Allan's Announcements

By Allan 　https://blogs.4j.lane.edu/chinn/?p=8054

Welcome Back Howard Roadrunners!

I’m hoping everyone is still in summer-mode and not thinking too much about school just yet. With my summer, I had a nice family vacation in Hawaii, although it was a different kind of vacation because we stayed with my in-laws who were renting a house in the middle of the city. Still, I better not complain about going to Hawaii. And now that my kids are getting older and can entertain themselves better, this felt like the first summer in quite a while where I actually got to do a bunch of reading. I focused most of my reading on “occult detective fiction” which is kind of Harry Potter meets Raymond Chandler. It’s a tough call between Harry Dresden or Sandman Slim who I liked best, but my favorite book of the summer was My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which I originally bought mostly because of it’s excellent cover art, which was done in the style of a retro VHS box, but it’s a super fun mix of 80s nostalgia, The Exorcist, and Mean Girls.

I’ll try keep my first staff announcements of the year short and will send out a longer one on the 26th. In the meantime, feel free to let me know if you have any questions or if there’s anything I can do for you.

Twelve items of note before you return:

• Staffing Updates – Last spring I shared several new hires, so to refresh everyone’s memory and to welcome some new folks who were hired over the summer, this year we are joined by Tamera Berge (CLC EA), Jenefer Brouse (Preschool EA), Davina Brown (Life Skills 1:1 EA), Racheal Bryant (Life Skills EA), Charissa Charpie (1st), Tyler Conner (CLC 1:1 EA), Imelda Cortez (5th grade), Elizabeth Griego (Bilingual Office Assistant), and Zach Stone (5th grade). Tamera worked at Howard last year as a Life Skills EA and was thankfully recalled back to our building, where she will be working as a CLC EA. Jenefer comes to us with over 20 years of preschool experience and was hired over the summer as a Preschool Promise EA to fill the vacancy left by Megan. Davina comes to us from Holt where she worked as a CLC 1:1 EA and will work here as Life Skills 1:1 EA with a 4th grade student. Racheal comes to us from Monroe Middle School where she worked as an LC EA and will work here as Life Skills EA. Charissa will be our new 1st grade teacher, taking Justine’s place, who’s moving to 4th to take Erin’s place, who’s moving to 2nd grade as our fourth classroom at that grade level. Charissa has taught 1st and 2nd grade more than 10 years in Bethel at Malabon and used to work with Jessy. Tyler comes to us from Willagillespie where he worked as a CLC EA and will work here as a CLC 1:1 EA with a 4th grade student. Imelda comes to us from Adams where she taught 4th grade. Before that she taught at River Road for eight years and one year here at Howard teaching kindergarten. Imelda is also a former Howard student, which now makes six of us in the exclusive Former-Howard-Student-Now-Employee Club (I think there’s ten of us who all went to North). Elizabeth will be filling Bianca’s Bilingual Office Assistant position when she leaves for New York in early September. Elizabeth is a native Spanish speaker and has a strong connection to the Howard community (all of her kids have gone through Howard and she has a kindergartner starting this year). And lastly, Zach was hired in the spring to be our fourth 5th grade teacher and last year did a job-share with Carla at 4th grade, so he’ll know many of his students this year. Please welcome these fine folks to the amazing Howard Team!

We just held interviews for a 2-hour Title 1 EA vacancy, which I hope to announce soon, and we’re waiting on downtown to complete the hiring and placement process for our new BEST Coordinator, Night Custodian, and School Psychologist, so stay tuned for updates on these positions.

Below is a list of the gen ed classroom teaching assignments and linked here is a complete 2018-2019 Staff List (with all 91 people working in our building). Hopefully I didn’t miss anyone.

KG: Shelly Silver, Katina Sugar, Robin Vaughan
1st: Charissa Charpie, Jessy Corliss, Nicole Kerins
2nd: Erin Gaston, Angela Larsen, Ashley Pond, Mellissa Swift
3rd: Allison Kreider, Rhonda Lawson/Stephanie Peterson, Natalie Niccum
4th: Justine Chunn, Jenny Groshong, Carla Zimmerman
5th: Lupe Callihan, Imelda Cortez, Suzy Rock, Zach Stone

• In-Service Week Schedule – The calendar of events for the first two weeks of school is at the end of this announcement and the complete calendar for the school year is on the Howard Staff Google Calendar, but below are details for in-service week. For part-time staff, some notes are below on what to attend, but ask if you have questions.

August 28 (T) – Teachers report back and this is a protected planning day. I’ll have some breakfast goodies, coffee, and drinks in the Staff Room at 8:30 to welcome folks back and to meet new staff members.

August 29 (W) – Classified staff report back this day and we’ll start the day with everyone in the cafeteria. Breakfast burritos will be available 7:30-8:00 for folks who placed orders and the Back-to-School Staff Meeting with everyone will begin at 8:00. We’ll go over some standard business items and will then move into our three main topics of the day. The first is an overview of the 4J Behavior Framework, which will apply to all staff and will be a year-long topic for licensed staff on Fridays. The next two topics are more teacher focused and will be around the newly adopted social emotional curriculum, Second Step, and the Professional Learning Community (PLC) rollout, which classified staff are welcome to, but not required to, stay for. I haven’t seen the information I’m supposed to share about Second Step yet, so it may be applicable to classified staff, but I believe it’s going to me more classroom focused. Once I receive all of this information from downtown I’ll send out a final agenda for the meeting.

Later in the day at 2:00, Peggy (our Tech Support Specialist) will offer an optional training on how to use the classroom AMX System (cord set-up, connecting laptops for video/sound projection, whiteboard interactivity, voice amplification, ENZO, etc.). Any staff unfamiliar with these systems should attend and anyone else who’d like a refresher are welcome to join.

Following that tech training at 3:00, will be an optional iPad training on how to use the new full-size iPads with keyboard cases we are getting for 3rd-5th grade (see item below for more details on that), which will be led by Misty Jackson.

August 30 (H) – The district Back-to-School Event at South Eugene High School is this morning, 8:30-10:30. Attendance is encouraged, but optional. Following that, there will be multiple required trainings for some licensed and classified staff (primarily specialists, such as PE, Music, Library, Counselors, etc.), so look for emails from the folks running those sessions for details. I’ll share more information once I receive it.

August 31 (F) – All licensed classroom, Title 1, and SPED staff will attend a half-day district Math/LearnZillion training in the morning (times and locations are coming). The second half of the day will be back here at Howard for BOTH classified and licensed staff and is a continuation of the Behavior Framework, focusing on PBIS Tier 1 universal practices to support and improve student behaviors. Part-time classified staff should shift your regular hours to attend this training.

September 3 (M) – Labor Day, No School

September 4 (T) – I have a placeholder Staff Meeting from 8:00-10:00 scheduled this day if anything comes up that can’t wait until our first regular staff meeting. At 10:00, I’ve scheduled a Q&A Session for new staff members to meet with me in the office to answer any questions you might have. I can get busy durning in-service week and may not always be easy to find, so I’ve set this time aside to be available for new folks. Also, “Meet Your Teacher” will be from 1:00-2:00, when families can come see their classrooms, drop off supplies, and meet staff.

September 5 (W) – The big show begins! I’ll review first day procedures later, but I’m thinking we stick with the same format we’ve used the past two years.

• Breakfast Burrito Orders Due 8/27 – We’ll continue our welcome back Breakfast Burrito Gathering tradition before the Back-to-School Staff Meeting in the cafeteria. If you’d like a burrito, please complete linked Breakfast Burrito Order Google Form by Monday, August 27th at 9:00. You’ll need to log onto your 4J Google Account to complete the form. At the meeting I’ll also bring some donuts and bagels and other breakfast goodies if burritos aren’t your thing.

• Master Schedule Updates – Linked here (XLS and PDF) and on the Howard Google Team Drive (Howard Elementary School > Schedules > 2018-2019) is the 2018-2019 Master Schedule. There are a lot of moving parts with creating a master schedule, so it will never be the perfect schedule for everyone and will never be all things to all people, but let me know if you spot any mistakes and I’m certainly open to suggestions if you see a way to improve the schedule that don’t create problems elsewhere.

• Full-Sized iPads w/Keyboard Cases for 3/4/5 are Coming! – Some exciting news! All 3rd through 5th grade classes at Howard (as well as several other schools) are getting 6th generation full-size iPads with keyboard cases. 4J is starting the process so that all elementary and middle schools will begin using the same devices. This is a first step towards bringing equity across the district for students in terms of technology access and also makes sense from a professional development and curriculum adoption standpoint.

To support teachers in this transition, the Technology Department has developed a 2-year PD plan. The first step in the plan is that similar to reading, math, and science Curriculum Teacher leaders, schools will select three Technology Teacher Leaders (K/1, 2/3, and 4/5) who will attend district meetings/trainings to bring information and PD back to their schools, so let me know if you’re interested in being one of those three reps.

The iPads and cases are here now and are currently being imaged by the Technology Department. For teachers used to using laptops with students, this will be a shift, but iPads offer quite a bit of versatility if properly utilized and students are already very familiar with the device, having used iPad Minis at primary grade levels. Also, a major reason we’ve resisted moving to iPads at upper grades was the lack of keyboards and that element is no longer an issue with these high end cases Apple worked with Logitech to develop. The keyboard cases are incredibly durable (able to withstand a 4 feet drop), are waterproof, and also allow for the iPad to be detached from the keyboard. See the Logitech RUGGED COMBO 2 website for the complete specs, but I was pretty impressed when I recently got to see one.

As mentioned above, Misty Jackson from the Tech Department will be here on Wednesday, August 29th at 3:00 to provide a training on these new devices (which will also be largely applicable to the iPad Minis if primary grade teachers are also interested in attending).

 

• Class Lists – For making any changes to class lists, please ignore the Google Sheet Class Lists (Howard Elementary School > MISC > Class Lists > Class Lists 2018-2019) we used to create class lists in the spring and to provide individual student information. Instead, go by what’s in Synergy, which is what is being updated for students who have moved away and what new students are enrolling and/or returning. Downtown is blocking teacher access to Synergy until Monday, August 27th, but attached to my email are the most current class lists. If we need to make any adjustments to class lists, please let Lori and myself know and we will get them updated. Class lists, with the exception of Kindergarten (see item below) will be posted Friday, August 31st at 12:00.

• Kinderzone! – 4J is aligning kindergarten start-of-the-year procedures across the district. For the first three days of school, kindergartners will see all teachers and on Friday teachers create class lists after having had time to get to know students, which will then be posted outside the office on Friday, Sept. 7 by 5:00. Linked here is the Kiderzone Family Letter that will be sent out to all kindergarten families.

• New School Hours – A few people have asked what our school hours are this year, so to remind everyone, they are now:

Monday – Thursday: 7:55-2:25
Friday: 7:55-1:10

We’ll continue to let kids into the building starting at 7:25 and the first bell to go to class will ring at 7:50. See 4J webpage on the Standard School Schedules for more details.

• Summer School – The three summer school programs were not quite as invasive as we’d feared (although they did slow down summer cleaning). I didn’t get any reports from ESY, EEP or KITS about anything being damaged or lost, but if you notice anything damaged or missing, let me know and they will rectify the situation.

• Summer Classroom Availability – Blue and Yellow Wings are ready for teachers who want to start setting up your classrooms. Upstairs Green Wing is also open, but EEP and KITS are still using downstairs Green Wing. EEP will finish this week in Rooms 14 and 15. KITS will finish in Room 11 and 12 Thursday next week. If you have specific questions about your room, please feel free to text or call Crystal.

• ESD Back to School Giveaway 8/28-29 – For teachers, the Lane ESD is holding a giveaway of office, science, math and craft supplies on Tuesday, August 28th & 29th from 4:00-6:00 at the ESD building on HWY99. See the linked flyer for details.

• Schedule of Upcoming Events – See the Google Calendar for future events, but here are the events of note for the rest of the year:

August 28 (M)
9:00, Breakfast Burrito Orders Due!

August 28 (T)
Licensed Staff Report Back
8:30, Welcome Back Breakfast Gathering (Staff Room)

August 29 (W)
Classified Staff Report Back
7:30-8:00, Welcome Back Breakfast Burrito Gathering (Cafeteria)
8:00-12:30, Back-to-School Staff Meeting (Cafeteria)
1:00, PBIS Team Meeting (Rae’s Room, RM1)
2:00, Optional Classroom Tech/AMX Review (STEAM Room, RM16)
3:00, Optional iPad Training w/Misty (STEAM Room, RM16)

August 30 (H)
7:30-8:30, District Back-to-School Breakfast & Social (SEHS Lawn)
8:30-10:30, District Back-to-School Event (SEHS Auditorium)
10:30, Specialist Staff In-Services (Various Locations)
12:30-1:30, Recess Supervisors Meeting (Title 1 Room, RM26)

August 31 (F)
8:00-12:00, K-5 Math/LearnZillion PD (Final time and location is TBA)
12:00, 1st-5th Class Lists Posted
1:00-4:00, Classified & Licensed PBIS Behavior Modules Training (Cafeteria)

September 3 (M)
Labor Day – No School

September 4 (T)
8:00-10:00, Potential Staff Meeting (Cafeteria)
10:00, Q&A Session for New Staff – Optional (Conference Room)
1:00-2:00, Meet Your Teacher & PTO Welcome Back Event

September 5 (W)
Classes Begin
PBIS Monthly Theme – Safety
7:15-8:00, Cup of Joe with the PTO (Front of School)

September 6 (H)
Regular Day

September 7 (F)
Bianca’s Last Day
1:35, EA Supervisors Meeting (Title 1 Room, RM26)
2:30, Early Release PD – Behavior Framework (Volunteer’s Classroom)
4:00, KG Class Lists Posted

Keep playing and we’ll see you in a couple weeks!

Allan