November 2, 2015

By Allan  

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Hi Everyone,

I hope you all enjoyed your extra hour of rest this weekend.

Nine items of note this week:

• LEL Classroom Visits Tuesday – I shared in last week’s announcements that the 4J Learning about Elementary Learning (LEL) network will be visiting Howard classrooms on Tuesday. After talking with the LEL facilitator, we decided to revisit a “problem of practice” we did in the past, which is to look at our technology integration, though one new twist is to look at it through the lens of the SAMR model that I shared with staff last year. For staff who were not here last year, SAMR is kind of a Blooms Taxonomy for looking at tech integration. When looking at the different levels of SAMR, it’s not a bad thing to be at any of the four levels, as long as it’s intentional and supports the lesson goal.

SAMR

The LEL group will be meeting in the Staff Room in the morning and from 9:20-11:00 will visit classroom in 20 minute increments. Attached is a schedule if you’d like to know when people will be stopping in your classroom. Please don’t feel you need to plan a technology dog-and-pony show. This isn’t like an Apple Visit where we intentionally turn our technology integration up to 11. Most of you have done this before, but let me know if you have any questions.

• Intermediate Being a Writer Rep Needed – Carla would like to step down from this rep position since she’s also the Site Council rep, on TLT and is now an LEL rep. If there is a 3/4/5 teacher (or specialist) willing to take on this role, let me know by the end of the week. And please don’t all jump at once! :)

• New Building Updates – Attached are the minutes from the last Owner/Architect/General Contractor (OAC) Meeting and below are a few items of note:

• New Howard Design & Construction: Community Update Meeting – This Monday at 6:00PM in the cafeteria will be a meeting to update community members on the progress of the new Howard building. There won’t really be any new information that staff hasn’t already read here, but please feel free to attend if you’d like. Attached is the postcard flyer that was mailed out.

• Visual Comm. Infographic Workshop Meeting Notes – Attached are the minutes from this meeting that happened a couple weeks ago and which I described in last week’s announcements. Also, I couldn’t resist posting a few more vintage Howard photos. I think I’m most fascinated by the photo of the Staff Room being located in what’s now Lori’s office.

• Leadership Days – A reminder from our last Staff Meeting that any new proposals for our building leadership plan need to be given to me before out next staff meeting on November 17th. At that meeting we’ll vote on the plans. Attached are the two current Leadership Plan proposals. One plan is status quo and the other plan takes one and a half days from the Literacy Leader, giving one day to a new Science Leader position and moves the one half day to the Tech Co-Leaders so they get 2 days each. If anyone has other proposals for new positions or different sub day  allocations, let me know soon so I can send it out the everyone before the meeting.

• IEP Meeting Compensation – Many non-ESS licensed staff attend IEP meetings during planning times or outside the workday. The EEA contract allows for licensed staff to be compensated for up to four hours of additional pay. I wanted to remind teachers to track your IEP meeting times on the Non-ESS Licensed IEP Time Log, which will be accepted later this year between April 25 and June 10th. The attachment can also be found on the HR Forms section of the 4J website.

• Downtown Admin Update – 4J has a new Director of Human Resources and it is Howard parent Cydney Vandercar. As you may be aware, Cydney became the interim Director of Human Resources in April of this year and has done a fine job leading HR during this time. If you don’t know Cydney, she began her career in 4J as a math teacher in 1993. After teaching for six years, she became one of South Eugene’s assistant principals. In 2004, she moved to Spencer Butte as the principal for four years and then as the principal at Cal Young for four years, after which she joined the HR team as the Workforce Planning and Staffing Administrator.

• 3 ways to take learning outside with mobile devices – Here’s a short blog post for those of you with iPads or anyone who might want to borrow a set from another classroom. Mobile devices are an effective way to stretch the learning experience outside the classroom, STEM educator Julie Willcott writes. She shares three ways teachers can use devices for out-of-the-classroom exploration. And yes, you do have permission to take iPads outside of the building.

• Obama: Limit standardized testing in school testing – Since the amount of required testing is always a hot topic, I thought staff may find this EdWeek article of interest. Obama is seeking to limit standardized testing to 2% of instructional time. The announcement comes as a report from the Council of the Great City Schools finds that the average eighth-grade student spends 2.3% of class time on testing and that some mandatory exams might be redundant. Here’s a related article that also appeared in The Atlantic.

• Schedule of Events for the Week – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for the next two weeks:

November 2 (M)
Progress Monitoring Week 3
2:30-5:00, Allan Elementary Principals’ Meeting (Ed Center)
6:00-7:00, New School Community Meeting (Cafeteria)

November 3 (T)
8:30-1:00, Larsen and Swift to Pisgah
9:20-11:00, LEL Classroom Visits
12:45-1:45, Zany Zoo Visiting Room 3

November 4 (W)
Wacky Wednesday – Favorite Team Day
8:30-1:00, Gaston to Pisgah
9:00-11:00, Allan to OAC Meeting (Construction Trailer)
9:10-9:35, K-2 PRIDE Assembly (Gym)
9:40-10:05, 3-5 PRIDE Assembly (Gym)
2:15-2:45, Allan to Grade Level Goal Meeting

November 5 (H)
8:00-1:00, Data Team Meetings (Staff Room)
10:00-11:00, NCU Technology Visit (TLT Classrooms)
1:00-2:30, Allan to Staff of Color Recruit/Retention/Hire Meeting (Ed Center)

November 6 (F)
8:00-1:00, 3rd Grade to McGowan Creek
9:40-10:30, Allan Teaching Math Group

November 9 (M)
Regular Day

November 10 (T)
Sara Green Visiting North Region Schools
Allan Conducting Observations (Larry Soberman to Cover)
11:45-2:00, 3rd Grade to Hult Center
2:30-3:30, IPBS Meeting (Room 1)

November 11 (W)
Veteran’s Day, No School
9:00-11:00, Allan to OAC Meeting (Construction Trailer)

November 12 (H)
2:30-3:30, TLT Meeting (Room 6)
4:00-5:00, Allan to North Region Principals’ Meeting
5:30-6:30, Meet the Superintendent – Community Event – English (Kelly MS)
6:30-7:30, Meet the Superintendent – Community Event – Spanish (Kelly MS)

November 13 (F)
9:40-10:30, Allan Teaching Math Group

Have an excellent week everyone and enjoy the great Halloween staff photo below, courtesy of Suzanna (which is much better than the potato quality photo I emailed from my phone earlier). You all are the best!

Allan

 

Halloween-Staff-2015

 

And here’s a YouTube video of from the Eugene Thrill the World folks who helped at Friday’s performance.