This and That:

• I am happy to announce that we have determined four dates to be set aside as “District SIW” for next school year.  These dates should be the only ones in which core, SPED, or other certified (e.g. ELL) teachers will be pulled from your building.  Additionally, these will be the dates on which other departments could meet either vertically or horizontally (e.g. music, second language, etc.).  I’ve included content areas that have already made plans for PD on those days:  9/14 (ELA and math), 10/5 (ELA and math), 1/11 (math), 3/8 (math).  I am fairly certain that science will also plan to meet on these dates as it is an instructional materials adoption year.  Additionally, counselors will likely be pulled these dates in order to create a district Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Program next year.
• Grant Wiggins, maybe best known as co-author of the book Understanding by Design, wrote an blog post entitled: “Everything you know about curriculum may be wrong.  Really.”  Wiggins asks the question: “… what results if we think of action, not knowledge, as the essence of an education…” Here is another excerpt from that post that may wet your appetite enough for you to read it in its entirety:”So, suppose knowledge is not the goal of education. Rather, suppose today’s content knowledge is an offshoot of successful ongoing learning in a changing world – in which ‘learning’ means ‘learning to perform in the world.’As odd as that might sound for academics, it makes perfect sense in our everyday lives. The point of child-rearing, cooking, teaching, soccer, music, business, or architecture is not ‘knowledge’; rather, knowledge is the growing (and ever-changing) residue of the main activity of trying to perform well for real.”
• There is a free evening STEM event for the public (including MS and HS students) on May 20 at Ridgeview HS.  Here is the flyer for additional information.  Feel free to share this information with anyone interested.

Reminders:

• Don’t forget to thank your mom this Sunday!  You wouldn’t be where you are (or around at all!) if it weren’t for her.
• Budget and School Board meeting this Tuesday evening beginning at 5:00pm – no RSVP required!
• There will be an Oregon Rising event held this coming Thursday at Summit HS beginning at 6:00pm.