Week of May 2

UAI Staff News

Volume III

Issue 29

Week of May 2nd, 2016

UAI Celebrations

April Assembly Awesomeness! Tracy, Sursattie, and Kelly coordinated yet another phenomenal assembly for our school community.  The girls shared their art, music, dance and poetry as we came together as a full school once again.  Our older girls readily encouraged our shier middle schoolers as they bravely read their work in front of nearly 500 of their peers.   This message of sisterhood and this show of how our girls can come together to celebrate each other is sometimes too rare.  As we enter into our final units of the year, look back at how our girls supported each other at this celebration. Plan small ways to have the girls honor each other each day.  By helping our girls articulate the hows and whys of strength, we help them become stronger, smarter, and more bold!  

College Match Day with FLOTUS.  As part of the Reach Higher Initiative, First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated College Match Day (traditionally May 1st, but that's a Sunday) in Harlem.  Over the spring break, Girls Inc. brought our juniors and seniors to the event to celebrate their future steps!  This year our girls are going to NYU, SUNY Stonybrook, Queens College, City College, Baruch, SUNY Oswego, and many more.  As the class of 2016 enters college, they will encounter our founding class of 2013 as seniors at these universities.  It took some time, but our girls are slowly but surely building a network and a community of UAI alumni!  True change takes time.  We are just beginning to really see how much and how far we have come since we began over 10 years ago in a tiny little red school house in Crown Heights!  Congratulations to our girls and congratulations to UAI!

Announcements and To Dos

Monday's Town Hall Meeting.  In place of Pods and Team meetings on Monday, we will be having a town hall meeting to review discipline and the efficacy of the systems we have in place.  To prepare for that, please reflect on discipline in your class this year.  Come to Monday's meeting prepared to share your thoughts, raise questions, and pose ideas for solutions.  We will be taking these ideas into the UAI retreat with the Urban Assembly on Friday & Saturday.  Coaches and Admin will be attending the retreat.  If you are interested finalizing the agenda, please join our meeting on Thursday in room 403 at 3PM! Here's the summary of staff opinions around discipline from the survey I put out a few weeks ago, and here are some prompts to consider for Monday's:

• The Behavior Reminder System is not working.  Students are being removed from classes at higher rates than last year.  What are some of the reasons do you think it is not working?  What changes would you make to fix it? OR If you think the whole system is flawed, what could replace it?
• Deans and Admin are being called to classrooms to remove students for disrespectful but non-disruptive behaviors (e.g. won't take off hat, won't put away phone, won't lift head off of desk). In your opinion, should we continue this practice?  Why or why not?
• The foundation of strong classroom management is having a healthy relationship with students.  How do you build relationships with your students?  How do you ensure that students feel heard by you and that they understand how much you care about them?
• We follow the Citywide Discipline Code with respect to student discipline.  We could definitely get better at this.  What suggestions do you have to improve our implementation of the code?

Please DO bring your own questions, comments, and insights to the meeting.  We will be doing a combination of small and large group discussion and we will also be collecting individual responses. We're trying to maximize input from all and varying the format is our plan to make this happen!

Spring Units.  In preparation for the June PD date and in preparation for this weekend's retreat with instructional coaches, I'm collecting your Spring units.  Please upload your spring unit arcs to THIS FOLDER.  Be sure to include your current unit arc, too.   When saving, please use this nomenclature: Course Name_YOUR NAME_Unit Name.

New Lesson Planning Tool.  I've asked Jamie and Danielle to construct a lesson planning tool that helps us really think through the entire period.  Check out Jamie's sample lesson (Thank you Danielle & Jamie!)  I will be asking each of you to try out this format and give feedback on using it to plan your lesson.  It will not be a mandatory template, but rather, it is designed to be used as a tool to facilitate your lesson planning.  So, to optimize utility, we need your insight! Pick a lesson from this week and use the lesson planning tool to layout your objectives and assessments for each of the formats, paying attention to both content and SEL objectives.   You can download the template here.  Once you've used it, please share your lesson HERE and share your comments on the template.  Please try to use the tool for any single lesson by Friday.  We will be taking a look at the materials uploaded to the folder this weekend.

Important Dates

• Monday, 02MAY16. Full Staff Town Hall Meeting (Agenda TBD)- Grade Team Meetings moved to Tuesday
• Tuesday, 03MAY16.  Teacher Appreciation Day
• Thursday, 05MAY16.  Coach Meeting to Set Retreat Agenda

• Monday, 09MAY16. Pod Share 3 of 6 and Grade Team Meetings
• Wednesday, 11MAY16.  Springfest 2016 5-8PM (This will satisfy the 2nd Parent-Outreach night of the year for teachers.  The first was Curriculum Night in September)
• Friday, 13MAY16.  Honor Roll Breakfast.

• Monday, 16MAY16. Pod Share 4 of 6 and Grade Team Meetings
• Wednesday, 18MAY16.  UA Principals' Instructional Rounds Visit to UAI.
• Thursday, 19MAY16 and 20MAY16.  HS Final Benchmark (Full Mock Regent Exams)

• Monday, 23MAY16. Pod Share 5 of 6 and Grade Team Meetings
• Wednesday, 25MAY16.  Senior Awards Night

• Monday, 30MAY16. Memorial Day- NO SCHOOL
• Wednesday, 01JUN16.  Algebra II Common Core Regent Exam
• Thursday & Friday 02JUN-03JUN16. 8th Grade Science Test

• Monday, 06JUN16.  8th Grade Science Written Test
• Monday, 06JUN16.  Pod Share 6 of 6 and Prep for Staff Share
• Tuesday, 07JUN16.  Night of Stars (6th & 9th Grade teams are invited to welcome our new and incoming students)
• Wednesday, 08JUN16 and Friday 10JUN16.  High School Final Exams
• Thursday, 09JUN16. Brooklyn Queens PD Day
• Friday, 10JUN16.  Annual Staff Party (location TBD)

• Monday, 13JUN16.  Last High School Day of Classes. End of HS MP 6
• Tuesday, 14JUN16.      AM Regent: Global    PM Regents: CC ELA
• Wednesday, 15JUN16. AM Regent: Liv.Env.  PM Regent: US History
• Thursday, 16JUN16.    AM Regent: CC Alg.  PM Regent: ELA - HS Grades Due at 3PM. 8th Grade Failures Due
• Friday, 17JUN16.  AM Regent: Trig & Earth Sci  PM Regent: Geometry

• Monday, 20JUN16 and Tuesday 21JUN16.  Middle School Final Exams
• Tuesday, 21JUN16.  AM Regent: Chemistry
• Friday, 24JUN16.  8th Grade Stepping Up
• Monday, 27JUN16.  High School Graduation, MS early dismissal at 10AM.
• Tuesday, 28JUN16.  Last day of school.  Students dismissed early.

For All UAI School Important Dates, please add "UAI School" calendar to your google calendars.

Per Session Posting

No new postings