BIG UPS (IN ADVANCE THIS WEEK)!
Roger, Bethany, Elinor and Heidi will be heading to Denver for the EL National Conference. Bethany, Elinor and Roger will be leaving Tuesday and Heidi will be leaving Wednesday. Obviously this leaves us THIN ON STAFFING and Admin support…. and we appreciate in advance, all of you for helping make this PD opportunity possible! BIG UPS TO ALL OF YOU BACK HOME FOR SUPPORTING OUR SUBS, AND SUPPORTING OUR STUDENTS WITH A THINNER TEAM THAN USUAL!
CREW TEACHERS – BIG UPS in advance for your work on the Mighty Cause fundraising pages. The FoR Board, and Caleb and I REALLY APPRECIATE the lift. We know it is new, and a little clunky, and we appreciate your involvement as crew teachers in helping kids get these pages right!
THE OUTLOOK CAL – All You Need To Know!
FOR FIELDWORK DETAILS INCLUDING BACK HOME SCHEDULES LOOK HERE!!!! RMS-RHS Fieldwork Overview
1st WEEK (all on Outlook!):
- Tues Nov 28th – Roger, Bethany, Elinor away at EL National Conference
- Tues Nov 28th – 9th grade Survival Culmination Fieldwork (staffing & back home sched)
- Wed Nov 29th – MS MTSS – focused on trimester 2 class list re-builds
- Wed Nov 29th – Building Led SIW (SLGG’s)
- Thurs Nov 30th – HS MTSS – focused on trimester 2 9th & 10th grade cohort splits
- Thurs Nov 30th – Fire Drill
- Fri Dec 1st – Mighty Cause PUBLISH DAY!
- Fri Dec 1st – Club Friday at RHS
2nd WEEK (all on Outlook!)
- FINALS WEEK AT RHS
- Mon Dec 4th – 8:00AM – Re-scheduled All Staff Logistics Mtg
- Mon Dec 4th – RHS Community Mtg
- Fri Dec 8th – NO SCHOOL GRADING DAY (grades due!)
LAST WEEK (all on Outlook!)
- Mon Dec 11th – 1st day of TRI 2
- Thurs Dec 14th – STAFF PARTY (details coming)!
- Fri Dec 15th – MS will be on Wed SIW schedule for activities and community mtg (details here)
FURNITURE AND COMMON SPACE UPKEEP!
BOOKSHELVES AVAILABLE:
We have 5 or more bookshelves up for grabs and a couple more standing desks that can be great for students who need to move while they learn. These are now available for high school staff as well as the middle school team has already had an opportunity to access! EMAIL ROGER IF YOU WOULD LIKE ONE!
PLEASE HELP KEEP OUR COMMON SPACES CLEAN/ORGANIZED
You will see and hear more about “Reset the Space and Leave No Trace” and we ask you as teachers to support the day to day maintenance of our Common Spaces.
If you have students using the Common Areas, remind them to push in chairs, reset tables and clean up their papers, materials etc. I have been cleaning the middle commons in the HS every other day for a couple of weeks now… students are NOT YET making it happen so you will likely need to supervise and double check until a habit is built! THANK YOU.
Lastly – please do not take common space furniture.
NEED FURNITURE OR WANT TO GET RID OF FURNITURE?
If you would like to acquire a different table or piece of furniture for your classroom, OR if you want to get rid of furniture from your classroom, please work with Roger. Please do not just take or move Common Space furniture. We are trying to get all of our Common Spaces SET UP and STABILIZED so that we can help students use and take good care of them!
NEW MIDDLE SCHOOL LIBRARY SPACE SET UP!
We finally have a library space set up in the middle school! Books are NOT yet set up, but the space is ready. You will notice that the library is in front of Ian’s room, not Laurie’s. We decided to keep a “group work space” outside of Laurie’s room so that Laurie, Phoebe, Eric and Jake ALL have equivalent “group work spaces” right in front of their classroom windows where they can keep an eye on students! Ian – we figured that of all those teachers’ your curriculum and gym time meant that you needed a group work space adjacent to your classroom the least!
MIGHTY CAUSE UPDATES
Crew teachers – thank you in advance for working carefully with each of the students in your Crew to to build HIGH QUALITY Mighty Cause Pages! The quality of the writing, photo selection and layout WILL make a difference in the money we raise!
Caleb and I will be looking for GREAT STUDENT SAMPLE PAGES to publish in the announcements this week!
Caleb has added MORE PHOTO ALBUMS to the Google Site and also some new “tips” for good pages – check them out.
Remind students NOT to hit PUBLISH until you have reviewed and OK’d their page. Caleb and I can help with this process. Our target “publish day” is Friday Dec 1st.
BIG PUSH FOR PHOTOS!!!!
As we dig into Mighty Cause pages this week in preparation for Publishing Day (hopefully!!) on Friday we REALLY need your photos of Fieldwork, Intensives and/or MS Elective classes. We ALSO need your pics for our MS and HS yearbooks!!
Kids having ACTUAL PICTURES OF THEMSELVES IN THE FIELD is a pretty important part of the Might Cause page if at all possible!!
EXAMPLE – Kali’s picture on her MC page right now is this:
BUT, imagine if her picture and story are more aligned to THIS:
Here are some easy albums to drop your pictures into:
RHS Fall General Photos
TRI 1 GRADING GUIDANCE
Grades Due Friday December 8th End of Day:
Here is the section of our Faculty Grading Guide that reviews How To Send AND POST Final Grades. Here are the minimum expectations for Synergy gradebooks (also from our Faculty Grading Guide) At RHS, please remember to post TA, Study Skills and Crew sections!
Realms T1 Canvas Courses:
- December 7 (Thursday): Courses conclude for students at midnight.
- December 13 (Wednesday): Teachers maintain grading access in Canvas through midnight. Courses then become read-only and move to Past Enrollments.
Realms T2 Canvas Course Shells:
- New course shells are now available
- You may begin importing and creating content for T2 Canvas courses.
- Cross-list before December 11 if using this feature (see Tyler if you need help- it’s quick & easy)
- Publish courses when ready. Published courses will be visible for students on December 11 (Monday).
- The “Beginning of the Year” guidance can be applied to the start of a term as well. Review as needed.
- and here is the generic BLSD Canvas Expectations Checklist
TRIMESTER 2 COHORTS @ MTSS THIS WEEK!
Teachers and EA’s… we will be revising MS (6th – 8th) and HS (9th & 10th) class lists/cohorts for trimester 2 during our MTSS meeting this Wednesday and Thursday morning.
You are of course welcome to attend the MS or the HS MTSS meeting this week and give your input.
High school teachers, we invite you to take a look NOW at your trimester 2 9th and 10th grade cohorts and give us any suggestions or inputs on kids you think ought to NOT be together or kids you think should or should not be in your class(es). To make the process easiest, please enter your suggestions or tweaks on this 9th Gr Cohort Feedback tab and 10th Gr Cohort Feedback Tab!
TRIMESTER 2 PLANNING – EVENTS, DATES ETC.
If you are like me… it is nice to see the upcoming trimester at a glance. This year, with no “weekly SWAG” it can be a little harder to track everything over the course of a trimester (they go FAST!).
Our Outlook calendar is still the GO TO PLACE for all the details. Everything below is on Outlook. However, if you want to see an overview of the trimester, I have added this “trimester 2 overview” tab to our major dates calendar. PLEASE NOTE – 6 out of 12 of the trimester 2 weeks are 4 days weeks!!
2024-25 ENROLLMENT & INFO NIGHTS!
Wowe – seriously hard to believe, but we are heading into application/lottery season for 24-25 school year and all that is entailed in the process including:
- Choice School Application Window Opens: 1/2/24
- Information Nights at RMS/RHS: Thurs 1/11/24 and Wed 1/17/24
- Choice School App and ACR deadline: 1/19/24
- Lottery: 1/23/24
- 8th Gr Forecasting Nights at Comprehensive High Schools: 3/4/24
Preparing For Our Information Nights!
- Curate/display student work on the walls inside and/or outside your classrooms! This is best when it is accompanied by additional docs like rubrics, learning targets, guiding questions etc.
- Classrooms will mostly be open, so anything you can do to organize your room!
STAY TUNED FOR INFORMATION ABOUT STAFF ATTENDING INFO NIGHTS – MORE TO COME SHORTLY!
MS & HS COMMUNITY MTG CAL AND PLANNING
HS and MS Monthly Community Meetings for the rest of the year are on the Outlook calendar AND there is an “Community Mtg Agenda and Facilitation Planner” here. At the moment, all of our upcoming Community Meetings need agendas and facilitators!
Next Step – we will be determining the facilitation plan going forward. Grades? Crews? Other? Feel free to weigh in, and stay tuned.. our ICCL Team will be buffing out a plan!
2nd & 3rd TRI FIELDWORK PLANNING – GO TIME!
What an AWESOME Fall Fieldwork Season – THANK YOU ALL!
NOW IT’S TIME TO PLAN FOR TRI 2 (AND TRI 3):
Trimester 2 fieldwork is obviously coming up, and we’d like to get permission forms prepped and all our outings calendared and support you in the planning! Please email Caleb (CC Roger) and get your tri 2 ideas onto our radar screen ASAP!
ALSO – trimester 3 is NOTORIOUSLY BUSY, so if you have fieldwork hopes for tri 3 please be SURE to let Caleb know ASAP.
STAFF CREW FOLLOW UP
Team – thanks for your suggestions about Staff Crew on the Friday before break! We have a Staff Crew planner (similar to our Community Meeting planner) that is designed to make sure we have a clear plan for the who and what of our Staff Crews for the year!
I have created STAFF CREW DATES AND AGENDA PLANS/TOPICS that includes your “suggested topics for staff crew” from your dry erase table contributions right there so that our facilitators can pull from this list.
If you are interested in facilitating one of our remaining staff crews, please sign up on this document above!
The dates are ALSO in OUTLOOK.
UPCOMING SIW’S
- Nov. 29th Building Led: SLGG’s (crew and academic)
- Dec 6th – Teacher Directed
- Dec 13th Building Led: Crew #3 of 6
TRI 2 BEHAVIOR TUNING UPDATE
COMING SOON.
TRI 2 TA’s INFO AND SIGN UP?
COMING SOON.
RESOURCE: LEVEL UP YOUR CHALK TALKS!
