https://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=12102
Hello Holt Staff,
It was great to have a building full of staff again!
After being bombarded with instructional PD the last two weeks, give yourself permission to have fun and connect with your students the coming weeks.
Thirty-nine items of note for this week (sorry it’s so many):
• Staffing Updates – Three staffing updates:
• Title 1 EA (Vicki Gotchall) – We’ve hired Vicki as our 6-hour Title 1 EA, filling the vacancy left by Robbie as he moved into his licensed librarian position. Vicki comes to us with over 20 years experience as an Educational Assistant, most recently working as a SPED EA in the Gilham CLC. For her start date, Gilham has several unfilled EA positions currently, so Vicki will not start at Holt right away.
• BEST Coordinator Vacancy – Aubrey Bulkey, our BEST Coordinator, has taken a job with the city, which leaves our position vacant. The coordinator job is a 6-hour position, so if you know anyone good out there, please tell them to apply. There’s a job posting currently up for multiple sites.
• Special Education EA Longterm Subs – Regular Holt sub Abby Parks is covering for Darrin while he is on leave through the end of November. Also, SSD has agreed (after a lot of hair-on-fire communications from the SPED Team and myself) to give us two 6.5 SPED EA subs through the end of the month, given the level of need of a number of incoming students, particularly at kindergarten. We have two excellent subs, Stephanie Saraz, who subbed a fair amount at Holt last year, and Leah Jaeger, who was an EA at Holt during summer school and who did a long term sub job last year in the Gilham Life Skills program.
• REPEAT: Tuesday Staff Meeting @8:30 – All teachers and EAs who administer easyCBM benchmark testing need to come to the cafeteria at 8:30 on Tuesday to review fall benchmarking protocols before we start testing Monday, Sept 12th. This is the only time available between now and then (Friday this week is protected). Gloria said she can cover things in 15 minutes. Following that, EAs will meet to review cafeteria routines, which are different for breakfast and lunch last year. After that we’ll have an optional meeting to draft a Curriculum Night/Open House plan to bring back to staff.
8:30-8:45, easyCBM Review (Gloria) & Others (Allan)
8:45-9:00, Cafeteria Routines Review (Kim)
9:00-9:15, Optional Curriculum Night Open House Planning (Allan)• REPEAT: Optional New Staff Orientation and Q&A, 9/6 @10:00 – I’ll be available Tuesday, 9/6 at 10:00 in the cafeteria to share some Holt nuts & bolts logistics, answer questions, and provide any assistance for new folks. I can get busy during inservice week, so I like to set aside a time when I’ll be available for new staff. You can also always text, call, or email.
• Optional Curriculum Night Planning – If you’d like to help plan this year’s Curriculum Night/Open House, please meet in the library on Tuesday at 9:00. Linked here is the 2019 Curriculum Night Flyer, which is the last time we held an in-person Curriculum Night.
• REPEAT: Meet Your Teacher, 9/6 @2:00 – In-person Meet Your Teacher is allowed this year and looking at past staff calendars, it was the Tuesday before the first day of school from 2:00-3:00, so that’s what I’m sending out to families. Upon a good suggestion from Jacque, I moved the Kona Ice start time to 2:30, which means families won’t get shave ice first and bring sticky messes into the building.
• Wear Your Holt Shirt WEDNESDAYS! – Wednesdays are our regular day each week to show school spirt for, so remember to wear a Holt shirt, gear, or purple & green this day each week. Go, Bolts!
• UPDATED TIME & MAP: Welcome Back Assembly Friday
@8:00@8:15 – Linked here is the Assembly Map and Directions for Friday’s Assembly. Take attendance and then head on down to the gym and sit along the wall in your grade level’s designated area.• Friday PD, Individual Educator Choice – This Friday’s PD time is “individual educator choice.” No district or building choice options are being put out and it’s intended to give teachers time to do whatever planning or prep you see fit. More details about future choice dates will be shared with principals mid-September.
• Friday Classified Meeting Cancelled – Unless any classified staff have something for the group to discuss, I’m planning to cancel Friday’s Classified Staff Meeting, but do let me know if you have something for the group.
• UPDATED EA Schedules – Now that we settled on Title groups four days a week, the 2022-2023 Master Schedule now has the finalized EA schedules.
• End of Day Supervision – This will be the same as last year, but for new staff and a reminder to Holt veterans, classroom teachers are to walk their non-bus riders outside to your grade level’s designated pick-up spot (see linked Dismissal Map). For bus riders, at least one staff member should walk each grade level group of bus riders down the hallway, though the cafeteria, and out to the buses. If buses are late, students are to wait under the covered play area.
• REPEAT: PBIS Rules Round-Up Schedule – Here are the revised times for the PBIS Rules Round-Up. Attached and below is a map of the stations. Classes will rotate in the station order listed below. Teachers should plan to come out early so we can start and end on time:
Wednesday @8:15
5-Minute Rotations (4 min. talk, 1 min. transition)
Classes starts at:1. Structures (Harshbarger, Longoria)
2. Swings & General rules (Norton)
3. Hard Play, Boundaries (Gori, Barton)
4. Four Square, Kickball, Wallball (Zluticky)
5. Equipment, Lining Up, Restrooms (Dempsey, Rabourn)Thursday @8:15
5-Minute Rotations (4 min. talk, 1 min. transition)
Classes start at:1. Structures (Ball, Talley)
2. Swings & General rules (Benavides)
3. Hard Play, Boundaries (Cobb, Reich)
4. Four Square, Kickball, Wallball (Parks, Heinrich)
5. Equipment, Lining Up, Restrooms (Lovato, Ayres)
Wednesday 8:15 Thursday 8:15
Here are the EA round-up assignments and linked here are the Playground & Recess Supervisor Guidelines.
1. Structures (Cheryl, Lisa G.)
2. Swings & General rules (Iris, Tasha)
3. Hard Play, Boundaries (Levi Margaret)
4. Four Square, Kickball, Wallball (Ashton, Tracy)
5. Equipment, Lining Up, Restrooms (Annie, Ben)Let me know if you spot anything you think we should change.
• Library Updates – I met with district admin and the two other schools participating in the Library Pilot last Friday and all schools will do the following:
• Check-out only for September . Starting in October, classes will visit the library twice a week. Amy Page, the district librarian, wants time to work with building librarians to create lesson plans, build scope and sequence, establish regular communication with learning communities, evaluating collections, etc.
• In October, classes will begin visiting the library twice a week: one day for check-out, and the other is a library learning day.
• Teachers will stay in the library with their class during their scheduled times. Downtown admin were clear this is not an extra prep. They did make an exception for large schools, in this case Howard, where Music and PE specialists are scheduled for 10 or more classes per day (8 classes per day is the recommendation, 9 is allowable, but 10 classes per day is not allowed). At those schools, library is one of the four guaranteed weekly 30-minute preps for classroom teachers and students have Music or PE only once a week.
• Scheduling Classes – For September, I’m assuming teachers would prefer to schedule Library on the one day of the week you do not have PE or Music, which works for one class in each time block. The SSHA (Science, Social Studies, Health, Art) time at the end of the day or during core reading time would also be good times to schedule a library slot. I’ll set a little time at Tuesday’s Staff Meeting to discuss how we want to build the twice a week Library schedule (a small committee, the scheduler, or a good old fashioned free-for-all [probably not that one]).
• Science Material Info – Elementary Science TOSA, Maggie Frassetto Cline, emailed principals to share the following information as you arrange and store your Science kits and materials:
• The Science kit and student book boxes should not be discarded. The boxes are where the materials are stored and we do not have replacements.
• If you have “extra” or “surplus” materials from past years still in your building, please reach out to Maggie. 4J is missing quite a few teacher manuals, materials, and parts of kits including entire boxes.
• Health, Science, ELA PD Links – Links to materials shared at the Math, Science, Health, and ELA PD the last two weeks are linked on the Holt Staff Dashboard. If I missed one, let me know and I’ll add it.
• District Mandatory Policy Review for all Staff – Linked here is this year’s District Back-to-School Memo, which covers a variety of district rules, policies and guidelines. Section 1 is the portion that staff are required to review. I didn’t get a chance to go over it this weekend, but I’ll plan to highlight any changes in next week’s announcements.
• Staff Orientation Checklist DUE Oct. 31 – All staff must review the above policy memo and sign & return the Check List Acknowledgment Form to signify that you have read and understand the memo. Forms should be returned to me no later than Monday, October 31. I’ll place hard copies of the acknowledgement form in staff mailboxes this week. Looking over this year’s memo, downtown
• TalentEd Goals and Self Assessment – All staff, both classified and licensed staff, need to complete the self assessment/reflection in TalentEd by October 1st.
Regarding SMART Goals, all licensed staff need to have goals entered into TalentEd and signed-off by me by October 30th, but I’ll offer teachers an optional building goals you could cut-and-paste and adopt as your goals for the year. I got an okay from Mike Ingman, the new HR Licensed Admin, to do more SEL focused of goals, which would be a little softer on our data points than if we used easyCBM, OSAS, or other more formal of measures. I’ll hold an optional meeting to develop these goals on Wednesday, September 20th if anyone would like to join.
• Cafeteria Food Composting Video & Lesson for Students – Downtown emailed principals a link to the 2022/23 Love Food Not Waste for Schools Google Folder, which has resources teachers can use to show students to explain how composting in the cafeteria works and why we do it. There’s a ton of resources there, but the main one of interest is the 4J Cafeteria Waste Stations Slide Show, which contains is pretty much all you need to show show kids.
• No Morning Announcements This Week – I’ll hold off on doing morning announcements until Monday next week. I’ll do it the first few weeks until we have some some students ready to go.
• Classified Staff Sub Entry Reminder (don’t include 30-min. lunch) – HR created a Classified – As you know, classified staff 5-hours or more have 30 minute unpaid lunch breaks. If a 6.5 hour EA who works 7:30-2:30 entered those hours into absence management, the sub would get overpaid. Linked here is an Classified Absence Management Cheat Sheet on entering your default times. If default times are entered with the unpaid break noted (7:55-11:30 and 12:00-2:55) you can enter your absences without having to use a variation or enter AM/PM and the break time will automatically be deducted from the sub time. It will show 7 hours, but the sub paid time will be 6.5hours. Let me or Melanie know I you have any questions on this.
• Don’t Park by the Giant Weed Piles – 4J Facilities is picking up the massive piles of weeds on Tuesday and is also planning to use a blower to clean up afterwards, so don’t park anywhere near those piles on Tuesday.
• Student Rostered in Clever – Your class should be rostered in Clever, which means they should show up in all connected apps. If you don’t see your class or are missing students, put in a ticket to 4jdesktop@4j.lane.edu or at the 4J Tech Help Desk (which will replace 4jdesktop later this year).
• Equity Team SEL & PBIS – After some feedback, I’m rolling the Monthly Equity Team Meeting into the bimonthly PBIS/SEL Meetings. I heard there was interest in joining the Equity Team for some, but they were understandably hesitant to commit to one more meet. I’ve updated the Team Sign-Up Spreadsheet accordingly.
• TSS Schedule – Rob Geerling, our excellent Technology Support Specialist (TSS), has set his schedule for this year, which has him at Holt Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday in the afternoons and Thursday & Friday in the mornings.
• Lamination – Please limit lamination to just a couple posters for now. We don’t have enough lamination to laminate everything in the new curriculum for the entire year, so for now please just laminate those piece your are using this month.
• Enrollment Update – Holt is closer to our projection than most elementary schools, so I’m feeling safe downtown won’t look to us if they need to fix large class sizes at other schools. When class sizes reach 30 is downtowns usual magic number when they will look to add a teacher. See the linked Enrollment as of 09/02/2022 doc for the latest district enrollment numbers.
• YMCA 2022-23 Youth Roster – Not on m blog, but attached is my announcements email is the YMCA Roster of students attend the YMCA after school program this year.
• REPEAT: Morning Arrival Supervision Assignments – Here’s the plan for where folks will be stationed for morning arrival. See the EA Schedule tab on the Master Schedule for your official arrival times, but most EAs on morning supervision will start in the cafeteria at 7:25. At 7:35 EAs responsible for supervising entrances listed below will transition to those locations:
Cafeteria (Levi)
A Wing Doors – 5th Grade (Carol, Vicki)
B Wing Side Doors – 3rd & 4th Grade (Annie, Kelly)
C Wing Doors by Gym – 2nd Grade (Jackie, Lisa P.)
D Wing Doors – KG & 1st Grade (Cheryl, Wendy, Amber)
Crossing Guards (Darren’s Sub & Ben)
Buses (Lisa G.)• UPDATED: Rainy Day Arrival Plan – I’ve updated the rainy day assignment to match the updated morning supervision assignments. Kids can be tough with a little drizzle, but if we get a downpour, we will use mostly the same rainy day plan as last year, except we’ll double up in the gym instead of using the cafeteria. Thie plan below would also apply to days with poor air quality, with the exception of moving the 5th graders into the gym:
Cafeteria – (Levi, Lisa G. after buses)
5th Grade – Covered Area (Carol, Vicki)
3rd and 4th Grade – Gym (Annie, Kelly)
• Enter through gym doors on blacktop
2nd Grade – Library (Jackie, Lisa P.)
• Enter through 2nd grade door and walks to library
• Robbie in Library, Annie at door, Jackie at K-2 intersection
KG & 1st Grade – K-1 Hallway (Cheryl, Wendy, Amber)
*Outside – Kim, Allan, Darla directing traffic flowAT BELL, all stations stay in area to avoid traffic jams. Use radios to coordinate release.
• K-1 and 2nd graders in Library released first
• 5th grade enters through A Wing exterior doors
• 3rd & 4th released down main hall.• K-5 iPad Classroom Inventory – Since iPads are staying at school this year, schools do not have to check out iPads to individual students in the Learn21 systems, but classroom teachers should still have your own system to know which iPad belongs to which students. And if you’re using stickers or tape, make sure they are removable and don’t leave a residue.
• Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program – Nutrition Services said the FFVP program will start in October. I’ll keep you posted as I get more info and we can start planning some of the logistics of delivery and returning containers to the kitchen.
• EEF Fun Run – Any runners on staff? A Holt parent has created a team sign-up for Holt families and staff who may be interesting in joining Holt Team for the EEF fun run at Alton Baker Park on October 23rd. I’ll add this to the Quick News, but Sign Up Here if you are interested.
• REPEAT: Principal Visits to Classrooms – I’d like to visit every classroom sometime during the first few weeks of school to greet students and introduce myself. I’ll read a favorite story to your class and chat with the kids a bit. Teachers, please let me know a good 10 minutes block of time I can come and visit sometime this month. Thank you!
• REPEAT: Team Sign-Ups – If you’d like to sign-up to be a member of one of our building teams, please add your name to the Team Sign-Up Sheet (2022-2023). Leadership Team (monthly), IPBS Team (monthly), and PBIS/SEL/Equity Team (twice a month).
• REPEAT: Insurance Open Enrollment Deadline, Sept. 15 – A reminder that you need to choose your insurance plan by September 15th or else you will lose your health insurance benefits for this year. See the linked 4J Open Enrollment 2022-23 Website for details.
• REPEAT: Holt Staff Fun Facts – If you haven’t already, be sure to fill out or update your info on the Holt Staff Fun Facts Spreadsheet.
• Morning Meeting Info (courtesy of Kim) – There are some consistent elements of “Morning Meetings.” They can provide a framework for your planning and provide the consistency needed to create a classroom community.
GROUNDING
• A grounding element brings student focus to the group. Examples:⁃ Classroom phrase – “I am strong, I am kind, I am brave, I am smart, I am a good friend.”
⁃ A musical element while kids close their eyes and think of a particular topic. This is a great way to help students think of what they might want to share or discuss.
⁃ Yoga and stretching
⁃ Tibetian Singing Bowls allow students to “ring” the bowl as a commitment to the group. (My personal favorite)
⁃ A clapping routine – some classrooms add another step in their routine each week and by the end of the year, there is a 30+ step routine they have learned.• For some teachers this element can initially feel a little awkward or a bit “touchy-feely,” but give it a few weeks to discover the benefits.
GREETING
• Students greet each other by name. You can combine the “grounding” with this activity too.
• Keep it fresh and change the greeting regularly so students don’t just quickly greet each other without intentionSHARING
• Have a sharing topic that is fun and allows students to share something about their lives.
• Point of caution here -topics need to be accessible to all students. So instead of asking – “Share where you traveled to this summer,” say “adventures can be found in things we have read, things we did by ourselves, or with our family. Share an adventure you had this summer.” Not all students can travel and not all students have parents that are active in their lives, s providing an extended definition of your question and then giving an example from your own life, allows students to participate.
• For students who struggle to “remember anything,” create a sharing topic with 2 or 3 options. Example: “Today we are going to share something that is special to you. You can talk about a “thing,” like a pet or stuffed animal, a person, or a time you remember that was really fun.”GROUP ACTIVITY
• This is a fun activity that creates laughter. This activity can also have an academic element too. Either way, you want to create cohesion in the group. Examples:⁃ Pictionary
⁃ Rhyming stories – start with a story topic and have students rhyme the next sentence
⁃ Counting game – partner up and have students alternate saying “1-2’3.” Then you add elements like “clap when you say 1,” or “high five when you say 2, etc”
⁃ What is in the box – have a funky feeling box where students try to guess by feeling what is insideMORNING MESSAGE
• This is your time to present topics, typically SEL based. Students should still be interacting with the message, but this is the learning time.
• For September meetings, focusing on COMMUNITY is a great way to build your classroom community.FINALLY…
• As a school, we have the power to create a school-wide community while we hold our morning meetings. Kim will send a link on Tuesday with suggested Morning Meeting elements, ideas, and topics for September. Use what you like or create your own. The new SEL committee will be assisting with these elements.
• These topics will also give us a common language to focus on each week as we help students through their day. For example, if COMMUNITY is the topic and two students are loud in the bathroom, you can reflect on how that impacts the community as a whole. (Age appropriate of course.)• Schedule of Upcoming Events – See the Holt Staff Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for the next two weeks:
September 5 (M)
Labor Day – No SchoolSeptember 6 (T)
Collaborative Planning Time for Lang Arts Adoption
8:30-9:15, Staff Meeting (Cafeteria)
10:00-11:00, Optional New Staff Orientation and Q&A (Cafeteria)
2:00-3:00, Meet Your Teacher
2:30-4:00, Kona Shave Ice Fundraiser (Hard Play)September 7 (W)
Classes Begin – First Day of School
7:00-9:00, School Board Meeting (Zoom)September 8 (H)
Regular DaySeptember 9 (F)
8:15-8:35, Welcome Back Assembly (Gym)
1:30-2:30, Friday PD – Individual Educator ChoiceSeptember 12 (M)
4:00-5:30, Allan to Equity PD (Ed Center)September 13 (T)
2:45-3:30, PBIS/SEL/Equity Meeting (Kelsey’s Room)September 14 (W)
Regular DaySeptember 15 (H)
Deadline for Open Enrollment (Insurance)September 16 (F)
2:00-3:30, Friday PD – Curriculum, K-2 Only (Zoom)September 19 (M)
International Talk Like a Pirate Day!
Let’s have a great week, everyone!
Allan
