Week of October 12
Calendar of Activities:
October 12 (M)
Kindergartners will eat in classrooms one more week.
4:00-6:30, Dr. Patricia Gándara visits 4J for evening event to speak on bilingual education. (Auditorium)
October 13 (T)
Fire Drill and Lock Down Practice (Mystery Time)
8:00-12:00, Vision Screening in the Library
8:30-1:00, 4th grade Field Trip to Thistledown Farms
3:00-4:00, PLT Meeting
6:00-7:00, Grupo de Padres
October 14 (W)
8:00-8:30, Joel at Owner Architect Contractor (OAC) Meeting on the Gravel Pad
10:00, Recess Evacuation Practice to Cafeteria/ Front of School (Kinder will practice in the afternoon in their 12:35 recess time)
11:00-1:00, ODE Visit to School and Classrooms (Shanda Brown, Mike Garling, and Kathy Larson will be on the tour including classrooms.)
1:45-2:45, Teacher Collaboration Time in the Library with Reid (planning and math formative assessments are suggested topics)
3:00-4:00- Parent Meeting in Conference Room
4:00-5:00, Meeting with North Principals at Awbrey Park.
6:00-7:00, Talking with Books Kindergarten
October 15 (H)
9:00 AM, Great American Shakedown- Earthquake Drill
4:00-6:00, CLLAS Latinos in Education Event with Patricia Gandara, Gustavo Balderas, Edward Olivos. (University of Oregon Knight Library)
October 16 (F)
The gym reopens for PE and school wide use. (400 person capacity)
PICTURE DAY
Room Clear Practice by classroom teachers throughout the day.
October 19 (M)
BEST Starts (Tentative)
2:30-5:00, Joel at Principal’s Meeting
October 20 (T)
2:45-4:45, Staff Meeting- 2 hours, Teacher Goals and School Wide Data Analysis
October 21 (W)
1:45-2:45, PLC Collaboration Time in the Library with TOSA Reid Sheppard
6:00-7:00, Talking with Books 1st Grade
October 22 (U)
2:45-3:45, MOD Squad (IPBS) Room 7
October 23 (F)
Regular Day
October 26 (M)
2:45- 3:45, Site Council #2 for October in Conference Room. (This will be an EEF Grant Writing work session.)
October 27 (U)
8:45-9:45, Cafecito #2- Joel speaks with families about the new building design. (Room 10)
October 28 (W)
1:45-2:45, PLC Collaboration Time in Library with Reid
6:00-8:00, La Celebracíon del Día de Los Muertos (Whole School)
October 29 (H)
Regular Day
October 30 (F)
Costumes are allowed. Please no masks. No costumes that promote cultural appropriation.
Pre-halloween/ Harvest Parties These are Ok. Anyone want to do a parade?
November 3,4,5,6- Karen, Erin, Kathy L. and Joel to New Mexico to share our progress as a school in implementing a dual language program at La Cosecha National Conference.
November 10 & 12 are Conference Days.- Plan ahead.
What is happening?
Here is a list of several activities and announcements for the week.
• Safety Week This Week –Here is a list of all of our School Wide Safety Drill Procedures that you will find helpful to read for the week. I will also send the little bits out as an email to staff to be prepared for each type of safety procedure necessary for that day.
• Building SMART Goals – Attached are the detailed SMART Goals Template (reading & math for student growth goals and AIMS4S3 implementation for the professional practice goal). These are goals you could use within Talent Ed. You can cut and paste from this document into the “Goals Development Form” in TalentEd. Teachers are welcome to develop your own goals, though our building PD and some district PD will be geared towards to these topics, so using these goals may make folks’ lives a little bit easier. I have cleared my schedule to meet with teachers this Thursday and Friday throughout the day. Larry Soberman will be here to cover the office and handle discipline. Edna also called a sub to cover teachers classes for 20 minute stints on both days. This allows most of us to complete goals drafts this week.
Observation Cycle: The observation cycle has changed to more of an on-year/off-year cycle, so for those of you on the observation year cycle this year, I’ll pair the “Standards Overview Conference” with an informal observation sometime this month or next. I’ll just drop by classrooms for these, though you can feel free to suggest a time if you’d prefer. For teachers on the off-year cycle, I’ll set up a time to meet with you or with your grade level team if you’d rather.
• HMH Reader App – For those of you with iPads (including teacher iPads), 4J has placed their orders for the HMH Reader app this past week, which is where you can get access to the leveled readers, so hopefully we’ll have them available to teachers and staff very soon. At this point, 4J is just waiting for HM to activate the accounts, though it may take some time set the app on iPads, but they should be available through ThinkCentral right away.
• School and District Report Card Release – School and district report cards will be publicly released on Thursday, October 15. The public will be able to access report cards on the ODE Report Card webpage. While much of the content of report cards will look the same, there are a few significant differences to note this year. Most importantly, school report cards will not contain an overall school rating or a comparison school rating. As this is a transitional year with the move to Smarter Balanced, ODE requested and received approval from the U.S. Department of Education to pause the report card ratings for one year. Ratings will resume on the October 2016 report cards. The report card will still contain assessment results – both for Smarter Balanced tests and the OAKS science assessment – however, there will only be one year of data for the new English Language Arts and Math assessments as this past year’s results represent a new baseline.
• No SBAC Interim Assessments – At last week’s TAG Coordinator training, Kerri Sage shared that the national company behind Smarter Balanced, AIR, will only work with states and ESDs for the interim assessments. This year AIR said ESDs need have at least 75,000 students within your ESD catchment to do get the interim assessments, which is less than what we have in Lane County. The only other option is to pay individually, which is more than the ESD or 4J can afford.
• Free UO International Cultural Service Program (ICSP) Presentations – The UO International Cultural Service Program (ICSP) invites teachers to request international UO students to visit your classrooms. What is ICSP? ICSP brings together a select group of University of Oregon international students to provide the Eugene/Springfield and surrounding communities with valuable cross-cultural exchange. ICSP students come from all over the globe and are available upon request to give presentations about their home country and culture. Read more at the ICSP website. You can submit a request by filling out this online form. If at any time you have questions, please feel free to contact the ICSP Coordinator, Sophie Patterson, by email icsp@uoregon.edu or phone (541) 346-7429.
• Art of Survival Exhibit: Enduring the Turmoil of Tule Lake – Wayne Morse U.S. Courthouse in Eugene – This is a extraordinary opportunity for staff and students and an important history lesson about Japanese Internment Camps in the US during WWII. Attached is a letter from Chief Judge Ann Aiken of the U.S. District Court in Eugene inviting you and your students to view the Tule Lake exhibit currently on display in the U.S. Courthouse in Eugene. It is open to the public from October 5 through November 30, 2015. Also attached are elementary teachers guides.
• Emerald Park Art Bus – Emerald park gave us postcards to put in teacher mailboxes, but for all staff, Emerald Park is bringing back an old-fashioned art bus, which can come to schools or school events to provide art lessons. They’re still developing how they will bring the Imagination Bus to schools. Dale Weigandt and I discussed possibly doing an Artist in Residence model, coming into classrooms for lessons (since their bus only holds 22 students at a time). Hopefully there will be more to come on this, but they are holding a dedication & tour of the bus this Thursday at 4:30 if you’d like to tell your students or even come yourself. This is a very nice and valuable resource for us in the River Road Community.
• Reconsider Columbus Day – With Columbus Day this Monday, it’s good to consider what stories our students have learned about Columbus? Chances are they’re incomplete. Amanda Morris has some suggestions for telling a more accurate story in this Teaching Tolerance article.
• Grant Opportunities – THE Journal is a technology education focused website I subscribe to and they always post grant opportunities in their daily email newsletters. I recently checked their website and they actually have a pretty extensive list of K-12 grant opportunities, mostly focused around STEM topics, ranging from smaller $500 grants to ones for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It could be a great resource for those of you wanting to find a little extra funding for that next project.
• Emotionally Healthy Kids – Cognitive science tells us that students’ emotions affect their motivation, attention span, memory, behavior, and, ultimately, their academic achievement. Yet anxiety and stress among students seem to be on the rise. How can educators help all students deal with their emotions to enhance learning? See this issue of ASCDExpress for a series of articles on this topic.
• Supporting Success of EA Substitutes – Karen Harden sent an email to principals and secretaries to share with classified staff in what you can do to help EA substitutes:
“Dear Administrators and Secretaries –
As you all are aware, we continue to struggle to have all of our substitute educational assistant absences filled. We will continue to hire substitutes, but it is not solely an issue of numbers. Currently we have 158 educational assistant substitutes in AESOP. This number is substantially more than the number of vacancies on any given day. We recently sent out a survey to our substitute EA’s to ask what barriers they see in their work.
• There were a few areas that CLEARLY stood out from their responses. I want to share those with you because you can help!!
• Many of them mention that when they get to the assignment, there are not substitute notes for them. They would feel more prepared to support students and staff if they had notes similar to those left for Guest Teachers (schedule, appropriate student information, basic school info, etc). If they feel successful at your building and in the assignment, they are more likely to return as well as speak highly of your program. I suggest you ask your EA’s to prepare substitute folders for their substitutes.
• Remember that for any assignment of more than 2 hours, you need to provide a 15 minute break. Comments in the survey share that many are not given scheduled to receive the required break. Please refer to the information HR shared at the training in August (I have attached a copy to this email).
• There was also frequent frustration with arriving at a school to have the assignment changed from that which they accepted in AESOP. Please keep substitute’s in the assignment they are assigned. If you have a particularly difficult student situation, and to support the success of students and your program you KNOW you will be adjusting the assignment, please make not of it in AESOP so that substitute knows what they are accepting. This will help them feel prepared and successful too!The other issue that was frequently mentioned had to do with training. Human Resources will continue to explore ways to provide training to help them feel more prepared for their work. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would appreciate hearing them.
Thank you for your attention to this important information. Please feel free to share this directly with your staff.
Have a good week – Karen
Karen M. Hardin, Human Resources
Recruitment, Retention, Equity and Staff Development Administrator”
There are some great things going on in classrooms I have observed lately. Keep it up. And if you have not had a chance to “fill someone’s basket” in the staff lounge, I encourage you to do so this week. It is fun and fullfilling.
Thanks everyone,
Joel
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