Week of November 2nd

UAI Staff News

Volume III

Issue 10

Week of Nov. 2nd, 2015

Announcements

2nd MP Begins Monday.  Friday marked the end of the first marking period.  Jennifer sent out Skedula PADS for grades.  If you are uncertain about how to upload your grades, please make sure you touch base with someone on your grade team.  The knowledge is there!  Grades are due by 3pm this Wednesday.  In grade team meetings on Monday, please make sure you are reviewing due dates for this next unit.  Make sure you are staggering due dates to be sensitive to student work load.  Also, please make sure that your team commits to dates by which each teacher updates Skedula gradebooks. At minimum, grade books need to be updated three times per marking period.  Our goal is to develop student intention and develop higher quality choices in work time.  We need to provide students with regular, timely feedback and evaluation of their performance in order to impact their growth and achievement.  Progress reports will be distributed during last period classes on Friday.

Election Day PD.  We will be having in-house PD on Tuesday.  During this PD, we will have three full-staff activities and two teacher-selected activities.  Please sign up for your workshop of choice by the end of the day on Monday (if you miss the deadline, you will automatically be signed up for one of the workshops below).


Full Staff Activities are in BLUE and Teacher Selected Activities are in GREEN.

• 8:30-9:00 Breakfast Provided (Bagels, Pastries, and Coffee) - Room 409

• 9:00-9:30 Kiri's Opening Remarks (Day Officially Starts) - Room 409
• This is going to a mini state-of-the-school address

• 9:30-10:30 Feedback (Darby, Marianna, & Marsha)- Room 409Just like our students, we as teachers need to collaborate regularly in order to develop our practice and maintain our passion for what we do.  In this full school PD, we will be talking about how to best give, receive, and execute on feedback. A key component of any collegial relationship is the ability to develop a support system based on trust and clear, promotive communication.  This workshop will introduce strategies to facilitate this mutually supportive feedback when working with a colleague, so that our PODs, coaching relationships, and day-to-day relationships run smoothly.

• 10:40 - 11:40 Workshop Choice 1.  Teachers choose between
• Optimizing Student Autonomy & Agency (Meredith, Wendy & Rebecca) - Room 405
• Strategies for Effective Co-Teaching (Christina, Brodie & Danielle) - Room 403
• Independent Work Time (Teachers can choose at most 1 IWT block)- TBD

• 11:40-12:40 Lunch on your own.

• 12:40-1:40 De-escalation and Social Emotional Learning (Kiri, Jen, & Martine) - Room 409
  In this workshop, we will be exploring how SEL Skills directly correlate to student behavior in the classroom. We will be working on developing concrete strategies that teachers can utilize to address student SEL deficiencies and deescalate problematic student behaviors in the class. 

• 1:50-2:50 Workshop Choice 2.  Teachers choose between
• Optimizing Student Autonomy & Agency (Meredith, Wendy & Rebecca) - Room 405
• Strategies for Effective Co-Teaching (Christina, Brodie & Danielle)- Room 403
• Independent Work Time (Teachers can choose at most 1 IWT block)- TBD

Student Led/Parent Conferences and 1st Benchmarks.  On November 19th & 20th, we will have our first round of conferences and our 1st benchmark period.  I'm still finalizing the schedules for benchmarks.  Please look for more details in next week's blog post.  This week, please begin to prepare for the conferences by displaying student work in classrooms and hallway bulletin boards.  Grade teams should meet to divvy up hall space, and Subject teams need to decide how best to select work to display and review the feedback provided with that displayed work.  High School teachers should begin focusing conferences in subject classes so students are prepared to discuss growth during Student Led Conferences.  Middle School Teachers will have traditional parent conferences.  If we want middle schoolers to have SLCs in the spring, we can make it happen, we just haven't enough time to be prepared for this upcoming conference period.

Resilient Scholars

School Connect PD.   I'm excited to announce that the UAI social workers, deans, and select teachers will be attending the Urban Assembly's PD on the School Connect Curriculum that we are using to impart SEL skills to our students.  In the middle school, we're hoping to launch this curriculum with the Girl Groups as soon as we can, and in the high school, power groups and classroom teachers have already begun teaching into these essential skills.

Important Dates

• Tuesday, 02NOV15.  Election Day Professional Development
• Wednesday 04NOV15. 2nd Soft Lock Down Drill at 10AM
• Wednsday 04NOV15.  MP 1 Grades Due at 3PM
• Friday, 06NOV15.  First Full Middle School Assembly.  Last Period (in Gym)
• Wednesday, 11NOV15.  Veteran's Day, NO SCHOOL
• Friday, 13NOV15.  First Middle School Dance!
• Monday 16NOV15. First Pod Share
• Tuesday 17NOV15.  First Fire Drill at 9:40AM
• Tuesday 17NOV15.  Grade Teams Moved to Tuesday this week.
• Thursday 19NOV15 (5-8PM) and Friday 20NOV15 (Lunch Dismissal to End of School Day).  Fall Parent Conferences (Updates to come on SLCs and MS Parent Conference in next Blog)
• Wednesday 25NOV15. High School Assembly and Early Dismissal at 2:30PM
• Thursday 26NOV15 & Friday 27NOV15.  Thanksgiving Recess
• Friday, 04DEC15. Middle School Assembly

For All UAI School Important Dates, please add "UAI School" calendar to your google calendars.

Per Session Posting

Middle School Dance Chaperones.  I'm looking for 5 dance chaperones.  Please reply ASAP for November 13th.  5-8PM (Jennifer - is that the right time?)