Week of March 30
This Venn Diagram reminds me of our staff!
What is happening this week and next?
March 30 (M)
2:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
2:45-3:45, Site Council Meeting (Conference Room)
March 31 (T)
STAMP Testing practice in 3rd and 5th Grade.
1:00-2:30, Senderos Consultation Meeting with Zulma Cifuentes (Conference Room)
2:45-4:45, Staff Meeting
2 hour meeting focused on 2 items:
1st hour: Senderos discussion and decision.
2nd hour: Math Practices Review and planning PD for Spring and next year.
Also: Updates on curriculum analysis from a culturally relevant lens and staffing.
April 1 (W)
April Fool’s Day
9:00-9:35- 3rd, 4th, 5th Grade Assembly for Spelling Bee in the Gym
4:00-5:00, Joel to North Region Principals’ Meeting (NEHS)
April 2 (H)
3:30-5:00, Joel to North Region Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
April 3 (F)
IIPM Data Meeting- Artist in Residence to provide activities for students during your hour. Subs wil escort them to the learning spaces.
April 6 (M)
Regular Day
April 7 (T)
2:45-3:45, PLT Meeting
3:45-5:15, Full day Kinder Meeting for all K teachers and principals
April 8 (W)
1:45-2:45, Collaborative Planning Time- Math Focus- Please complete the PLC form.
No other meetings.
April 9 (H)
2:45-3:30- TLT Meeting
4:00-7:00, Joel to Job EXPO (Ed Center)
April 10 (F)
Regular Day
Coming up:
April 15 (W) Guanajuato Teacher Student Exchange Visit to El Camino del Rio- This exchange will bring Mexican students and teachers into every classroom for one day. They want to see how our program is designed and how we teach and support students. It will be a day of learning and cultural exchange.
April 17 (F) Peace Jam Marimba Performance for Rigoberta Menchu Tum at University of Oregon
Some items for the week:
• Formal Teacher Observations – I’ll be back at it with the formal observations and informal observations this week. Some teachers still need a second formal observation. I will contact you if that is necessary.
• Staffing Updates –
SPED- We received 0.5 FTE for Sped teacher staffing for next year. We received 4.5 hours of Sped EA hours.
Grade Level placements changes:
I have placed Marcy Hellman in Kindergarten for next year.
I have placed Jaime Jones in 2nd grade for next year.
I have placed Sarah Knudsen in 5th grade at 0.5 for next year.
We will have vacancies at the EXPO for 1st grade 1.0 and 0.5 FTE in 5th grade.
• Wednesday Meetings such as PBIS switched to Thursday for the rest of the year.
To reduce the amount of time teachers are spending in meetings on Wednesdays, I have moved all of the scheduled PBIS, TLT, and IPBS meetings to Thursdays. This also makes it easier for Jennifer to make it to all our meetings. This will guarantee a full hour of preparation time for all teachers regardless of their responsibilities on other teams. 2:45-3:45 should be free for all teachers to work together or on their own. PLC Math Collaboration will continue from 1:45-2:45.
• Prep Time Update for 2015-2016 – Details on this will be worked on over the coming months, but downtown let principals know that the current plan for meeting the 90 minute weekly prep requirement for next year is most likely going to be done through additional PE and Music classes, which will equate to a third prep section for each teacher. This is different from what was shared with principals earlier, but the reason for this is 4Js attempt to make headway with the upcoming PE requirement for 2017, which is for 150 minutes of PE a week. More to come on this one since we’ll need to know 4Js plan in order to finalize a building master schedule.
• 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 nice infographic titled “7 Things to Remember About Feedback” and an excellent 4 minute video from Jay Smooth titled “Moving the Race Conversation Forward.”
• PDUs from Journeys Training – Linked here is a PDU Certificate for teachers who attended the Journeys trainings on March 13th. And FYI, you don’t actually need to have a paper copy of this form. You just need to keep track of your training name and it’s PDU hours on your Log of Professional Development Activities form, which can be found on the 4J HR Forms webpage.
• Job EXPO Information – FAQs – Since Camino del Río is growing and adding licensed teaching positions next year , I thought people might be interested to know the details on this year’s Job EXPO which may fill these vacancies.
• Job EXPO Openings & Process – Vacancies included on building staffing plans will generate openings for Round 1 of the EXPO. HR will post all increments of FTE at the EXPO (per agreement with EEA). Any new vacancies created by hires from the Round 1 of the EXPO will go to a 2nd and then 3rd Round. EXPO dates will be Thursday, April 9, Tuesday, April 14 and Tuesday, April 21, all from 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
• Temp Employees – Recently EEA and HR met to discuss allowing Temporary Employees access to the first round of the EXPO. The two groups agreed that Temporary Employees could participate in all three rounds with the understanding that Contract employees are guaranteed an interview (temps are not guaranteed an interview) and Contract employees have priority over temporaries in most situations (i.e. displaced teachers with job rights).
And feel free to let your colleagues around 4J know about our openings if you think they’d be interested and a good match for our school!
• NAACP Family and Youth Conference! April 11th – Please take note that the 8th annual NAACP Family and Youth Conference will be held Saturday, April 11th at the Downtown LCC meeting and learning center from 10-to 4pm. This free event is meant to assist parents and youth navigate the education and community resources available for student success. There will be two parent workshops and two youth workshops, free lunch and a guided tour of local African American historic sites, including the first African American Church in Eugene.
• District Admin Update – HR announced that Dr. J. Andrew Dey, Ed. D. has accepted the position of Principal at South Eugene High School beginning July 1, 2015. For the past five years Andy has served as Director of K-12 Curriculum and Professional Development at the The International School Nido de Aguilas in Santiago, Chile, but has roots here in Eugene. He taught science at Roosevelt Middle School (3 years) before becoming an assistant principal at Thurston High School (3 years). Andy then served as principal at Agnes Stewart Middle School (2 years).
• Convergences of Practices between CCSS/NGSS in support of Language Development (Venn Diagram) – Here is a a venn diagram that’s worth checking out which compares the high leverage practices that support Math/ELA/NGSS and language development.
•Are you going to share anything about Cesar Chavez Birthday this week? Here is a little to help you out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgMkX4eE3bs
That is it for the week!
All the best, Joel
Announcements, Equity, Staff Meeting Agenda, Staffing, STAMP, Teacher Evaluation/ Observations, Two Way Immersion, Uncategorized | Comment (0)Week of March 16
Hi Everyone,
Congratulations to our OBOB Team! Although they didn’t advance to the next round, they did get to the elite 8 of 52 Lane County teams participating at this year’s competition. A big thanks to this spirited team and the great coaching efforts of Megan Murphy. It has benefited all our students. Also, a big thank you to parent Sabrina Gordon for volunteering to help our students this winter.
March 16 (M)
2:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
March 17 (T)
Picture Day for all grades in the Library
12:00-4:00, Kinder Teachers Meeting with Reid and Maddy.
1:00, Joel in NERA Meeting with Retired Educator volunteers for homeless youth.
2:45-3:45, Staff Meeting- Agenda,
a. Approve staffing plan, discuss intervention needs for 2015-16.
b. Senderos discussion and listing of pros and cons
2:45-4:45, PLT Meeting- Planning and Parent Handbook Work
March 18 (W)
1:00-1:30, Eugene Emeralds Assembly (All Classes)
1:45-2:45, Grade Level Collaboration Time – Math PLC meets in Library. Please enter on your Google form.
2:45-3:45, Joel, Karen, and Nancy go to STAMP TEST Planning Meeting (Ed Center)
March 19 (H)
8:30,Virtudes Assembly
2:45-4:15, Taking it UP Meeting in the Library with Carmen and John Lockhart
4:30-6:30, Joel to the Equity Committee at the Ed Center
March 20 (F)
12:30-2:00, Movie Award Day in Classrooms
2:00, BEST Field Trip leaves for lunch and boarding the bus.
11:00-2:00, Joel and Jessica Zapata to meet with the Mexican Consulate
March 23-27
Spring Break – No School
12:00-1:00, Spring Break Fun Time – Lunch & Activity (Cafeteria at Howard)
March 30 (M)
2:30-5:00, Joel to Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
March 31 (T)
STAMP Testing begins in 3rd and 5th Grade.
1:00-2:30, Senderos Consultation Meeting with Zulma Cifuentes (Conference Room)
2:45-4:45, Staff Meeting, 2 hour meeting focused on Math Practices and Maddy and Reid’s work with grade Level Teams. (Library)
April 1 (W)
April Fool’s Day
4:00-5:00, Joel to North Region Principals’ Meeting (NEHS)
April 2 (H)
3:30-5:00, Joel to North Region Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
April 3 (F)
Regular Day
Coming up:
April 15 (W) Guanajuato Teacher Student Exchange Visit to El Camino del Rio- This exchange will bring Mexican students and teachers into every classroom for one day. They want to see how our program is designed and how we teach and support students. It will be a day of learning and cultural exchange.
April 17 (F) Peace Jam Marimba Performance for Rigoberta Menchu Tum at University of Oregon
Here are some of the items of the week:
•Irma De La Guardia wins National Bilingual Teacher of the Year
• HM Journeys/ Senderos and ThinkCentral – In our staff meeting on Tuesday, we will discuss and decide on Journeys and Senderos. After listening to different perspectives on this idea, I will say that I still strongly support a move to have both Senderos and Journeys. I believe that in the long run, we will be able to provide adequate supplementation to these materials in order to avoid redundancy and directly translatable texts. I believe there is more than enough material to use in both languages to support our students with out having issues of redundancy. The value of having curriculum mapping done for use across languages is very important. We will make our decision about Senderos on Tuesday this week after the staffing decision.
On the practical end of things:
Since we had our HM Journeys/ Senderos training last Friday, let me know if you’d like the upgraded HM Journeys materials delivered to your grade level and I’ll put Craig to work bringing them down. Remember, regardless of a Senderos decision, we will be replacing Journeys Materials. And if you misplaced the trainer’s email, it was “Cifuentes, Zulma” <Zulma.Cifuentes@hmhco.com>. Also, all licensed staff should now have access to ThinkCentral if you’d like to check that out. If you’d like to use it with your students this year, let me know and I’ll load your students into the system as well.
And regarding old HM materials, Craig can cart away any materials you don’t want to keep. I’ll probably try to sell our old materials to Follett in Summer, but feel free to keep any leveled readers, big books or others materials from the old curriculum that you still have a use for.
• SLUGGO READING Assembly at 1:00 PM WEDNESDAY– The annual SLUGGO assembly will be on Wednesday. I rescheduled our VIRTUDES assembly forThursday to give teachers one more day to get the awards written and communicated to families. In addition, it seemed like too much to have two assemblies in one day. Please review assembly expectations for both asemblies with your students.
• Virtudes/ Virtues Awards THURSDAY, March. 18th @ 8:30 – This Wednesday is the March Virdudes Awards. Virtudes certificates are located in the office in your boxes. When you turn in your Virtudes nominations, be sure that you let Edna/Yasmin know who and why each student is being recognized so she can put their name up on the board. Also, you are encouraged to communicate with families to invite them to the assembly.
• Employee reimbursement limit increase to $250.00 – The employee reimbursement limit has been increased from $100.00 to $250.00 per reimbursement, subject to the usual criteria of the spending qualifying for reimbursement and timely receipt of the request, which are:
• Should be for small purchases. The district provides contracts for most supplies, so please check first before purchasing supplies with personal funds.
• Have a limit of $250 per reimbursement.
• Must comply with district purchase guidelines including reimbursement amounts and documentation such as copies of detailed invoices.
• Completed reimbursement requests, including mileage, should be received by Financial Services within 60 days of when the expenditure was incurred.
• Smarter Balanced assessment and testing exemption (“opt out”) — process, form and information – With the Smarter Balanced assessment testing window opening last week, you may get inquiries from parents about the Smarter Balanced tests, state testing in general, and/or about opting out of state tests. This is a reminder that the district has created a process and published an exemption request form and accompanying frequently asked questions document. If a parent asks for information or tells you they want to to opt their student out of state tests, you can direct them to me or to the State testing opt out FAQ and request form, the FAQ about the Common Core State Standards and Smarter Balanced assessments or the district information webpage about the Smarter Balanced assessments.
• Concussion – What Teachers Should Know – Attached you will find a one page document called Concussion-What Teachers Should Know. This was shared with principals and we were asked to encourage teachers to post this in their classrooms, for easy reference.
• Lessons for successful maker programs – Students are natural makers, and maker programs can help take learning beyond students’ comfort zones, according to Guatemala-based educators Adrian Catalan and Ceci Castillo. The pair shared four tips to help educators launch successful maker initiatives during their SXSWEdu session, Making Makers: From Guatemala to the World.
Five days until our nine day Spring Break!
Best,
Joel
Announcements, English Language Learners, Math Training, Opt Out, PLC time, Staff Meeting Agenda, STAMP, Two Way Immersion | Comment (0)