Week of March 23rd

UAI High School Staff News

Volume II

Issue 30

Week of March 23rd, 2015

Announcements

Spring Break is Almost Sprung! We have only 9 school days until spring break.  Both this week and next week are short weeks.  This week ends with an assembly on Thursday and a half day on Friday.  Next week ends with Benchmark Exams on next Wednesday and Thursday.  It's completely normal for some students to feel stress and anxiety as we approach long school breaks.  To help sooth these feelings, it's important that keep up with our routines and expectations.  Through the predictability of our classroom and overall school cultures, our students can more readily fit themselves into the UAI landscape of learning. That fitting in gives them a sense of belonging and ownership which goes a long way into easing all of us into the Spring Break!

Benchmark 4 is Next Week.  Next week's benchmarks are the penultimate benchmarks for the year.  As such, we will be using these benchmarks to inform final Regents lists in June, and to inform summer school registration.  For this administration, I will be asking all teachers with courses that terminate in a Regents Exam to provide scores based on the Regents Rubrics (not percentages this time around).  I'll talk more on that in next week's blog.  For a more accurate prediction of Regents performance, teachers may want to use a fresh exam for this administration. However, that is certainly not mandatory.

Marianna & Ilyana present the LC writing methods to
Chancellor Farina at the Superintendent's Writing Conference

Our Visitors Love Us!  Last week we had several visitors, all of whom were immensely impressed with what we do here at UAI.  Brian O'Connell, the principal of a screened high school in Far Rockaway called The Scholars Academy was particularly impressed with the level and quality of individual student intention and questioning.  Janis Ross, Karen Watts' lead principal evaluator (and former founding principal of The School for Classics) exclaimed, "A lot of people say that they are student centered, but [you guys] are really doing it!"  Finally, Chancellor Farina was again impressed with our teachers when Marianna and Ilyana dazzled with their presentation on how our students develop their writing in Learning Cultures.  Learning Cultures set the foundation, but it is your talent and commitment that elevates our school to excellence!  I'm sooooo excited to see how we continue to grow and be even more awesome in the time to come!

Hollaback! Assembly.  In recognition of Women's History Month, our Carrera partners are once again stepping up to coordinate and execute a fabulous experience for our community.  Ms. Wazina has worked to connect UAI with this organization that focuses on stopping street harassment.  We look forward to an afternoon of education and activism this Thursday.  Do not bring students up until we call for your grade, starting at 1:20PM.  The assembly will start promptly at 1:30PM.  We'll have the same seating as last assembly with the juniors and seniors on the bleachers and the freshmen and sophomores flanking the gym floor.

Reminders

March is Women's History Month.  The door decoration is complete! Thank you all for participating.  It is great to see so much celebration of women right at the portal to our girls' learning.   This year's decoration was more of a celebration than a competition, but with so many interested in the competitive aspect, we will probably bring that back next year!  Thank you all for your support and enthusiasm!

It's time for SLCs.  This Thursday and Friday are our Spring Student Led Conferences.  Officially, SLCs are Thursday night 5-8PM and Friday afternoon 12:00-2:40PM.  However, as per usual, you can flexibly use these 5+ hours however you want to schedule the meetings.  If you haven't done so already, you should start scheduling those appointments this week.  Please enter those appointments into THIS APPOINTMENT sheet.  Please take a moment to read the tab that says READ ME FIRST.  There are a couple of added to-dos on the list for the SLCs this time around. You may also want to use this CHECKLIST to help facilitate your conferences.  Grade teams may have their own student reflection sheet and or methods for appointment setting.  Please check in with your grade team leaders.  Finally, if your advisee's parents are not yet registered in Skedula, please print out their letters and help them get signed on (via phone or computer). Parents can also visit Carol to get assistance in signing up.

Important Dates

• Thursday, 26MAR15 - Evening Student Led Conferences 5-8PM
• Thursday, 26MAR15 - Hollerback Assembly (see info above!) 1:30-2:30PM
• Friday, 27MAR15 - Afternoon Student Led Conferences   12-2:40PM 
• Friday, 27MAR15 - Rapid Dismissal at 11AM

• Wednesday 01APR15 and Thursday 02APR15 - Benchmark IV Exams
• Friday 03APR15 through Friday 10APR15 - Spring Break
• Monday 16APR15 - First day be from spring break
• Friday, 24APR15 - April Assembly during 8th Period - Details TBD
• Monday 27APR15 through Friday 01MAY15 - Last week of 5th Marking Period - Please DO NOT SCHEDULE any field trips for this week.

Per Session

Session II After School for STEM electives.  If you have an idea for a STEM elective that you would want to run for after school in the second session (which starts after Spring break and runs through the end of May), please submit your idea(s) to Ms. Nicole by Monday, March 30th.  We will have some per session hours available (hours will vary depending on proposals).  These per session hours come from a grant and as such, have to be STEM related electives.

Summer School Post
I have had several brave and stalwart souls for summer school (Jamie, Kerry, Mike, Michael, Danielle, and Ilyana).  If you responded to me, but I missed you, please email me again!

In-school summer school days (14):  July 1st & 2nd and July 27th through August 11th
Out-of-school Plato check in (3):  One hour per week for July 6th through July 24th
Regents Days (3):  August 12th, 13th, and 14th - Hours TBD for proctoring and grading.

Summer teachers are guaranteed at least 3 hours of instruction per in-school day plus 2.5 hours of prep per week (for in-school time).

I am fully staffed for summer school! WOO double HOO!