Week 2: September 9 2019

Mr. Browne's Precept

An act of kindness never dies but extends the invisible undulations of its influence over the breadth of centuries. ~ Frederick William Faber

Appreciation 

 

This week, I would like to extend my appreciation to Chris and Anthony. On Friday morning one of our friends was having difficulty settling into the day. Anthony and Chris were a strong presence for our friend and helped get him launched into class. Their love and care for the student were evident. I am also aware that Stephanie and Lindsay had to do without their support as we started the day. This is just a single example of how this community works together to support our students and each other.

Honey-Do List 

September 13th: Huddle Preference Survey
September 16th: Sign off Sheet for Required Reading
September 20th: Classroom Schedules
September 20th: Let Jodi know if you think the Book of the Month Club is a good idea
September 30th: 1st Draft of Action Steps for professional growth and student learning goals
October 10th: Grade Level Blueprint for Learning objectives completed so Jodi can review

Idea: Book of the Month Club

Sometimes when I can't sleep I think up activities that I think will be good for the school community. Here is my latest. I/we would choose a book representative of our students that focuses on a positive character trait like kindness or empathy. Over the course of the month, I would read the same book to each class so every student would hear the book. We could send something home to families about the book and the character trait in our newsletter with ideas for related read alouds and/or activities. Let me know by September 20th if you think we should go forward with this idea.

Leadership Team Update 

The amazing leadership team met Thursday morning. We had a productive meeting.  We created draft protocols for our peer observations and classroom visits. The coach facilitating your CLT can tell you more about them. The leadership team members will be trying these out in classrooms sometime before September 26th.
We also resolved some lingering issue that you had about creating your Blueprint for Learning.

• Instead of creating the Blueprint through January you will complete it on a month by month basis. The coach facilitating your CLT will fill in the objectives for the coach facilitated time that happens at the beginning of each cycle.
• The team will fill in the remaining blocks based on a combination of three things: 1) What you have been working on in CLT  2)New ideas that you got from WSPD 3)Your action plan for the professional practice and/or student learning goal. 
• Please continue to use whatever agenda format worked for your CLT last year. You will not be graded on your agenda. The agenda is important because it is the "lesson plan" that you develop for your own learning. I am not concerned about you using the time well or on the tasks identified. You are professionals
• I have added a Honey-do list to the Hive so that you will see upcoming due dates for the month. There will not always be a concrete deliverable. Often the results of the work will be seen in change and growth during classroom visits. 
• We will create a folder of protocols that teams can choose from for the variety of activities that we will be participating in.

Morning Announcements 

I apologize that morning announcements have been a bit lackluster. I have wanted to take time and think about how I wanted to "brand" them. This is how I am going to start next week. We will have morning announcements at 9:45. Each day I will have grade level students of the week help. We will start with the third grade on Monday and work backward to K0-K1 on Friday.  Each day we will do the following:

• Reminders for Staff
• Birthdays-Yes we have birthday crowns!
• Music-We will identify a different genre each week and talk a bit about the genre. We will listen to a clip of the genre
• Dance-Using the genre above we will have a dance break where students can just move to the rhythm
• Daily Buzzword (M, W, F)- We will have a new vocabulary word each of these days\
• Dr. Jodi's Math Problem of the Day (T, Th)- I will read a word problem for each grade. The first student to bring me the correct written solution from each grade level will get a math star fo their class. I will read the problems on Tuesdays and Thursdays but I will also include them here each week. 

Morning Announcement Focus Areas

Dr. Jodi's Math Problem of the Day (T, Th)-

Tuesday

• Kindergarten: Dr. Jodi has 8 nuts. Squirrels ate 3 of the nuts. How many nuts were left? (5 nuts)
• Grade 1: Dr. Jodi saw 67 apples. Fifty of those apples were red and the rest were green. How many green apples did Dr. Jodi see? (17 green apples)
• Grade 2: Dr. Jodi heard a horn honk 5 times every hour. How many honks did she hear in 5 hrs? (25 honks)
• Grade 3: Dr. Jodi saw 27 girls at the movies. She saw 4 times as many boys there. How many boys did she see at the movies? (108 boys)

Thursday

• Kindergarten: Dr. Jodi needs to know how many letters appear in her name. (4 letters)
• Grade 1: Dr. Jodi needs to know how many times the letter P appears in the phrase " Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers. How Many Pickled Peppers did Peter Piper Pick?" (15)
• Grade 2: Dr. Jodi has 5 nickels, 4 dimes, and 6 pennies. How much money does she have? (71 cents)
• Grade 3: At Franklin Park Zoo Dr. Jodi saw 77 snakes, 67 alligators, and 57 bears. How many reptiles did Dr. Jodi see? (144. Note: Bears are not reptiles.)

Music Genre: African Drums (Source https://www.contemporary-african-art.com/african-drums.html)

DESE Visits

I was informed this week that our school has been selected to participate in the upcoming classroom observations being conducted as part of DESE’s district review.  Below, I provide more information on these observations. Most immediately, I have two hopefully quick requests: 

DESE has received our school’s master schedule and floor plan from BPS. They greatly appreciate any additional information you can provide on teachers’ instructional times and locations in advance of the visit (e.g., Grade 3 ELA takes place in Room 101 at 10 am). Please provide this schedule in response to this email or in response to the forthcoming scheduling email. 

Here is some additional context on the visit: 

DESE has selected the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to be the vendor who will conduct classroom observations. Between 9/30 and 10/11 of this year, AIR’s observers will visit 100 BPS schools, and conduct between eight and ten observations per school, depending on school size. The purpose of these observations is to create a report on the quality of classroom instruction across the entire district, using a sample of classrooms in the majority of BPS schools. The district review will not be used to evaluate individual teachers or schools, and no identifying school information or individual teacher information will be reported to participating schools, BPS, or DESE. The observation protocol is not designed to provide feedback to individual teachers or schools.

 On the day of the observations, an observer will report to the main office and sign in. I will set aside 15 minutes at the start of the visit to coordinate with the observer(s). The AIR team will ask if there are any teacher absences (they do not want to observe short-term substitutes), confirm the timing of activities outside of regular academic instruction (e.g., recess, lunch, physical education), and confirm how to avoid settings where their presence would be unduly disruptive (e.g., medically fragile settings, one-to-one settings).  

The observers will then proceed to conduct observations, unaccompanied, in a representative set of preselected classrooms. All observations will be brief, lasting approximately 20 minutes, and designed to minimize interruptions to teachers’ instruction and students’ learning. No identifying information will be collected on teachers whose classrooms are observed.

 All observation team members are certified in the use of the CLASS tool and are experienced observers. All AIR members have been CORI checked, and will also only be with children in a classroom setting (i.e. they will not pull children out of class for interviews). 

Classroom Schedules 

I will need your individual class schedules for the above review by the end of the day on September 20th. 

Reminders

• Please check mailboxes at least every other day. This is important so that we can fit important information, or at least backpack mail, in your boxes as it comes in. 
• Do not forget to sign in every day. This is important for payroll purposes. 
• Do not forget to pick up your two-way radios when you are taking children outside of the building. Though this is a new procedure it is important for safety. 

Late Pick-up Help 

We are looking for a co-educator (Paraprofessional) to volunteer to shift their hours to 9:30-4:00. The reason behind this is we would like someone to help cover late pick-ups. The expectation is that the volunteer would be at their teaching post and ready to go at 9:30. Please let me know ASAP if you are interested. The 1st person to volunteer will be selected. 

Food for Thought 

This article "An Open Letter to Black Parents Whose Suns Have Been Pushed Out of Preschool" has been on my mind since I first read it. It is thought-provoking and challenged my thinking in a lot of ways. I have been in schools where we have called parents every day about their child's behavior without thinking about what message we were sending the parent about their identity and the identity of their child. I believe that we are the type of school that will build relationships with our students and families. This article simply reminded me how much as at stake.