Week of August 27, 2012
WHAT’S NEW?
Welcome back Awbrey Park Staff!
I have published several topics in this post to let you know about events and opportunities coming up. As I mentioned last week, I will be sending a weekly blog entry to inform you, share articles, and inform you of upcoming events. This will be published on Sundays. I hope staff has time to read it by Tuesday of each week.
Site Council Retreat on Monday Evening 3:30-6:45: Here is our agenda: 1.Welcome and Team-building. 2. Review SC By-Laws and responsibilities. 3. Clearly define roles and responsibilities for the year. 4. 2012-2016 SIP Writing Year- begin process. 5. List our priorities and ideas. 6. Review 2011-2012 data. 7. Increasing Parent Involvement. We are having a potluck dinner during our session too. We will be meeting in Room 13.
2012 4J Kickoff Conference, “Making Thinking Visible: Creating Pathways to College & Career” – 4J is planning something VERY different this year for the district kickoff event. Instead of the usual welcome speeches, the district has created a powerful professional development conference focused on our key instructional initiatives. All staff assigned to work August 30th are required to attend, although if you are part-time you are only expected to attend for as long as your normal work hours. See Kerry Delf’s email for details about time, location and transportation (I’d be happy to carpool with anyone in South Eugene. I can fit 5 in my car.) and also the agenda for the conference including a list of the afternoon breakout sessions.
CLCB Educational Assistant Interviews– ESS and Awbrey Park staff will be working together Wednesday afternoon to interview candidates for the vacancy in the program. I am planning to conduct interviews on Wednesday, August 29th, from 12:30-4:00 in the conference room. If there are any staff members interested in being part of the interview committee, you are welcome to help out. Jason, Brenda, Amy Tidwell and myself will all be part of the committee. We don’t require additional committee members but I want to extend the opportunity if anyone else wants to participate.
Friday Staff Meeting in “Collaboration Station” 8:00-11:45 in the Room 13
- Be ready to collaborate and team-build. We will be doing a creative building activity at one point in the morning. No smocks necessary.
- Be prepared to share something that you found useful, inspiring or thought provoking from the district kickoff event at the Hilton. We will be having a BBQ lunch after the meeting under the oak tree.
- Please consider ideas on how to decorate/organize our new space; “Collaboration Station”. This year collaboration meetings, staff meetings, and our data meetings will happen in Room 13. It is my hope that the space will inspire and promote collaborative practice. I look forward to your ideas on how to organize this space to present new ideas and “own it” for the purpose of teaching and learning at Awbrey Park. Please thank Melinda for the long hours she put in to beautify the space and get us off to a great start!
Joel’s Visit to Classrooms – I’d like to visit every classroom sometime during the first couple weeks of school to introduce myself to students. I’d like to read a favorite story to your class and then share a little about myself so kids can get to know me. Teachers, please let me know a good time to come and visit so I can get to know your students. Thank you! I will be sharing more about my visits to classrooms throughout the year at Friday’s meeting.
Teachers, share your newsletters with me. – Please share copies of teachers’ classroom newsletters. I also encourage you to share them electronically. This helps me keep up to date on what’s happening (or going to happen) in classes. It helps me decide on any class activities that I want to come and see. It also gives me a chance to share events in the parent newsletter.
Teacher Instruction Schedules.– Teachers, please send me a schedule of your weekly plan. I know that these shift in the first couple of weeks as we adjust with the pull out programs in the building. I’d like to see where core ELA, Math,Writing, Social Studies, Science, other units are taught. This year, I will create a spreadsheet to see where each core subject is taught. This will help me understand how much instruction is dedicated to each area and also to plan out my walk-through focus each week.
Common Core State Standards and Families. – Chris Castillero, the new Associate Director of Curriculum and Professional Development – Mathematics, shared a resource around the Common Core State Standards for communicating with families that I thought I would also share with staff. The National PTA website has published documents explaining how schools are transitioning to the Common Core. The documents on the website provide some details about grade level expectations in ELA and Mathematics and are available for K-8 and HS (English and Spanish). You might already have this resource, but I wanted to provide it just in case. For future reference, Chris is willing and able present at any parent or community meetings on the Mathematics Common Core, CPM or any other math topic.
Google Permission Forms for 2012-13. – For those of you using Google Docs with students, a yearly permission form must be signed by a parent/guardian for ALL K-8 students using Google Tools. Teacher should collect the signed forms from students and turn them into the office. Once the office has the entire class/homeroom set of forms, the Google permission can be “turned on” via eSIS at the building level. Attached are the Elementary English and Spanish versions of the form.
Edmodo Training. – Last year, quite a few teachers began using Edmodo in their classroom. If you’re wanting to get “up and running” with Edmodo for staff communication and classroom use, on August 30th, Edmodo sessions will be included as one of the choices during the breakout session time at the kick-off conference at the Hilton. Downtown will also be offering other Edmodo workshops throughout the year.
Please take some time to thank Melinda, Larry and Richard for their hard work to prepare our building for school this year. It looks fabulous! ,Thanks for reading and have a great week!
Joel
The week ahead:
8/27 Site Council Retreat 3:45-6:30 at Awbrey Park
8/28 Licensed Staff Furlough Day
8/29 All Licensed Staff Report to Work
8/30 District School Improvement Day at the Hilton, 8:00-4:00
8/31 School Improvement Day, 8:00-11:45 + BBQ + Planning