Diario Camino del Río

Week of October 22, 2018

 

Buenos dias Estrellas Brillantes.

 

I hope each and every one of you had a restful weekend. I had a great weekend too. I watched my son break personal records in the swim meet he was in.  Also, I enjoyed time with my wife Anna. It is so important for all of us to rest and recharge.  I heard from a principal in my PLN that we have to make white space for the weekend. “white space” is parts of your calendar that are dedicated to nothing.  Not having anything planned. I hope you can do this each weekend, or at least find time to spend enjoying being with your loved ones.

 

Here are some important items of the week you should read about and understand more:

• New SPED Referral Process– I shared in earlier announcements the new SSD process for referring students to be evaluated for Special Education, but last week principals received our first presentation on this new process as well as slightly updated forms. Linked here is the new SPED Referral Process(which includes the process for both staff and parent referrals) and also the new SPED Referral Packet.

The short version of the new process is that if a student is being consider for a SPED evaluation, building staff need to complete the above SPED Referral Packet, send it downtown to an SSD team of school psychologists and other specialists who meet every other week to review packets, and then send their recommendations back to buildings to decide whether or not to proceed with an Evaluation Planning Meeting. It’s a long eleven page packet, but it’s all the same information you’d look at prior to an Evaluation Planning Meeting.

Also, most of it can be printed off from Synergy or easyCBM and we’re allowed to simply write “See Attached.” The reasoning behind this new process is to bring equity to the referral process, because for a variety of reasons, students with similar experiences and challenges might get evaluated at one school but not at another. SSD is still taking input on the packet format, but the process is pretty well set in place. If you’re interested, linked here is the SPED Referral Process Presentation principals were shown last week. Let me know if you have any questions on this.

•Photos and Video of AIM4S3- I would like to take some video and photos of teachers using our AIMS4S3 framework for my presentations.  I will be in classrooms to do this during some of my informal observations next week. 

•Family/Teacher Conference Info- Sign up Genius up this week: Start collecting appointments next week. Conferences are in 3 weeks! Jaime will send the sign up Genius link to you this week so you can begin to get appointments ready. Also,  I am going to try and make it easy for teachers to send this out with QR codes so parents can sign up on their phones.   Peggy Vega and Jaime will be working on this together.

•Family Report Printouts for Conferences– I know some teachers like to have the parent reports with attendance and assessment data for conferences.  Last year we only got them at grading periods, so if we do not get them, remember there are parent reports available in easyCBM, although they are limited to only this year’s data. Let me know by Friday, November 2nd if you’d like a class set of these.

• NCU Teacher Ed Program Student Opportunities– Downtown sent an email to principals asking if any teachers want to host NCU teacher education students. The above link lists the students and placements being sought. It’s first come, first served, so let me know by Friday if you’re interested and I’ll forward your name to HR.

• SMART Notebook Update– If any teachers need to update SMART Notebook on your laptops, downtown has received the updated license. To run the update, first quit Notebook if it’s open. Then go to your application folder where you should see Managed Software Center. Open that, click on the Software tab and then find SMART Notebook Activation. If you click Install that should update the license key and you should have Notebook fully functioning again. If you need assistance, call the Technology Help Desk at x7777 or email Peggy at 4jdesktop@4j.lane.edu

• United Way Annual Campaign– United Way Campaign Forms were put in staff mailboxes this past Friday. If you’d like to donate, return forms to my mailbox by Friday, November 16th. United Way of Lane Countysupports many Lane County community programs that assist our students and families. Linked here is the emailsent to principals. You can learn more about what all they do by following the above link.

• Latino and Native American Cultural Resources

Latino and Native American culturalresources are available for teachers and parents, including video clips, pictures, links to google classroom, and more. Also, do you want more resources to inspire females? Go to The RAD Women Series. One book, RAD American Women, A-Z, has short, powerful biographies of a diverse group of women. You can request school visits by the authors. 

• October 29 and 30th PLC Sessions are coming up:

MaricCarmen will prearrange for the subs in this case. We will have three subs on Monday the 29th and three subs on October 30th. The following schedule seemed to work better on October 10th. Reid will meet with you in the conference room.

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