13 Days and counting!
Student Appreciation Day: The culture of care team is planning a fun day to celebrate our students’ hard work this year. It is tentatively scheduled for June 11th. We will be making a short appreciation video, signs, having a mid day (time is TBD) dance party (in the classrooms), special snacks delivered in the morning and ice-pops delivered in the afternoon (most likely just before AM and PM recess). We would like to keep this a surprise for the students! Thanks for your support and if you had input, please email Heidi T.
Last Week of School Schedule
- Monday 6/14
- Field Day: Martinson/Vickery – Reisinger/Park/Greene – Yeager-Woock/Green
- Tuesday 6/15
- Field Day: Kindergarten – Howard/Glogau/Therrian – 1st Grade
- Wednesday 6/16
- 5th Grade Hat Drop (drive through) in parking lot and 5th grade end of year video in the gym 8:30-11:00ish
- 5th grade Celebration March 12:15-12:45
- Thursday 6/17
- Last day of school; 1:00 release time
- 4:00 Staff Party
Field Day – here are some details;
- Please see the master schedule document for the Field Day schedules for Monday and Tuesday: Schedule.
- Teachers please separate your class into teams; 3 teams per teacher at the 4/5 level and 2 teams for all the other levels – use this sheet here to enter your teams.
- We will use our own field for the event, Harmon is booked.
- Recess will occur as scheduled, however the field zone recess cohorts will have their area reduced for those conflicting times.
- Teachers please bring your students to the field at the appropriate time and pick them up. You are welcome to stay however we have all the stations covered so you can use this time for grades and other end of year tasks if you desire.
- Parent volunteers will set up prior to school starting.
End Of Year Staff Party
Please consider this your invitation to come celebrate the end of an incredibly challenging year. We will also use this as an opportunity to celebrate the transitions for everyone last year and this year.
- Date: Thursday, 6/17
- Time: 4:00
- Location: Misha’s House
- What to bring: lawn chair, BYOB, clothing to match the weather conditions as we will be outside.
- This will be a staff only party to keep our numbers within reason.
- More information regarding food and amount requested from each individual coming later.
Placements
Second Round Date:
- Wednesday 6/2/21
- 1:15-2:00- 3rd → 4th
- 2:00-2:45 – 1st → 2nd
- 2:45-3:30 – K → 1st
Staffing Update
- Music position candidate pool is growing which is good to see. Position closes on 6/17. Interviews tentatively scheduled for Tuesday 6/22.
- We currently have two 2nd/3rd temp positions and one 4th grade temp position posted. These positions will close on 6/7. Interviews tentatively scheduled for Wednesday 6/29.
- Marieka and Becky E will be job-sharing a 1st grade position for next year, which is where that 2nd 2nd/3rd grade temp position came from.
- ICCLs – We will have two positions open for the next two years and I want to encourage you to apply. HR wants us to have these positions filled by June 30th. The job definition is shown below and the full job description is linked further below.
- JOB DEFINITION: In cooperation with the principal and building leadership team, the instructional coach & curriculum leader will support and facilitate the school’s work of professional learning communities toward continuous school improvement, teacher effectiveness, and increased student achievement. It is understood these efforts require additional hours outside the contracted workday.
- All applicants must provide an essay via email to Candy Gelatt in the HR office. Each candidate will also ask a colleague to submit a Confidential Recommendation form directly to Candy in the HR office.
- ICCLs should plan to participate in the Taking It Up training on August 18th & 19th (if you have not already participated)
as well as the district leadership retreat in August (TBD). NEW – ICCLs are not required to attend the district leadership retreat due to a restriction on the numbers. - Building Leadership team shall consist of me, Heidi Thomas, Shawna, ICCLs and any other grade level representatives who may not be already represented by an ICCL.
Taking It Up – Link provides a little more information on this powerful training.
Summer School – here is the office flyer for Jump Start if you are interested.
Eval, SLGGs, EOY – please use the link below to schedule a time for your end of year meeting.
Next week:
- Tuesday 5/18 – 2:45 Leadership
- Thursday 5/20- 2:45 Safety Team – Safety Team Notes – Please input any safety concerns or questions on this document for the team to consider.
Core Instruction Differentiation Resource
SEL Menus We have 10 SEL menus for you to choose from!
SeeSaw Next year – This year we bought the premium version of SeeSaw so we could ensure teachers could effectively use the tool and could have access to the library of lesson resources. In a survey conducted by instructional tech it was found that teachers are not really using the premium services so renewing our contract doesn’t seem necessary. However, some schools still may want to continue with the premium version. If your k-2 team wants the premium version TLC will pick up half the cost. This has to be a full k-2 team. We cannot support just individual teachers or one team at a school. Please let me know if this is something you want more information on.
Retention is not an Intervention – The following was shared with administrators on retention – both these resources provide powerful context to respond to any question of retention.
From Human Resources – Please pass along (to your staff) this reminder regarding the Employee Assistance Program service that is available to your staff.
Continuing Effective Covid-Time Practices in the “New Normal”
In this article in Ed. Magazine, Lory Hough compiles suggestions from educators on practices implemented during the pandemic that should continue when schools return to fully in-person instruction. Some excerpts:
• Cultivate trust. “The pandemic has reminded me just how important it is to listen, care for one another, seek perspectives, solve problems together, stay true to core values, and follow through,” says Jennifer Perry Cheatham (Public Education Leadership Project). She hopes “active trust-building emerges as a necessity in education – a foundational tenet through which we perform all our work.”
• Rethink grading. “We must realize that our century-old inherited grading practices have always disproportionately punished students with weaker support nets and fewer resources, students of color, from poor families, with special needs, and English learners,” says Joe Feldman (author, former teacher and administrator). During the pandemic, it became apparent that problems with grading affected many more students, waking up educators to the need to more accurately and fairly measure student learning.
• Truly include parents. “For all their pieties,” says Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Institute), “schools have seemingly gotten into a habit of treating parents as a nuisance… [giving] the gentle brush-off to parents concerned about discipline, special education, or testing.” With remote learning, parents have had a front-row seat on their children’s curriculum content, how teachers teach, and how school time is used. Reactions have ranged from positive (I had no idea teachers were so organized) to helpful (Now I see why my daughter is confused about parts of speech), to negative (I never knew how little learning occurs during my kids’ school day). “There’s great power in all this,” says Hess. “This kind of openness can strengthen school communities, enable valuable oversight for what schools are doing, and provide students more of the support they need. Here’s hoping that we find a way to keep it, long after the kids are out of the kitchen and back in the classroom.”
• Learn from the positive anomalies. Some students, perhaps one in 20, have actually performed better on schoolwork during the pandemic, observes author/former principal Tracey Benson. Perhaps this happened, he says, because of “the truncated direct instruction time, the streamlined curriculum, or the absence of the social stimuli of being constantly surrounded by other students.” We can learn a lot from these positive outliers: “What is it about the distance learning environment that has helped them turn the corner, and how can we preserve these strategies as we return to traditional in-person instruction?”
• Stop teaching by telling. Teacher lectures and plodding through textbook chapters have been even less effective via Zoom than they were beforehand, says Chris Dede (Harvard Graduate School of Education). Seeing students tuning out, many teachers shifted to problem-based and project-based activities, teaching science, technology, engineering, and math with materials found in students’ homes and communities and using family members as mentors and co-teachers. “Let’s not give up the powerful, novel models of learning and motivation that are a silver lining in the dark cloud of this human tragedy,” says Dede.
• Continue creative assessing. While there’s definitely a role for standardized testing, says New York City social studies teacher Tyler Tarnowicz, being liberated from high-stakes testing for two years has led to some creative ways to assess student learning and growth in real time, involve students in the process, and hold educators accountable. As standardized tests return, Tarnowicz urges us to keep them in perspective and continue to get valuable insights from lower-key classroom practices.
• Keep opening doors to higher education. During the pandemic, several changes have been implemented to level the playing field for college admissions, says Brennan Barnard (Making Caring Common):
– Wider access to college counseling;
– High-quality virtual visits to colleges;
– Test-optional policies;
– Better understanding of applicants’ family responsibilities and other circumstances that affect their educational opportunities;
– Admissions officers having more insight about who is being left behind.
Barnard hopes these practices will continue in the years ahead.
• Rethink attendance policies. Thousands of students have “gone missing” during school closures, says Bree Dusseault (Center on Reinventing Pubic Education), often students who were already struggling. This has led many educators to implement strategies like these:
– Collaborating with families to reengage missing students and bridge technology gaps;
– Ensuring that every student has at least one consistent relationship with a caring adult;
– Providing options like evening classes, flexible schedules, and independent study;
– Focusing on content mastery versus seat time.
“The solution to chronic absenteeism does not revolve around truancy boards or court dates,” says Dusseault. “We need to incentivize schools to use wellness-centered approaches that hold students to high expectations but avoid punishments that only set them back.”
• Expand learning time. Many students lost months of learning during the pandemic, says Karen Hawley Miles (Education Resource Strategies), in some cases a full year. As schools return to regular schedules, she points to schools that have reorganized staff, time, and technology to help those students catch up. Among the options: extended learning time, high-dosage tutoring, and after-school learning opportunities.
• Change teacher-student ratios. During remote learning, some high schools shifted from seven-period days to a quarter system with students taking no more than three subjects at a time, says Jal Mehta (Harvard Graduate School of Education). This frees teachers to focus on 80 students at a time, versus 160, making it much easier to build relationships and rapport. This is a practice that should continue, says Mehta.
• Ask what matters. “It was a wild ride,” says graduate student Kelsea Turner. “We were teleported into breakout rooms where we found ourselves taking solace in a familiar face or marking time in a silent standoff, waiting for someone to initiate the conversation. In this two-dimensional world, we realized that the back of your hair didn’t matter anymore and that we could show up to class barefoot. We learned that ‘I had an unstable Internet connection’ was the new ‘my dog ate my homework,’ and that the effort required to click ‘unmute’ somehow made us feel like whatever we said had better be worth it – most of us, anyway. We discovered that vibes transmit through Wi-Fi and we can feel them without ever knowing how a person moves through the world…
“So many variables demanded radical flexibility, forcing us to try what we would have resisted before, to fail, then to try something else. We learned how to learn again in this bizarre here and now. And to both our chagrin and delight, this year inspired us to ask and really mean it: What matters now in education? As we prepare to depart Zoomland to return to classrooms or embark on new endeavors, may we remember to never stop asking this question, and to mute ourselves to listen for the answers. And if we are lucky enough to work with students, let’s not forget the tenderness we felt when someone greeted us warmly by name when we arrived in class – and how sometimes it was the only proof we had that we were actually there, in person or not.”
“For Keeps” by Lory Hough in Ed. Magazine, Spring 2021 (#168, pp. 26-35); Hough can be reached at [email protected].
Construction – If you are interested in the Newport Corridor Update click here; https://www.bendoregon.gov/newportimprovements