Week of January 27th

UAI Staff News

Volume VII

Issue 23

January 27th,  2020

Announcements

Happy Birthday To:
Ms. Nadine (Social Media & HS Social Studies ICT) on Friday 31JAN20
Ms. Pauline (MS Elective Teacher) on Saturday 01FEB20

Happy Spring Term (and launch of MP4)!!  Welcome to the Spring Term of the 2019-2020 school year.  We have officially put the Fall term in the books, and we are now looking ahead to end this year strong.  During tomorrow's PD, I will be going through many of our accomplishments, reviewing some of the changes that we've made in response to our progress monitoring, and gearing us up to take on the rest of the year.  To be able to do that, I need to make this post brief, so I can spend the rest of this Sunday getting ready!

New Spring Schedule.  One of those changes that I will review in detail tomorrow will be the updates to the new schedule.  I've been writing about them for several blog posts now, and if you CLICK HERE, you can see the changes for yourself.   Because of the 6th grade consolidation and opening up of a new 9th grade ICT section, there are co-teacher changes, so please look at the student programs to see who your co-teachers will be.  Ms. Jennifer made all the changes to the 9th and 10th grade groups on Friday (thank you JJR!!!), and we will be working together to finalize 6th grade changes tomorrow.  All program changes go into effect on Tuesday.  However, your ATS attendance sheets will be behind a day or so because we had to wait for grades to go in first.  Skedula will be up to date when we synch on Monday, so PLEASE take attendance in Skedula until ATS catches up.

Regents Week Rocked.  Ms. Joanna and her team of helpers executed another brilliantly smooth Regents week.  Many thanks to all of you who also supported our students with your rock star proctoring and bathroom monitoring skills.  Also, big ups to the Middle School staff for teaching through the week and providing our kids with structured learning for the entire week!

To-Do This Week

Spring Round of Observations.  We will be launching into our spring rounds of observations this week.  Please make sure to have your lessons linked (so that we can access) into your pacing guides, or if you prefer, please have them printed and ready when we arrive in class to observe.

Tuesday Notification Celebrations and Promotion In Doubt .  Please use these next three Tuesdays before the February break to reach out and review each of your advisees' growth and performance for the fall term.

• Discuss Academics.  If she passed everything, how can she continue to excel?  If she is failing a class (or HS Regent exam), her promotion may be in doubt.  This means that she may have to attend summer school.  Parents often need to hear this early so they can prepare summer plans accordingly.  Remember, All HS Students have another chance to take exams in June and in August.  All students have another chance to recover current failing grades by passing their courses by June.  Solicit from parents what they would need from us to support learning at home.  Share your information on Skedula and with your grade teams.
• If attendance is the issue (lateness and/or absence), find out from the parents what seems to be happening, and ask them how we can help. Share your information on Skedula and with your attendance grade team leads.
• For behavior and Social Emotional Development, share her strengths and areas of growth.  Find out from parents if there is anything we can do at the school level to help them continue to build her growth in key SEL areas. Share your information on Skedula and with your grade teams and counselors.

Monday Chancellor's Day.  Tomorrow is our next staff Professional Development day.  We will be continuing our work around exploring and understanding implicit bias.  In my Midyear Conferences, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing how you have internalized this work in your own pedagogical practices this year.  Here's the agenda for tomorrow

Goals:  Through our work tomorrow, UAI staff will

• Deepen their understanding of how bias shows up in schools, and develop strategies to control for bias-based beliefs and actions in UAI classrooms.
• Make connections between our beliefs and our decisions to understand how our individual classroom actions impact school level outcomes.  
• Continue to build trust and understand one another's perspectives in order to create a collaborative working community that provides the highest quality learning environment for all of our students and families.

Agenda (we will begin and end in room 409)

• 8:00 Breakfast (Panera - Optional)
• 8:30 Welcome & State of the School Address
• 9:15 Opening Activity - Understanding our Privilege
• 10:00 Implicit Bias Workshop
• How does Bias Show Up in Education
• Taking a Look at Deficit Thinking
• 12:00 Lunch (on your own)
• 1:00 Individual Teacher Work Time
• Prepare and Link Lessons through to February 14th
• Work in Teacher Teams to Rehearse and Refine Lessons
• Create Google Calendar Reminders to Update Skedula with Assessment Data
• 2:30 Closing Activity

Social-Emotional Learning Update

Per Session Opportunities

No new postings this week.