Crazy week this week – I kept thinking Friday was a Monday! Here is a logistics update for you all. Excited to celebrate the arrival of Mark and Ashley’s baby coming up any day here! 3 Weeks till Spring Break….
Week 1:
- Baby South’s arrival (Monday?!)
- 10th gr PoL – Tuesday
- Challenge Day (and Pancake Breakfast by Leadership) – Thursday
- Michelle out Friday (Jodi)
- Student led conferences 4 wks away
Week 2:
- No big events planned!
- Michelle out Thur/Fri (Jodi)
- Student led conferences 3 wks away
Week 3:
- 10th gr Zolo Media career tour optional
- Student led conferences 2 wk away
Week After Spring Break:
- 10th gr Natural Resources career tour optional
- Roger out (personal day) Friday
- Student Led Conferences postponed 1 week
10th Grade Coffee House
I am really grateful to Paul, Michelle and Karen for their hard work on this PoL coming up next Tuesday. I would like to encourage all of our teaching staff to be there if you can… but I am not REQUIRING it! Your attendance at these events sends a positive message to our students and families, and is a cool opportunity to get to know parents better.
I am happy to be flexible about your early departure from school on other days of the week in exchange for you presence at events like this! However, you have some other conflict and can’t make it, I totally understand... it would be cool if you can send me an email to let me know if you won’t be there.
Student Led Conferences, 1 Week Delay and 10th grade??
I am proposing we delay SLC’s by one week for two reasons… we just lost a week of the 2nd semester in which students would have been moving forward on tasks and learning that would have been part of what was “sharable” at SLC’s AND because I have to take a day off on Friday April 5th which was our planned SLC day.
ALSO, I am going to schedule some time on a Wednesday (this week or next, stay tuned) to open up a conversation about HOW we want to go about SLC’s. I feel like the 9th graders should definitely do a 2nd SLC… it’s a great opportunity to get the skill under their belts, and a chance for us as teachers to improve our practices around the “lead up”. HOWEVER, I am open to some thinking around what makes most sense for our 10th graders. There have been some conversations about their unique position as a class right now and it could be that instead of SLC’s, 10th graders might benefit more form something else? A mini-retreat? A tweaked version of SLC’s that includes something around Junior Year planning? Another idea that is waiting to emerge out there? Stay tuned for time to talk and gather your ideas and opinions.
2019-20 Planning
It is time to start sharing our thoughts on 2019-20. As you know, your voice, expertise and opinions matter… A LOT! In fact, without your input we are WAY less likely to find the right path as quickly or easily.
This 2019-20 Staff Planning Survey is JUST an opening to a larger conversation that I will create time for as a staff in our Wednesday SIW time. I will do my best to balance our needs for planning next week vs. planning next year!
The 1st three questions on the survey are about YOUR own plans/hopes for next year, and will remain confidential unless or until you tell me different. The 2nd half of the survey is designed to elicit your early thinking on program design for 2019-20, and I will collate your thoughts into a document that we will then use as a framework for some discussion and ultimately decision making!
If you could please capture your thoughts onto this 2019-20 Staff Planning Survey by Friday March 8th it would be excellent! I would like ALL STAFF to complete this, but know that certain questions are optional and so if you have no opinions (come on, really?!) on a question, leave it blank! THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR SHARING YOUR THINKING!
Pump & Stretch Next 3 Weeks
On Monday we will have our last “Open Gym – Online PE” flex session and in Crew I would like to make sure that all students sign up for a structured Pump & Stretch session for the remaining 3 weeks prior to Spring Break.
It is clear that MANY of our students have really struggled with online PE… and for a mix of different reasons including: a dislike of online learning generally, struggles with the platform itself, inexperience with classes requiring super well developed “independent learner” skills, and more. We also know that our students now have LESS time to complete their online Health course, given the fact that we are already close to Spring Break. After meeting with Amy Douglass and doing some thinking together with her, I have the following plan in mind:
- Every Friday, all students will head to Crew for Pump & Stretch class time and will work with their Crew teacher on their online PE and/or Health class (details on techniques you can use to actively support students to follow). This means that our fitness oriented P&S will be only Mon, Tues, Thurs.
- Add an “Online PE-Health” Pump & Stretch option to our list of choices so that some students who know they need support on this class more than a fitness break can choose this option (we will see what happens here with numbers). We will need a teacher who is willing to offer this instead of a more typical Pump & Stretch.
- I will set up a Pump & Stretch Sign Up form for Monday in Crew. Can those of you who teach Pump & Stretch please indicate what you would like to offer for the coming 3 weeks… Yoga? Mindfulness? Basketball/volleyball (1 wk of each)? Pickleball? Ping pong? Juggling? Walk & talk? Fitness? Games (wk 1 – dodgeball, wk 2 – corn hole, wk 3 – choice). Online Health? Can you please indicate your preference Teacher P&S Sign Up – March 19 by Sunday evening!
A Few “tune up” Reminders
EARBUDS & CELL PHONES: lets please remember to REALLY BE CLEAR about ear bud use. I am still seeing students with earbuds in A LOT, and even when it is clear they don’t have permission. Our party line is:
- Our DEFAULT CONDITION is no earbuds or cell phones out in class
- Students may ONLY have cell phones out and/or earbuds in IF THEY HAVE RECEIVED EXPLICIT PERMISSION FROM YOU TO DO SO.
- Please refrain from shifting from this rule by having blanket times or rules like: “whenever it is private work time you may have earbuds in.” or “whenever you are working on Peak you may have earbuds in” because these shift us away from the default condition in the 1st bullet. Visuals in your classroom and/or on your whiteboard might help!!
- If you allow students to use earbuds for a portion of your class period on any given day, please be sure to remind them when the “invitation closes”
- This policy will be easier to keep track of if you allow earbuds only very sparingly!!!!
GRADEBOOKS: Please make sure you have set up 2nd semester gradebooks and are beginning to enter assignments and assessments. Our students are going to benefit from frequent feedback on their work in class and on their homework! I have had some questions from students and parents about how often they can expect gradebooks to be updated. I propose that our staff wide expectation should be that gradebooks should be updated one week from assignment submission. In other words:
- students who turn in work on the due date can expect that it will be scored and entered into the gradebook within 1 week
- students who turn in work late can expect it will be scored and in the gradebook within 1 week of submission
- Is this a reasonable goal… knowing that there may be occasions where a teacher might need more than a week, (say 10 days) but most work will be scored and entered within 1 week?
- ALSO – I strongly encourage you to communicate actively with your students both in class and through family emails so they know how to reach you and they understand your expectations!
- Here is our recent “gradebook expectations cheat sheet“
Crew This Week and Challenge Day
Here is our Crew Planning Calendar – keep an eye on it!
Challenge Day is this Thursday. Our leadership students are hosting a pancake breakfast beforehand for all staff and students.
- Hoping to have all hands on deck all day! All of us adult chaperones need to be ready for orientation at 7:30am. Our day will finish at 3:00pm (30 minute debrief afterwards)
- I would like to encourage you to address Challenge Day in Crew on either Monday or Tuesday!
- Please share that this is an opportunity our school gets to participate in because a group of student leaders in our District (Shay M’s Advisory Team) selected it as their “passion project”… to bring Challenge Day to as many HS students as they can
- Challenge Day will be as powerful as we make it… our students already have a pretty high degree of trust and support for each other, but we still have lots we can improve on!
- I have a call with our facilitator’s on Wednesday and they will want to know our goals: What does your Crew think are our school’s “culture strengths” and “culture challenges”? What does your Crew think ought to be our school’s specific goals for Challenge Day? What does our school need to work on?
- What is your Crew looking forward to about CD? Anything they are nervous about?
- possible 5 minute into video to share on splash page
- ideas for pre and post activities in this download