speaking families and they said it unfortunately is not at this time.

• 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 thought 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.

• 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.

Have an good week, everyone! 39 more days!

Joel

Week of April 6

What is going on?

• Caring for Kids Follow-Up Opportunities – Two separate Caring for Kids training are being offered to teachers, one covering Morning Meeting and the other covering Cross Age Buddy Activities. PD on each of these will be offered twice- once during the school day with sub time provided, and once after school with extended contract offered. The hope is that this will reduce teacher time out of the classroom for those who prefer an after school offering. Attendance is optional, but you may choose to attend a session on one or both topics or none at all. Register on the 4J Workshops webpage and the AESOP sub code is “Caring for Kids.”

• Job EXPO Information – The Job EXPO will be this Thursday. I have verified with HR that I can offer internal applicants through the EXPO process but because we have hard to fill positions, I can bypass the process too. The ELL Position does not fall into that category.  The grade level immersion positions can go directly external. I will be making a trip to Portland on Tuesday to recruit heavily for the 1.0 1st grade and  0.5 5th grade positions.

• Boxing Up Old HM Materials – If you have old HM materials you are done with for the year, let me know and I will have Craig box them up and label them for you. All I ask of teachers is that you group the items you want to discard by the categories listed on the packing label Marlee sent out. And if you didn’t read the email Marlee sent to cert_all too closely about packing up materials, the gist of it was you can keep the parts of the old program you want and to box-up and label the parts you do not want to be shipped downtown. Let me know if you have any parts of the program you’re ready to get rid of. Another reminder from earlier, let me know if you’d like me to have Craig deliver your grade level Journey’s materials if you’re ready for them. I’m planning to give folks planning time with the new program on our two remaining PD days.

• Title 1 Newsletter – Here is the latest district level Title 1 Newsletter that went out to all Title 1 Coordinators and principals. This month’s issue is again mostly coordinator specific information and tasks, but there is a short article from Beyond Heroes and Holidays by Enid Lee titled Looking Through an Anti-Racist Lens that’s a good read.

• Student Headsets for Classrooms – I am working on finding the most effective headphones for the classroom for our building.  It is not hard to find good sounding headphones, but good headphones with microphones that work well on laptops of various ages appears to be a challenge. We are going to purchase enough headphones with mics for the 4th grade iPad project as a start. They will be Apple earbud microphones which should work well in any Apple product.

• School gardens provide informal setting for learning – Our school garden is much to be proud of. And soon, we’ll have a deluxe area for the school garden in the new building. Take a look at this blog post on students and gardening. Students are more likely to try fruits and vegetables they have grown themselves, asserts Julia Parker-Dickerson, director of education programs for KidsGardening.org. In this blog post, she highlights how school gardens can provide an informal setting to teach students about nutrition and engage the mind and body.

• Autism and biliteracy- Here is and an interesting article on autism and biliteracy published by the BBC

• The economics of being bilingual – Know more than one language? How your bilingual brain could pay dividends

Enjoy the week!

Joel