https://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=1353
Hello Howard Staff,
The school year seems to be off to a terrific start! I’d like to thank you everyone for making the fist week of school such a positive one for our entire school community. Staff enthusiasm, hard work, and great attitude were clearly infectious and made our students and parents just as excited about the new school year.
I’ve had a great time coming into people’s classrooms to read a story and have a number of visits scheduled for next week as well. Let me know if you haven’t arranged a time with me yet and I’ll get it on my calendar.
Fourteen items of note for this week.
• Monthly Collaborative Meetings – You may have noticed on this week’s calendar that Tuesday has a Collaborative Meeting at 2:30. This is a monthly meeting for teachers, most likely in your grade level teams, to have an established time set aside for collaboration. We will talk more about this at future staff meetings and/or PD days, but keep in mind that collaboration is different from team planning or prepping. Some examples of collaborative practice are lesson studies, instructional networks, data teaming, action research, and team teaching (I’m available to sub for anyone if you ever want to team teach or observe a colleague). If you would like some guidance on the types of collaboration the district is expecting teachers to participate in during our PE/Music time, see the attached overview sheet. For this month, go ahead an use this time as you choose, but in future I see two options for these days. One, I could provide a protocol or activity for teams each month, or two, teams could develop their own plan for how to use this time for collaboration. If teams are interested in developing their own plan, one excellent resource for activities besides the ones described in the overview sheet is the National School Reform Faculty website, which has many high quality protocols. Most of the protocols on the NSRF website are designed for larger groups, but would be easily adaptable for smaller teams. More to come on this topic!
• Student Teacher Volunteers for Open Gym? – Without a regular PE teacher we no longer have open gym in the morning and I’m wondering if there might be one or two student teachers who would be willing to supervise in the gym 2-3 days a week, 7:30-7:50. The cafeteria is overflowing in the mornings, so it would be great if we had open gym available again. Teachers, please check in with your student teachers to see if any of them are willing and able (and if you’re willing to give them up in the morning).
• Teacher Evaluation Pilot & TalentEd Update – Celia sent principals an email last week regarding the delay for the TalentEd rollout. She said she has been in contact with Brett and Marsha (TalentEd trainers) regarding log-in access to TalentEd. They have had some glitches due to way Lawson stores employee data. They estimate it will be ready by September 13th.
• Staff Handbook – I just realized I did not send this out with my back-to-school information, but attached is the updated Howard Staff Handbook for 2012-2013. For people new to the building, this handbook should answer most any questions about Howard policies and procedures you might have. Let me know if you have any questions and please return the acknowledgement form that you have read and understand the contents of the handbook by the end of the month.
• Fall Conferences Update – It was proposed at the back-to-school staff meeting that we change the conference dates from Nov. 14, 15 and 16 to:
o Oct. 30 (evening conferences, 4 hours, 4:00-8:00)
o Oct. 31 (regular day, no conferences)
o Nov. 1 (all day conferences, 12 hours, 7:30-7:30)
o Nov. 2 (no school, comp. day)This still gives Lori enough time to schedule conferences for teachers, so we will vote on this at the next staff meeting to make it official. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions on this.
• Morning Meeting Sign-Up – Tacked on the bulletin board in the mailroom is a sign-up for teachers to pick a month to facilitate a Morning Meeting at the start of a staff meeting. Find a month that works for you and hopefully I won’t have to twist any arms to get someone to sign-up for our meeting on September 18th. Student teachers are welcome to sign-up as well.
• Staff Supervision Schedule – I realize it may have gotten buried in all of the attachments I shared at the start of the year, but please take note of the Supervision Schedule and who should be in the breezeway, the 1st/BEST hallway, the bus area and by the Howard Sign in the AM and PM. I realize the first week of school is pretty hectic, but for this coming week please do your best to make sure we have these areas covered. Thank you!
• Bus Safety Required Training – All students in School District 4J are to receive instruction on bus safety during the first half of the school year (before Winter Break). The intent of the rule is to reach the occasional riders who find themselves on a bus because of a field trip, activity trip, etc… There are videos available on Learn360 and also this on this 4J webpage, which will meet the training requirement if you show them to your class. Another option is to schedule a bus to come out during the school day and for a driver to give your class the training. I’m going to assume people are showing the videos unless you email me that you would like the driver led training. Let me know by Friday if the driver led training is your preference. After you have done your training with your students, please email me the date and method you used to instruct your class in bus safety.
• Student Writing Folders & Inserts – If you haven’t done so already, be sure to pick-up your student writing folders, graphic organizers and proofreading keys located on the filing cabinet next to the staff mailboxes.
• EEF Grants – I wanted to remind staff that EEF is now accepting grant applications. Schools can submit two $2,000 and two $500 grants, or they can combine grants to create one $5,000 grant. Grants are due to EEF October 15th, but they’ll actually need to be ready to be shared at Site Council on September 25th, where we will approve and rank order the grants we are submitting. Please let me know if you have any grant ideas or are planning on submitting a grant to Site Council.
• Oregon Humane Society Poster & Story Contest – The Oregon Humane Society will be holding their 64th annual Be Kind to Animals poster and story contest. Each year students in Oregon are invited to either create a poster or write a short story portraying a part of the Oregon Humane Society’s mission. The deadline for entries is entries is Friday, March 22, 2013. Follow this link for details if this is something you’d like to do with your students.
• Help name an asteroid! – The science nerd in me loves this! In 2016, NASA will launch OSIRIS-REx, an unmanned mission to an astroid called 1999 RQ36. It is, to say the least, not the most inspiringly named object in space. That’s why MIT, the University of Arizona, and the Planetary Society are sponsoring a contest to rename it. If you are under age 18 then you can enter the contest. Follow this link for contest details if this is something that fits any units you might be teaching this term. The deadline to submissions is December 2, 2012.
• 13 free websites to help teach about the election – There are a number of free websites available to help teach students about this year’s presidential election. The writer of this blog lists 13, including PenPal News Red Blue, which partners students with pen pals in different geographical regions, and the nonpartisan nonprofit ProCon.org, which details candidates positions without the spin. MTV’s Fantasy Election also allows students to pick their “team” of candidates similar to fantasy football.
• Lou Holtz gives commencement address to University of Portland Class of 2012 – Lupe shared this one with me and I thought it was worth passing along to everyone. It’s a great inspirational speech given by football coach Lou Holtz at the University of Portland this past spring. It’s 15 minutes long, so it’s a good one to throw up in your classroom after school sometime while you take care of your end of the day tasks.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkR0iVEcDEE[/youtube]
Have an excellent week, everyone!
Allan