Week of Sept 21st

UAI High School Staff News

Volume III

Issue 4

Week of Sept 21, 2015

Announcements

Congratulations to the 5K Run for Team UAI!
Many thanks to Darby for organizing!
 I'm looking forward to this being the first of many fabulous team-building fitness events!

First PD Monday.  This Monday is the first PD Monday of the year.  High School will meet in room 409 for initial Grade Team PODs and Grade Team Meetings.  Middle School will meet in the library to plan for the first unit after unit zero, focusing on making explicit the rationale and intentions underlying curricular decisions.  Here are the agendas:

• Middle School                                  High School
• 2:50-3:00PM  Announcements        3:00-3:10PM  Announcements
• 3:00-4:10 Unit Planning                  3:10-4:20PM  Grade Team PODs &                                                                                   Meetings

Preparing for Curriculum Night. Next Wednesday is Curriculum Night.  Here's the structure of the evening.

• 5:30-6:00PM Principal Address and Welcome (Partners will also have intro time here)
• 6:00-6:30PM PTA Meeting
• 6:00-8:00PM Teacher Teams
• Parents will be broken up into groups by grade (the number of groups will depend on how many parents we have) and groups will rotate through classrooms.  
• Teams should use Grade Team time this week and next to finalize plans for how the groups will rotate through each of the classrooms.  Click here for a suggested agenda.

Initial Planning Conferences. I will be having initial planning conferences with teachers beginning this week for the middle school teachers and beginning next week for the high school teachers. In preparation for these conferences, please think about the following

• What data points are you using to gauge student capacity in your classroom?  What are their current skills?  Do they need remediation or enrichment? How you preparing your first unit to evaluate and address diverse learning needs?
• What's your plan for the first hook lesson? I want to be hooked, too! So dazzle me!
• From your observations of students in class and discussions with team members, what SEL areas are priority for the students and what is your plan for addressing it?
• After thinking about these questions, what are your two most pressing goals for the year?
• What specifically do you need/want to support you in achieving these goals?

MOSL Selections are due on September 28th.  State MOSLs will be the NYS state exams associated to your subject.  If you don't have a state exam explicitly associated, your state MOSL will be a bundled evaluation (ie. how the kids do on all their state assessments).  For local measures, I will assume that selections will remain the same unless you REPLY here.  Here are some other resources for you to prepare for your IPC.  

• Quick Start Guide from the UFT
• Advance Educator Guide 2015-2016

Marking Period Dates.  I am changing marking period dates for the high school to come more into alignment with the middle school so that we can be more in alignment around school-wide systems like report cards, student conferences, etc.  Colleen, Val, and I will meet first thing on Monday to finalize the dates in STARS (the DOE systems of grades and report cards), and we will get those dates out to you for sure on Monday.  The default dates in STARS end at odd times, and we encountering some technical difficulties in changing them.  For now, here are the target MP dates.

• Marking Period 1: 9/9 - 10/30 (MP1 Grades due on 04NOV at 3PM)
• Marking Period 2: 11/2-12/11 (MP2 Grades due on 16DEC at 3PM)
• Marking Period 3: 12/14-1/29 (HS ends on 25JAN:  HS Grades Due 28JAN; MS Grades Due 03FEB)
• Spring Dates TBD very soon!

Resilient Scholars Project

To catch up the Middle School, the UAI High School has joined the Urban Assembly's Pilot project for Social Emotional Learning, called the Resilient Scholars Project.  This part of the blog will share various strategies to share and do with teachers, students, and parents.  For this week, I've selected three strategies parents can try at home.  As you meet in Grade Teams, you should plan to share these or other strategies that parents can use at home to support their daughter's learning.

Optimistic Thinking.  A child's disposition paves the road to their willingness to take risks and thus grow and excel.  Optimistic Thinking is how our young women develop an attitude of confidence, hopefulness, and positive thinking regarding herself and her life situations in the past, present, and future.  This Encouragement Folder Strategy is a strategy that parents can launch at home and teachers can support in the classroom to foster positive self-concepts for our young women.

Personal Responsibility.  Personal responsibility is a student's capacity to be intentional and consistent in her interactions with others and in contributing to collaborative inquiry and group efforts.  Here's an activity that can help parents structure conversations around personal responsibility and Helping Each Other.

Important Dates

• Monday, 21SEP15. Full Staff PD (at 2:50PM in Library for MS; at 3PM in room 409 for HS).
• Tuesday, 22SEP15.  Cabinet - Grade Team Leaders (Both MS & HS are invited) 3PM, rm 403
• Wednesday 23SEP15. Yom Kippur, NO SCHOOL.
• Thursday, 24SEP15. Eid Al-Adha, NO SCHOOL.
• Friday, 25SEP15, Middel School Community Building Field Trips
• Friday, 25SEP15. High School DRP Special AM schedules - See Martine's email.
• Monday, 28SEP15.  Open Lunch and Late Pass Rules go into place for HS & MS
• Wednesday, 30SEP15.  Curriculum Night, 5PM-8PM

For All High School Important Dates, please add "UAI High School" calendar to your google calendars.  I will soon be renaming this to be UAI School Calendar.  Before I do that, I need to make sure renaming it doesn't mess things up for people who have already added the calendar.  In the interim, please use this calendar to track school events.

Per Session Posting

Math Team Meeting Per Session.  As a special focus to improve math instruction, I will be paying per session at training rate for after school math PD meetings on Wednesdays from 3-4PM.  Please email Kiri to express interest, but in the interest of pure transparency - we really need to get this started ASAP, so expect Kiri to pop up in your classroom if you're a math teacher to beg you to come.  First meeting is Thursday, 

CHAMPS Middle School Sports & Fitness Program.  Please click here to find the per session tempalte to apply.  Any interested teachers must formally apply to this posting and have (1) AED/CPR certification from the American Red Cross or American Heart Association and (2)Concussion in Youth Sports (CYS) certification from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). These certifications must be valid for the entire season to be considered. Elana has been nominated as the coach, position is now closed.

First School Dance Chaperones.  The first school dance will be on Friday, >>>DATE CHANGE October 16th<<DATE CHANGE<<<< from 6-10PM.  We are looking for a maximum of 10 chaperones.  Please email Kiri directly if you are interested.  Update (14SEP15): Damon, Elena, Jamie, Kristin, Kerry, Michael have signed up so far.  We're still looking for 4 more.