https://blogs.4j.lane.edu/madisonstaff/2019/09/08/september-9-2019/
Greetings, Lions!
Thank you so much for all your hard work and enthusiasm this past week. The school year is off to a great start! Here is this week’s update:
- Honor Roll & Crystal Apple Assembly – We will kick off our week with our Honor Roll and Crystal Apple assembly at 9am Monday. There will be an assembly map in your mailboxes Monday morning. Please remind kids of the expectations for assemblies. This assembly will honor last year’s honor roll kids and will introduce our first Crystal Apple winner. In the coming months, students will get to nominate staff members for the Crystal Apple award. We will send out more info about that process later this month.
- iPad Rollout – We are scheduled to roll out iPads this week. Because of Monday’s assembly, we will push our start date to Tuesday. If we follow our schedule of 4 days of practice in Focus before moving to all classrooms, kids would practice getting and putting away iPads on Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday and Monday would be getting iPads before focus and logging into StudentVue. This means Tuesday, Sept 17 would would be the day kids take their iPads with them all day. This may not work for all teams, so please meet with your team to determine what would work best. If your team is going to send iPads to classes sooner, please send an email to let everyone know so we can work to remind kids what to do with their iPads during lunch and classes that won’t need them.
- iPad Assignment and Tracking – This is the document we will use to track student behavior with iPads. I have a few more tweaks to make as we have added and lost a few kids, but this will be ready to go on Tuesday morning. I will also provide every Focus teacher with a list of your students, their iPad assignment, username, lunch number, locker number, and whether or not the student has turned in a tech agreement. Additionally, every cart will have a list of kids, their iPad numbers, and their cart spots.
-
- Tech Agreements – We’ve gotten back about 275 tech agreements. In the “Master List” tab of the iPad Assignment and Tracking workbook, you can see which kids have and have not returned their agreements in the “Tech” column. If you have any of the blue agreements in your room, please send them down to me so I can get them entered. Every student must have one turned in before they can take an iPad to classes.
- ISLA – We had our first two participants in the ISLA process last week 🙂 It worked well and we were able to share with the students that if they continued to make choices that resulted in being sent out of class, they would get to participate in this same process every.single.time. As kids get settled in, I expect we’ll be seeing more kids in the office on a regular basis. Please remember to send them with a pass and, if possible, include a quick note as to the issue so we can make sure the kid’s story jives with what actually happened.
- W.O.W. – Just a reminder of the WOW strategies we’ve adopted. Welcome every student at the door, own your classroom, and wrap up with intention. This article from Edutopia shares some ideas for starting and ending each class period. My personal favorites are the Reading Minute and Closing Question.
- Peter and Erin Out Tuesday Morning – Once a month Peter and Erin will have to attend an “All Admin” meeting downtown. We will be gone in the morning, but should hopefully be back by first lunch.
- Picture Day Wednesday – I’m new so I have no idea how picture day is done, but it’s on Wednesday. If you have new staff on your team, please fill them in on how it works. For your enjoyment, here is my 7th grade picture – I permed my bangs the night before…always a good decision.
- Open House – Open House is September 19 at 6pm.
- Team Meetings This Week – TLC, Climate, and Justice League will meet this week. If you have any items for any of the teams, please let the team leaders know. Here is the list of team members for this year.
- TLC = Tuesday at 7:30
- Climate = Wednesday at 3:45
- Justice League = Thursday at 7:30
- Friday Early Release PD – This Friday is scheduled to be a Behavior Framework PD. The Climate team will be working on this during their meeting this week.
- PBIS Tours Reminder – Just a reminder to schedule your PBIS tours this week. This is especially important for our 6th graders.
- Enrollment Update – We are currently 32 kids over our projection. We’ve been asked to make contact with any kids who haven’t yet shown up to school to see if they plan on attending. Once the schools have completed that process, admin downtown will review the information and determine which schools are “significantly overenrolled”. We likely won’t hear anything about staffing increases for a few weeks. Peter is working on a plan to implement IF we get more staffing.
- Medical Cell Phones – Our school nurse, Connie Chiakowsky, now has a district issued cell phone, so please make sure ALL phone or text communication with Connie is done using her new phone number. We will send that out shortly. This is being done to address privacy concerns. SSD’s urgency is in moving texting and picture taking of injuries and students to district phones instead of personal phones.SSD also issued the first round of building medical phones, which Madison received and is being kept in the office. These phones are to be used for any and all calls of a medical nature that seem appropriate. These are also how we are to text our school nurse sensitive medical information. If you’re interested, here is the email we were sent about these phones.
- Insurance Open Enrollment Deadline SUNAY – If you haven’t yet participated in Open Enrollment, please do so. We don’t want you to lose your 4J health insurance benefits. The deadline is Sunday, September 15!
- Assessment Pilot – As Peter and I shared last week, we are slated to participate in the district’s assessment pilot. The district’s timeline is a little delayed due to a key staff member’s medical leave. Here’s an excerpt from Eric’s email about our participation: Teachers will be assigned one of the two assessments classroom by classroom and will need to attend the 90 minute after school training and a second 90 minute “interpretation of results” training after the close of the Fall benchmark (both extended contract), and participate through the Winter and Spring assessments. At the end, participating teachers will also need to provide feedback on the assessment they worked with. There is more detailed information forthcoming from the Assessment Team, but, because the pilot affects EasyCBM benchmarks this fall (pilot teachers do not need to give both EasyCBM and one of the pilot assessments), I wanted to mention some of the basics of pilot planning here for y’all who are participating.
- Repeat: Talent Ed Self-Evaluation and Safe Schools Training – Just a reminder to complete your Talent Ed Self Evaluation and your Safe Schools Training.
- A Bit About Erin – My very first teaching job was teaching six periods of 6th grade English Language Arts. I had student taught in elementary school and had absolutely NO IDEA what I was doing in a middle school classroom. I took over at the end of September after their teacher (who was brand new) decided she actually didn’t want to be a teacher. The claim to fame of our school was that Snoop Dogg went there for middle school. Needless to say, my management was a hot mess – 1 kid owed me 140 hours of detention. His dad offered to let him move in with me on the weekends to serve his time. The kids talked me into getting a hamster as a classroom pet. One kid took it home for the weekend and it came back Monday missing an eyeball. The kids fundraised for me to take it to the vet. It then went to live with my brother. Let’s just say I learned A LOT that first year.
- Schedule of Upcoming Events – See the Zimbra calendar for future events, but here is what is coming up in the next two weeks:
September 9 (M) Fall Benchmarking Window opens
9am, Honor Roll and Crystal Apple Assembly
September 10 (T) iPad Roll Out Begins
7:30, TLC Meeting
8:30, Peter and Erin to All Admin Meeting
September 11 (W) Picture Day
3:45, Climate Team Meeting
September 12 (H)
7:30, Justice League Meeting
4:15-5:15, Student Success Act Staff Conversations – Phase 1 (North Eugene HS)
September 13 (F) Tech Agreements Due
2:45, Early Release PD – Behavior Framework
September 15 (Sunday)
Open Enrollment Insurance Deadline
September 16 (M)
Regular Day
September 17 (T)
iPads go to classes
September 18 (W) Audrey’s Birthday!
7:45-8:30, Staff Meeting (Library)
Fire Drill lesson during Focus
September 19 (H)
9:10, Fire Drill
September 20 (F) Kimberly’s Birthday!
2:45, Early Release PD – PLC Meetings (Library)
