Dear Realms HS Team,
I am SUPER excited to dive into another great year! I feel grateful and humbled to have such an amazing bunch of passionate, dedicated, and talented educators on this journey together. It will be at times amazing, hard, inspiring and tiring!
Last year these blog posts featured a an airplane theme… a metaphor around launching, flying and all the while building our plane (in mid air) while simultaneously serving the “passengers” and determining our destination!! Remember? Yeah, I know, it got a little stretched and tired by the end… but nonetheless a metaphor can help create meaning and “perspective” in times when coherence, meaning, or perspective are hard to find!!
So… this year’s metaphor you are wondering?…. I am thinking windows! On Friday last week, when I was feeling at a bit of a low due to the state of our facility and the length of the “to do list” in front of me, I walked into the bump out where our new classrooms are being built and I saw something that lifted my spirits and brought me back to the long term vision for our school: windows installed in the outside wall where our new classrooms will be!
So… windows it is! Be prepared for the metaphor to get stretched and tired (again!), but hopefully it will also give us the opportunity to find meaning in complex and busy world of “starting a school: year 2”
In the meantime, enjoy the “views” below! (ouch!).
Roger.
CELEBRATING ONE OF OUR OWN!
Not sure if everyone knows (I was supposed to keep it quiet earlier in the Spring) but our own amazing Jennifer Scalley has been selected as one of seven finalists for classified/support staff person of the year in our District! This is not surprising to us, right? Congratulations Jennifer and whether you are selected as “the chosen one” or not you ARE amazing in our eyes and we are lucky to have you as the glue for our team in so many ways! Jennifer will be recognized at the District Kick Off event on Tuesday afternoon!
COMMUNICATION & COLLABORATION:
Hey all – I hope to use this blog once every week (or TWO?) to try and streamline communications so that you don’t have to search through a 1000 emails from me… you can come back to this blog and find old content, links, decisions etc! Bookmark it!
Similarly, the portal will be another “go to” place for: 1) frequently used documents AND 2) documents that are “in process” and that we are using to collaborate on. Bookmark it! The portal will be most useful if we keep it organized, prune it once in a while, and use it just for the two purposes above. Another note… ANY doc that you put link onto the portal should live in the RHS Team Drive. Here are the kinds of docs to put on the portal:
“In process and collaboration documents” like:
- Crew and expedition calendars
- Disorientation agendas and plans
Frequently used documents like:
- master schedule
- grading handbook
- duty list
CREW DECISION:
Based on conversations at the end of last week with District construction/maintenance folks around creating temporary classrooms in the cafeteria I have made the executive decision to go with 7 Crews instead of 8 until we move into our new rooms. The part of this that I am open to feedback on is who will lead each Crew but at this point the decision to go with 7 crews is “done”! I am happy to share my reasoning at some point if you are curious.
Here’s how Crews will look:
- 2 ninth grade crews of 22 students each (current 44 enrolled @ 9th)
- recommended staffing: Tomsic and Hanford
- 3 tenth grade crews of 20 students each (current 60 enrolled @10th)
- recommended staffing: Agocs, Seelig, Trendler
- 2 junior crews of 15 each (current 30 enrolled juniors)
- recommended staffing: Dixon and Harju
ROOMS ASSIGNMENTS:
BACKGROUND: On Thursday and Friday this week Mike F over at Skyline and I had some open/difficult/productive conversations around facilities, room sharing etc. In the end, even though I can see that there is some “inequity” in our final arrangement, we agreed that Skyline would keep their 3 “inside rooms” and Realms HS would take over what they call “The Studio” (room adjacent to cafeteria). We will have our 4 “open rooms” (rooms 1-4), the Studio, a temp classroom in the cafeteria, and the Maker Space (for Crew). I have asked the District to put together a a nice big temp classroom in the cafeteria against the east white wall using 7 foot dividers. It will be provisioned with a full set of tables/chairs, whiteboard(s), projection cart, teacher desk, shelves etc. etc.
NOISE: We can expect that our 4 open classrooms (and common/couch space) will be reasonably “loud” throughout the academic day. During most of our schedule, we have 3 or 4 out of these 4 rooms occupied, and Skyline will often have 2 out of 2 of their open rooms (Paul and Michelle’s old rooms) occupied. This is a pretty good “net increase” in students out on the warehouse floor… SO WE ARE ALL GOING TO HAVE TO COMMIT TO NOISE REGULATION (more to come on this)! Sometime during the 1st 2-3 weeks of school the “lapendary panels” will be installed over all these rooms and we are hoping that these will help mitigate noise! (?!). In the end, I actually think that for the short term, our temp cafeteria classroom might be a pretty desirable place to be because it will be in the cafeteria which is isolated!
We also have the Outback reserved during all of our PE/Health classes for this trimester.
I have built a TENTATIVE room assignment scenario and it can be found on the Master Schedule – By Teacher/Room. I have made an effort to keep people in the same room as much as possible and to consider what subjects end up in what rooms. I am CERTAINLY open to checking on this next week and revising this room set up if necessary. I know that this an impactful set of decisions for each of you and for our students! However, I ask all of us to remember that it is for two months and then we will re-negotiate once our rooms are complete!
PARKING LOT OF QUESTIONS – ANSWERED!
I have attempted to answer all of your questions on the Parking Lot of Burning Fire. I do encourage everyone to skim this WHOLE document as you all asked lots of great questions and you might benefit from reading the answers to other people’s questions, not just your own!
BUDGETS
There are always lots of questions about budget, and we will have a chance to talk more about this as the year progresses. For now, I want to share your supplies budget for the year and how much we have left in our “Start Up Equipment” budget from last year, including how it is “earmarked”.
We are lucky to have some financial support each year from Friends of Realms to help offset SOME of the costs of fieldwork and Intensives, HOWEVER FoR has now been through TWO straight years of drawing down its reserve fund and is NOT going to be able to grant us as much money as we’d like this year. SO…. we all need to be careful in our spending and look for ways to save!!
Here is a link to the budget. This should take you directly to the “supplies budget” tab which is the one that is most important right now for you. You have View permission over the whole budget if you are interested, dig in some day… it’s fun!
Please remember that ALL ORDERING/PURCHASING goes through Jennifer and must be pre-approved by RW (or sometimes JS).
HOURS & MEETINGS
I have drafted a proposal for start/end times and meeting times. I have also attempted to clarify my expectations and around when and how you can (and can’t) flex from these times. Please take a look at the RHS Staff Arrival, Departure, Meetings document. If you have feedback on any of this please let me know. If you prefer your feedback/question to be private for now, then send me an email. If you think your feedback/question is best read by the full staff, then use the Comment feature on the document!
We WILL have a full staff check in on this and finalize it once everyone has had a chance to read it and share any feedback and any needed revisions are made. As I am sure you recognize, our hours and meeting times will ALWAYS require compromise… it won’t work perfectly for everyone. Some folks are morning people, others have morning commitments and prefer to work late. For some folks, what is true on Mondays might not be true on Thursdays. Etc. Etc. Etc. So, I will take your feedback and then publish a schedule that I think strikes the best compromise.
EL OFF SITE PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Please take a look at this EL Education Off Site PD spreadsheet and indicate if you are interested and available for any of these offerings. We need to determine who is going to the National Conference ASAP as those going will need to register asap.