To Do:

• Andrea Wilson received an email this week from Aaron Henderson, Bend REI Outreach Coordinator. He was reaching out in order to see if there would be anyone interested in having REI bike techs come to schools in order to teach basic bike maintenance skills to students. You can reach Aaron at: [email protected] if you are interested in discussing possibilities of how this might look with him.
• Please see the following reminder/To Do from Jon Lindsay regarding any 3rd year probationary teachers you have this year: It is only December but it is time to start thinking about the renewal/non-renewal process. If you have an employee that you don’t want to renew, then we have some work to do in this area before the public board meeting February 12th. By Jan. 9th: Please have a conversation with me about any certified employee that you have some concerns about.  If you have a concern about an employee, we need to start making a plan for how to move forward with that person.  We may decide to start with informal supports or go to our formal process.    We have several options when we are talking about probationary employees of concern.  One option is to non-renew a probationary contract.  This is formally done at the Board Meeting in February.  If we decide to move toward non-renewal, we will need to have some discussions with the teacher, with the BEA, and with the board during Executive Sessions.  If you are having concerns with a probationary teacher, please make sure we talk about it.  Once a teacher becomes contract it can be a much harder process.I also need to know about contract teachers that you have a concern about.  You may only be supporting the person informally, which is great, but I still need to know about them.  If you have started the formal support system, which includes Focus Performance Review, Support Strategies, and/or a Plan of Assistance, you must contact me so that we can work through it together. Due by Jan. 21st:  Probationary three letters of support.  We need to be hiring and putting the best teachers in front of students.  It is an important decision when moving an employee from probationary status to contract status.  After participating in the board process last several years, I have a better feeling for what the board is looking for in these letters.  The board takes moving a probationary employee to contract status very seriously.  They really want to know that each of you have specific reasons why each one of these employees should move to contract status.  Here is a spreadsheet of probationary three employees and the famous probationary letter from Matt. (Please don’t just change Matt’s name to yours as there will be some other obvious updates needed as well!) If you have any questions, please feel free to give me (Jon) a call.

This and that:

• Apple has created a video around the question of: “Have you ever made something wonderful but were too afraid to share it?” You may have recently seen this video/commercial, but I thought it was worth sharing with you as we head into this holiday season. I think there could be a number of applications to your work as leader of educational professionals and young learners – and I’ll let you make those connections for yourself, rather than tell you what they are for me.  However, I one I do want to pass along is as a personal “thank you” for giving of your gifts daily to those you lead, work with and serve. This week was another great reminder for me of the great work you do in your interactions with students and families!
• As a heads-up, Skip Offenhauser is days away from opening up the application window for additions to the adopted or supplemental Health curriculum. Our district offers rich social emotional health and wellness curriculum throughout all levels, including video and speakers, for teaching and learning. Only those persons and materials approved by the Health Advisory Committee should be in front of our students. For example, suicide awareness, alcohol, vaping, tobacco cessation, sex trafficking, sexuality, etc. materials must be approved for use as well any guest speakers on these topics. If teachers have materials or speakers that they would like to see approved, please have them share these resources with Skip and the team.

Reminders:

• I communicated this last week as well, but wanted to put it back on your radar in case you were planning on doing some reading over the break… At our next MS Horizontal meeting (Jan. 28) we will not be discussing chapters 7 – 8 of The Culture Code, so you do not need to read that section quite yet. Instead, we will be spending that time processing the information that Austin James collected from you during a site visit in the past number of weeks. Remember Tony Hsieh (downtown Los Vegas project from chapter 5)? He was quoted as saying: “I try to help things happen organically. If you set things up right, the connection happens.” (p. 64) He is also the one that spoke about the power of “collisions” – the belief that: “Serendipitous personal encounters are the key driver of creativity, community, and cohesion.” (p. 66) One of my goals for our time together on Jan. 28 is to allow for “collisions” to happen among you. (And taking a risk that my plan doesn’t crash and burn instead!)
• We are officially back on Jan. 7, 2019!
• We will not be having a Leadership meeting in January.