Week7 October 14, 2019

Mr. Browne's Precept

Normal is a setting on a washing machine. ~ Unknown

Honey- Do List 

10/18/19     Team selection due to Jodi

10/21/19      BIMAS Window opens

10/22/19     Let Jodi know if you want to be on our historic research team

10/23/19     Submit BIMAS plan to Jen Mederios-Crabbe

10/24/19     Submit student math product that demonstrates strong mathematical thinking to office. 

10/31/19     Action Plan Template for Unit Completion

11/1/19       Register for whole-school PD in TeachPoint

11/22/19     Picture Day Make-Up

Shout Outs 

Keri could get a shout out every week but at the moment she is organizing the restoration and cleaning of the teachers' room. We are so lucky to have a staff that truly functions as a team. 

Rose during the professional development I realized that Rose would do a much more thorough job of pinch-hitting for Marc than I could have so I tossed the ball to her. She picked it up effortlessly and ran with it. (Sorry for the mixed sports analogies)

Pick a Team

It was brought to my attention that co-educators were unsure if they could volunteer for any of our teams. You are always welcome to volunteer and your perspective would be valued. Please see last week's Hive for a description of our teams. 

I accidentally left the Sunshine Team off of the list last week. Our Sunshine team captained by Eleanor is a very important team that attends to staff wellness. Partially in response to concerns that we have too many teams and we may be spreading ourselves too thin, I am proposing that we combine our Health and Wellness Team with the Sunshine Team with Co-Captains.  Unless someone objects we can rename the team the "Sunshine Total Wellness Team".  I dropped the health because it is part of total wellness. 

Traffic

Alyce is a champion for all children. She has worked tirelessly to create a safe drop off for our neighbor who is a medically fragile child. I want to thank all of you who have joined the fray and/or share her concern and are thinking of ways to make it better. 

Here is where we are currently with this project: 

I have put in a request for official-looking cones. This makes sense and was one of the recommendations by BPD. I am not sure if we will be able to scrounge any up from the district so if you have any large orange cones that you would like to let us borrow that would be wonderful. 

BPD and/or BPSPD are going to attempt to come at least 2 days a week at dismissal unless there is something more serious happening.  They were here this afternoon and surprisingly parents did not park there. 

We are open to any other creative solutions that someone might have. 

Behavior Support

Faculty Senate is such a good thing because it lets me know what I need to do a better job communicating about. 

We will be ordering each grade level team with two walkie-talkies (4 for K0/K1) so that you can have easy access to them at recess time, use them to contact the appropriate people when you need help with a student or facility issue. The trick will be to remember to keep them charged. I forget at least once a week. We will still check-in when we hear or see a student that is struggling as well.

 What does happen when we take a struggling student out of the room? The nuances depend on who the student is but generally, the same pattern is followed. We wait until the child has a calm and safe body. We ask the child to complete an age-appropriate number of compliance tasks. We complete some form of sensory activity while processing the incident with the child and then return the child to the classroom. 

Our goal is always to return the child to the classroom and reengage in the task as safely, quickly and efficiently as possible. We do not want to reinforce of task avoidance or 1:1 attention-seeking maladaptive behaviors. 

BIMAS

Last week there was information about the BIMAS included in the Hive. The window for the assessment opens next week.  Jen Mederios-Crabbe needs to submit the plan completing the assessment to the District as part of the CBHM grant. What this boils down to is knowing when you plan on entering the data. Jen has offered to provide coverage for your class so you can complete the process of putting the data in. Please let Jen know by 10/23 when you will be completing the data entry for the assessment. 

My Way Cafe Update

BPS Food Services sent me the following message this week:

We are excited about the new kitchen at the Lee Academy and the rollout of My Way Cafe! Our goal is to make sure you have the proper staffing and training to prepare for a successful rollout. Our experience in past implementations leads us to know that the first day of the program will be an indicator for success. 

In the past few weeks, we have been working diligently to prepare your location with trained staff in the new MWC method. Unfortunately, as we are not yet fully trained at your school site, and we will need to postpone your rollout date slightly from the original date. Your new rollout date is now November 18, 2019. I apologize for the delay, but believe it will give us better time to prepare to ensure the launch at your school is a success.

Keri has been to visit Ellison Parks to see their K0/K1 students go through the lunch line and to troubleshoot some issues. Today she sent the following message via email:

Hi teachers,

I've managed to talk to some of you in person over the last few days about the My Way Cafe launch, but I know I haven't gotten around to everyone so I figured an email could help clarify things. Please don't hesitate to follow up with me if you have questions or concerns. 

We thought we were on track for an October 21st launch but we got word Tuesday night from Food & Nutrition Services that they're going to postpone the launch until November 18th because the cafeteria staff is not yet fully trained. 

The new lunch schedule will look as follows: 

K2: 11am (breakfast cafeteria)

K0/K1: 11:30am (breakfast cafeteria)

2nd grade: 12:00pm (art cafeteria)

1st grade: 12:15pm (breakfast cafeteria)

3rd grade: 12:45pm (breakfast cafeteria)

The biggest change is having our youngest friends eat down in the cafeteria. But I know even some of the other small changes easily affect your schedules and routines. Change is hard. I'll be the first to admit I don't like change! Keep me posted if you want help thinking through anything that comes up due to the changes in lunchtimes/locations. 

We're also planning to restructure arrival procedures as we anticipate the breakfast line will take a bit longer to work through and because we'll be adding our youngest students down there to eat. No students will be entering through the front door. We'll be sending everyone around to check out breakfast. We will stop using the side door and instead have staff positioned around the back of the building for students to enter through the back door. Upon coming through the door, students will either head right to enter the breakfast line or head up the stairs to their classrooms. Here's a link to the updated arrival posts: Arrival Posts

We plan to start this new schedule about a week before the real launch - sort of a chance at a dry run. So please be prepared to start the new arrival routines and the new lunch schedule on Tuesday, November 12. We'll be communicating all these changes with families through the November school newsletter and an all-call in early November. 

Self-Reflection (Aka This week's fumbles)

I believe that self-reflection is an important part of becoming better at what we do. I choose to do it publically because I believe that opening our practice to scrutiny helps us become better at what we do. 

Preparing our awesome presenters for the consultancy

I so appreciate Stephanie and Rose for presenting a problem of practice for the consultancy. Rose was pinch-hitting at the last minute. I intended to do it but realized she had more actual knowledge of the lesson than I did. When I asked her Stephanie immediately agreed to participate. What I did not do was check-in with Rose (and Marc before her) and Stephanie about how it was going developing their problem of practice presentation or the question for the consultancy. Next time I will be more aware and check-in to offer assistance as needed. 

Communicating about the incident on Bus 539

I sent an all call to all of the students that ride bus 539 to let parents know that there was an incident on the bus. While all calls to all families go to the staff too, calls to specific groups do not. Some teachers were caught unaware when parents contacted them about this. Moving forward in situations like this I will include the staff in these calls. If something like this happens again please refer all parent inquiries to me. Some parents called/emailed to request more specifics. The response was that there was a fight between individuals on the bus and that we believe it was an isolated incident. 

Morning Announcements

Thank you to all of you that provided support about my problem of practice. It was incredibly helpful. So I believe that I am ready for the third take of morning announcements. 

9:35:00  Play 30 seconds of cultural music to alert the community that announcements are going to start.  

9:35:30 Announce what country the music was from and a fun fact about that country

9:35:40  Greet the community and offer a fun fact about the day

9:35:45 Monday: give the vocabulary word of the week. This week's word is Considerate: Thinking about the thoughts and feelings of others. 

The remainder of the week we will play more of the musical genre and have a dance break. 

9:36:06 Announce the Birthdays

9:36:16 Complete the Pledge with guest pledgers from Grade 3 (to start). 

9:37:16 Allow people the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance and close

This entire routine should be under 3 minutes. It may take a bit to make it precise. The routine keeps the things that I heard were most important from those of you that provided feedback. 

Vocabulary Word of the Week

This idea came from some of the feedback and I really liked it. I will choose 1 vocabulary word of the week, provide teachers with a large printed version of the word and a picture. We will introduce the word during Monday announcements. Teachers can refer to it during the week and we will encourage students to use the word and be attentive when they do. 

Recognizing Math Thinking

I still want to recognize outstanding mathematical thinking. Once a week please identify a student product that demonstrates strong thinking. On Thursday please send the student and their work to the office on Thursday at 2:15 to be personally recognized. Their work will then be displayed on the "Bee"utiful math Bulletin Board.  We will try this and see how it works. 

Little Things

Attendance

In order to create consistency for how tardies are entered into the system please post your classroom attendance at 9:45 every day. We also continue to experience issues with accuracy regarding attendance. It is very important that this record is accurate. For old-timers like me, there was a time when this was the most important and only data point that the state collected in the form of hand-completed registers. Currently, it is one of the few indicators that the state judges Pk-3 schools on.