March 11, 2013

By Allan  

Hi All,

I hope everyone remembered to “spring forward” with daylight savings time and move your clocks ahead one hour this weekend. Hopefully Howard families remembered as well.

Nine items of note for this week:

• Shelley’s Budget Forecast Email – I’m not sure if everyone had a chance to read Shelley’s email regarding next year’s budget, but I wanted to let folks know that I’m available if you have any questions.

• Pilot Teacher Invitation to School Board Work Session – Effectiveness and Growth Pilot Update – On Wednesday, April 17th 5:00-6:45 at the Ed Center, the School Board will be holding a work session to receive an update on the Teacher Effectiveness and Growth System pilot. The Board is interested in hearing from teachers in the pilot, so HR asked pilot school principals to extend an invitation to pilot participants if you’re willing to volunteer to your time to attend. Let me know if you interested and I can provide more details.

• Fire Drill Monday at 1:30 – As long as the weather is cooperating, we’ll hold our March fire drill this Monday at 1:30. Monday looks like the only day without rain in the fore case and I want to make sure we pick a dry day.

• BEST News – If you’re curious what’s new at BEST, they have a new website with a nice video that includes a few of our kiddos. Sharon Tabor is working hard to get the word out on BEST to help make sure it continues to be funded, so feel free to share this video, the BEST website or Facebook URLs in your classroom newsletters or on your websites.

• No ESY at Howard this Year – Thought I’d let folks know that the Extended School Year (ESY) program will not be at Howard this year. The plan was originally to have it here, but I convinced downtown to let it be another building’s turn.

• Websites for students to share their reading lives – In this article from The Reading Teacher, the authors recommend websites that allow students to share and archive their reading lives, create online reading histories, and place books on digital bookshelves for future reading. I was personally familiar with Good Reads, but they all look pretty slick. These could be a fun way to get kids excepted about reading and writing about what they’re reading, perhaps in place of reading logs.

Good Reads
Shelfari
Library Thing
BiblioNasium

• TED Talk Presenter, Chimamanda Adichie at UO, April 1st – It’s a few years old, but if you have time, here is a wonderful video on multiple perspectives from TED.com. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. One reason I share this now is that she will be giving a free lecture at the UO the evening of Monday, April 1st. See the flyer for details.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg[/youtube]

• Great Behavior Management Resource – This document is pretty simple but is also quite revelatory. Imagine you have a student who habitually tilts his chair back and drums annoyingly on his desk with a pencil. This morning, he was doing it – again – while you were trying to teach. What do you do? Read this short article on the punitive vs. responsive teacher reactions to this and similar situations.

• Schedule of Events for the Week – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for this week:

March 11 (M)
PBIS Focus: Safe Bodies
ELPA Testing Continues (ELD Student Only)

March. 12 (T)
8:30-9:30, Suzy Price Title 1 Visit
2:30-3:30, Collaborative Team Meetings
3:30-4:30, Allan to Kindergarten Readiness Meeting (Ed Center)

March 13 (W)
8:00-11:30, Grade 3 Understanding Rigorous Mathematical Content PD (Ed Center)
8:00-4:00, Allan to Learning About Learning Network Meeting (Camus Ridge)
2:15-3:15, OAKS Test Security Training (Room 8)

March 14 (H)
8:00-11:30, Grade 4 – Understanding Rigorous Mathematical Content PD (Ed Center)
10:25-10:55, Allan to Teacher Formal Observation
2:15-3:15, IPBS Meeting (Room 10)

March 15 (F)
Spring Pictures
8:00-11:30, Grade 5 Understanding Rigorous Mathematical Content PD (Ed Center)
6:30-8:30, Family Movie Night! (Gym)

Have a fabulous week, everyone!

Allan