Taking Attendance
Attendance must be taken each period in a prompt fashion. That is a stand-alone sentence, but I’m going to expand on it anyway. Taking attendance is not only legally required, but it also is a HUGE help to a number of people inside our building. Families get automated calls sometime during the 11 o’clock hour letting them know if there student was marked absent (or marked present), which can lead to more work for some of your colleagues when those calls are made due to incorrect or incomplete information. Set a reminder, stick a post-it to your computer, task a student with reminding you – whatever you need to do in order to take attendance promptly, please do.
Student Behavior Expectations
Our students are showing us, in ways that are less-than desirable, that they don’t know what it means to be part of a community here at Pacific Crest. The vandalism and destruction in the bathrooms and classrooms, the litter at lunch, the unkindness towards one another, the near-constant iPad gaming – all of these are ways that they’re expressing that they need more guidance around what it means to be part of a community at school.
To help them better understand what it means to be part of our Golden Eagle community, Anne-Marie and I are working to develop a road show to meet with all students in their classes and talk about what our expectations are for them and for them to have an opportunity to share some things we, as the adults in the community, might do to help them feel more ownership of their experience here.
One of the structural changes we are going to make will be to close the bathrooms during passing times, but we need to be sure that this is rolled out in a way that is clear and durable, so that won’t happen until the week after Thanksgiving break. Thanks to those of you who are doing the hard but necessary work of being in the hallways during passing periods so that students see adults are present; I know it’s a big ask, as you have 10,000 things to do in only five minutes between classes, but seemingly small things like this have big impacts. HUGE thanks to those of you doing the harder work of popping into bathrooms during passing period and shooing kids out. This is a great deterrent to the vandalism we’ve seen in bathrooms this year and I’m grateful for the steps taken to show pride in our building and help combat these behaviors.
If you have any solution-focused ideas on how we might make the community experience more student-driven, please reach out to me or Anne-Marie. We’ll take all the help we can get on this one.
A reminder, Anne-Marie created this Expectations Tracking form for you to record any undesired student behaviors where documenting a pattern may be helpful. There’s also now a question on there about whether you’d like Admin follow up with an incident for those things that are not classroom-managed issues.
Emergency Drill Changes
Since we have moved to two lunches, we had to rethink the timing of our fire drills since they can’t happen in Advisory anymore.
We will run future fire drills during the last 10 minutes of class time. We will rotate class periods so that one class is not getting disrupted more than the other. All staff, even those who having planning period when the drill occurs, are required to leave the building during any evacuation drill (such as fire drills).
Below is the schedule.
Our November Fire Drill will be next week, Tuesday (11/16) at 9:50 AM.
Drill Schedule
November – period 1
December – period 2
January – period 3
February – period 4
March – period 5
April – period 6
May – period 7
June – TBD
*** Other drills like Earthquake, Secure, Lockdown, etc. will still take place during Advisory and will be more educational than a the typical “drill”, as we know that even drills like this can cause trauma but we still do need to be prepared in case there is ever an event that requires us to put these skills to use.
Now Hiring: Athletic Director
Brooke Walton, our Athletic Director, has resigned her position and we are now looking for a new Athletic Director. This is an extra-duty position that comes with a stipend and is a great way to help support our athletes have a fun and positive experience with middle school sports. The hours of the position vary by season, and the full job description is available online. If you or someone you know is interested, please let me or Anne-Marie know or apply!
Evaluations
Here is the agreed-upon evaluation process for the 2021-22 school year. Please note that both the number of observations and the evaluation domains and standards have been adjusted. We’ll review at SIW.
Virtual Family Turkey Bingo Fundraiser
All staff are encouraged to join us on for an evening of fun at our 2nd annual Family Virtual Turkey Bingo Fundraiser on Wednesday, November 17th from 6-7:30pm. Tickets are available for purchase on Touchbase now through November 16th. Each kit includes 10 bingo cards and 1 dauber; cost is $5 per kit. All proceeds benefit The Giving Plate. This is a great way to have a fun family evening while supporting a great cause. Sign up and get your kit today!
If you have received Heidi Odman’s email on 10/25, your training has expired. Our Fall MAC Survey will be the week of November 15th. Please complete the training by Monday November 15th, 2021. You can stop and restart the training if you do not complete it all at one time. You may have activities that you perform as part of your job that are claimable for reimbursement on MAC Survey Day, and if not, just by being a part of our trained employee base, your salary and benefits contribute to our reimbursement dollars dedicated to FAN. It will take approximately 22 minutes to complete (shorter if you increase the playback speed on YouTube).
There is a MAC Training Video that will assist you with your MAC Training. You will need two windows open and will be listening to the MAC Training Video in the background while clicking through your MAC Training slides.