Week of March 30th

UAI High School Staff News

Volume II

Issue 31

Week of March 30th, 2015

Announcements

The Last 40 Days of Classes.  This week has two instructional days, two exam days, and the first day of a nice long break.  When we return from the break, there will only be 40 instructional days remaining.  It's hard to believe that we have so few days left! As you look towards planning these last few days, if your class terminates in a Regent exam, begin planning on how to use Responsibility Teams and Briefs to begin the preparation for these exams.  Be creative with the genre of your briefs.  They could be anything - Powerpoints, Cornell Notes, Infographics, Study Guides, Review Sheets, creating their own practice questions, political cartoons, maps - get them to stretch their imaginations!  Essentially, the teams will be synthesizing review information to present back to their peers.  Ultimately, they will be operating like study groups do in preparation for summative assessments in college.  For them, their big test will be the regent exam!  As a reminder, you will have to teach into the idea that kids must be making time at home to study, take practice tests, and make their briefs.  In-class time should be maximized for collaboration with their teams.  Darby, Brodie, and Paula's Pod is currently working on Briefs and Teams.  On Monday, we are having POD check-ins and looking at student artifacts of learning.  Take a peek for some ideas that these three may have discovered in their study thus far!

Benchmark 4 is on Wednesday & Thursday.  Please review the Benchmark Schedule to refresh your memory.   In addition, you will be entering your Benchmark Results by CLICKING HERE. We will be using this particular benchmark to plan for June and August Regents.  If your class terminates in Regent exam, you must use a Regents-based exam for this benchmark (except for the Geo Common Core).  Most of you have already been doing this, but for those creative types out there, I wanted to make sure that I was clear on expectations for this benchmark. All scores should be entered by the end of the day on Friday, April 17th. But try to get as much done before you leave for the break as you can!

PROSE is a Nope.  We received word from the PROSE people that our application was rejected.  Only about half of the UA schools were accepted.  We didn't receive any official reasons or critiques about our application, but I will reach out to Pamela (UFT) and Shannon (UA) to see if we can get any more details.  Once we have some more information, we can talk about whether or not we want to pursue Prose further.  For next year, there is no real negative impact on our school, and if we want, we can still choose to SBO some of the proposals that were in our prose application.  As a reminder, the three Prose variants were (1) Calendar flexibility to schedule student release days for increasing teacher participation in the UA's practice of Instructional Rounds, (2) Hiring Restriction Relief in being able to hire on Community Assistant lines for college and partnership coordinators, and (3) MOSL Variation in allowing us to use the DRP as a MOSL option for teacher evaluation.  I think the only SBO-able piece is the calendar flexibility, but I will continue to check with Shannon/Pamela/Damon to find out more.

SLCs Wrap Up.  Over 100 families came up to school for the high school SLCs!!   My sense is that number is even bigger.  Please update THIS APPOINTMENT so that I have accurate data to report back to the city.  Also, please turn in your sign in sheets to Ms. Carol by the end of the day on Monday.  She's going to work with Nancy and Allan to update contact information in google and in ATS (and thus Skedula).

Important Dates

• Wednesday, 01APR15 and Thursday 02APR15 - Benchmark IV Exams
• Friday, 03APR15 through Friday 10APR15 - Spring Break
• Monday 13APR15 - First day be from spring break
• Friday, 17APR15 - Benchmark IV Results are due
• 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.

• Monday, 04MAY15 - MP6, the last marking period of the year, begins.
• Wednesday, 06MAY15 - MP5 Grades are Due
• Friday 15MAY15 - Annual High School Honor Roll Breakfast at 9AM
• Wednesday 20MAY15 - Senior Awards Night
• Monday, 25MAY15 - Memorial Day, NO SCHOOL
• Thursday, 28MAY15 - Springfest, our 2nd Parent Outreach night (the 2nd of 2 that were added with the new UFT contract)

• Tuesday, 02JUN15 - Common Core Regents - NO CLASSES
• Thursday, 04JUN15 - Brooklyn Queens Day at UAI - Just UAI HS at UAI HS
• Thursday 11JUN15 and Friday 12JUN15 - Final Benchmark Exams
• Friday, 12JUN15 - End of the 6th Marking Period
• Monday, 15JUN15 - High School Field Day (Details TBD)
• Tuesday, 16JUN15 - Regents Week Begins
• Wednesday, 17JUN15 - Final Grades are Due
• Wednesday, 24JUN15 - Plato Training
• Thursday, 25JUN15 - High School Graduation at Kumbel Theater
• Friday, 26JUN15 - Last Day of School

Per Session

Hiring Committee.  We've started looking ahead to next year for hiring.  I've asked Martine to chair our hiring committee.  I'm trying to scrounge up some funds to pay people, but at present the committee is volunteer.  Funding for hours is reliant on how much money I end up spending on subs and coverages.  If I have left over, then I will be able to pay for some of these hours.  Paid or not, the committee is open to all.  If you are interested in joining, please reach out directly to Martine.  We are currently looking for an Earth Science teacher (Sarah is moving to the middle school next year) and maybe (depending on a few staffing/funding moves) a special ed teacher (Martine is moving into the Dean's position next year).  

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!