Week of August 10th

UAI High School Staff News

Volume III

Issue 1

Week of Aug 10th, 2015

Announcements

Summer Update.  This week we wrap up yet another successful summer session at UAI.  This summer, we had the opportunity to supply our young women with a wide diversity of program offerings.  In addition to our mandated summer school programs, Girls Inc launched an impressive elective programs for our young women, including Occupy Summer School, which was featured in the NYC Metro and in the New Yorker this summer.  This pilot program was so successful that we are thrilled to be working to bring it to a full-fledged after school program this fall.  It's a busy summer at UAI with our young women participating in both summer school programs and learning how to improve themselves to prepare to change the world!

Welcome to our New Staff.  Please join me in welcoming Tom Wilson (Earth Science), Kim Dempsey (Chemistry), and Steve Bufford (10th/12th English) to our school.  Tom, Kim, and Steve have been working with Danielle, Jamie, and Ilyana, respectively, during our summer school classes.  During this period, they have been working together to onboard our newest staff members to Learning Cultures and to UAI.  As new teachers, these three will continue to receive mentoring support from Danielle, Jamie, and Ilyana throughout the year, and they will also be able to receive support from the community as a whole when they join us for our teacher-led PLCs (aka Pods).

September PD Dates.  We will be having three professional development days prior to the official start of school.  All staff are expected to report, and all staff will be paid training rate per session for these PD days.  If you recall, I sent a save the date email about these three days earlier this past spring.  However, if you have a conflict, please reach out to me directly (via email at kiris@uainstitute.org or phone 917-776-0460).  Detailed agendas are still in development, but here are the dates and broad outlines:

• UAI Leader PD  (Grade Team Leaders (9th- Kerry, 10th/12th- Danielle, 11th/12th- Brodie); Subject Team Leaders (English-Ilyana, SocStds- Darby, Math-Mike; Science-Damon, Language- Elena, ISS-Kristin), Returning Peer Coaches (Rebecca, Marianna) and Admin (Colleen, Martine, Jen).
• Agenda for Tuesday, 01SEP15 10AM-2PM
  In this PD, UAI leaders will work with Kiri to deepen their understanding of the school's mission, and their capacity to analyze team needs to effectively and efficiently meet school goals.   Working under the theory of action that developing strong leaders is the key to achieving our goals, this PD will be the 1st in an on-going series of Leadership Development PDs throughout the course of the year.
• Analysis of School Progress and Intro of School Goals
• Reviewing the CEP - Our Schools' Goals for the Year
• Reviewing our Data - The New Framework for Great Schools
• Organizational Assessment of UAIHS and Team Function there-in
• Leadership Development
• Introduction to the Ways of Knowing
• Introduction to Exec-Comm Profile
• Role Play
• Goals and Expectations for Thursday's SEL PD
• Team Leader Classroom Set Up (at least 1 hour)

• WHOLE Staff PD (All classroom staff report)
• Agenda for Wednesday, 02SEP15, 10AM-2PM
  The main objective of this PD day is to provide subject and grade teams work time to coordinate efforts and unit plans for Unit Zero and for the first Inquiry Unit of the year. Kiri and your Team Leaders will be working with you to best prepare for the launch of the school year.  Teachers should plan to bring with them the necessary materials for planning.
• Unit Zero
• Recapping the Grade Team Commitments
• Making Space for Social Emotional Learning Lessons
• Creating/Completing The Grade Team Calendar
• Inquiry Unit
• Making Time for Inquiry Group and Responsibility Teams - Prior to presenting a final brief to their Responsibility Teams, students need to have collaborative inquiry experiences to develop high-quality, fact-checked briefs.  How can we structure our Inquiry units to make sure this happens?  Can't wait for the PD? Click here to see one way you could map out your units for the year.
• Assessment - thinking about assessments both within the classroom and longitudinally across grades.  How are we assessing both skills and content throughout the scope and sequence of our content areas?
• Remediation and Enrichment - what are we planning to do as a subject team to incorporate workout plans into the expectations of our Inquiry Cycles?
• Course Resources and Materials- How can we best support the department to share and develop materials that help all teachers provide a diverse array resources for student inquiry in our subject?
• Classroom Set Up Time (at least 1 hour)

• WHOLE Staff PD (All classroom staff report)
• Agenda for Thursday, 03SEP15, 10AM-2PM
  Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) has long been a foundation of Learning Cultures.  However, one of the major deficiencies of LC has been it's lack to explicitly address how to work with students who have lagging SEL skills.  This year, in partnership with the Urban Assembly, we are planning to close this gap through our work with an SEL curriculum called School Connect and a tool called the DESSA that will help us measure student growth in this area.  Jen, Martine, and Kristin will lead the staff in developing their understanding of how SEL fits within the classroom and they will introduce resources aimed at supporting teachers in their execution of SEL lessons.

Gearing Up for the School Year.  With 1 month of summer left, there's still plenty of time to relax and have fun in the sun.  So, when you feel sun-tired and are getting an itch to start thinking about the school year, here are some resources that will be helping for you in thinking about next year.

• The Master Schedule
• Preparing for 2015-2016(NOTE: You'll find a link to our budget on this page.  The salaries you see are not actual salaries of individuals.  This is a budgeted amount based on our schools' average teacher salary and the budget lines that fund staff.)
• 
  

• 
  

Building our Community.  In order to achieve our goals as a coherent team, it's important to have a strong community base.  To have that base, it's important to get to know a little about one another.  This is particularly important in building ties with new staff and/or staff that we don't work with each and every day (e.g. other teachers on different grades/subjects).  To facilitate building bridges across UAI, I want to start with a UAI HS face book (no...not the Facebook...but rather an actual face [space] book).  So to all UAI teachers, paras, parent coordinator, secretaries, deans, admin, college coordinator, and all partner staff, here's what I need from you

1. A picture of you
2. A brief bio that gives us a glimpse of your experience and education (please write in the 3rd person)

Please email the picture an bio to kiris@uainstitute.org.  I need these in time for my next blog post which will be in two weeks.  Need a mentor text?  Jen & I had to write ours for this summer program we did at Columbia, so here they are!:

Kiri Soares co-founded UAI with middle school principal, Kelly DeMonaco in 2006. She began her work in New York City Schools as a math and science teacher at a small alternative high school in Brooklyn in 1997.  In 2003, she left the classroom to become an instructional coach, and before founding UAI, she was an Assistant Principal.  Kiri earned her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and has 2 masters degrees - one in teaching from San Francisco State University and one in administration from Mercy College. This year will be Kiri's 10th year at UAI and her 19th year with the NYCDOE.

Jen Cusa is a Licensed Master Social Worker and has held the position of Director of Student Support Services at UAI since 2007.  She graduated from UMass- Amherst with a BA in Social Thought and Political Economy and received her Masters in Social Work from Hunter College.  Also as UAI's Director of Social Emotional Learning, Jen's work emphasizes the implementation of student social emotional learning practices and creating school-wide policies to promote a positive, supportive learning environment.

Important Dates

• Tuesday, 01SEP15 - UAI Leader PD (Teacher training rate per session)
• Wednesday, 02SEP15 - Whole Staff PD  (Teacher training rate per session)
• Thursday, 03SEP15 - Whole Staff PD  (Teacher training rate per session)
• Monday, 07SEP15- Labor Day, NO SCHOOL
• Tuesday, 08SEP15- First Day of School for All Staff
• Wednesday, 09SEP15- First Day of School for All Students
• Monday & Tuesday 14SEP15 and 15SEP15- Rosh Hashanah, NO SCHOOL
• Wednesday, 23SEP15- Yom Kippur, NO SCHOOL
• Thursday, 24SEP15- Eid al-Adha, NO SCHOOL
• Wednesday, 30SEP15- Curriculum Night, All Teachers Report 5-8PM