I want to wish you all a restful, peaceful and enjoyable Thanksgiving Break. Do not work here. Do not work at home. Do not worry about work; it will be here when you get back. Focus on you. Focus on family, Focus on friends. Do the things that make you happy. Do the things that make you feel healthy.
Building Shutdown
Just a friendly reminder to please try to turn off anything drawing electricity for the break, including power strips, chargers, printers, fax machines, massage chairs, and cappuccino machines (=.
Safety
The recent shooting event in northern California got me thinking about our lockdown drills and I feel like it would be prudent to add in a couple more drills for the year. I would like to keep them low-key and appropriate to each of your classrooms, but I do think it is important to practice the procedure of locks, lights, & out of sight more than once a year to keep us better prepared. We all did a great job on the last one and we had just about everyone out of site with locked doors within two minutes of the announcement. That is a great response time, so thank you.
Academic Excellence Report
Our team met on Tuesday morning and we covered the following topics;
- Prep for Math Studio work later in the winter – more on this later.
- Upcoming Site Council Report – Thursday, 12/14
- Tuesday, 11/28 PLC Focus – Lesson Design – Working as a team design a lesson that reaches beyond the average for all students. This will vary a little bit depending upon your grade-levels.
- District SIW Series; Please be sure to look at a Math-focussed options for the 2nd district SIW series. Presenters were asked to tailor their content to include Everyday Math material for us and since this is one of our three major goals I’d really like to take advantage of the opportunities.
Future Ready Report
We worked on two major topics for this meeting;
- Planning for Parents’ Night Out
- Planning and prep for presenting at conference
SEL
You may have seen this short piece in the Speddy Eddy Newsletter, but I thought I would share with you for two reason;
- You all should find this incredibly validating as you put a lot of these items into practice routinely.
- This is a great straightforward explanation of SEL without a lot edu-speak, so I think it’s a great reference for us.
Positive Words
Please read this and enjoy some more validation.
https://www.edutopia.org/article/positive-words-go-long-way
Time on Learning
If you are in the mood to challenge your thinking about our education system, please read this article. This is from a secondary-setting perspective, but I think there is a lot to gain from this easy read.
Redefining Failure
Here’s a great article to help us remember and reinforce the importance of failure as a natural and important part of the learning process.
Please take a moment to glance at the calendar.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Brian