Week of October 17th

UAI Staff News

Volume IV

Issue 7

Week of October 17th, 2016

To Do's for this Week

• [MONDAY, 17OCT16] Weekly PD Resumes. Our weekly PD resumes on Monday at 3PM in room 409.  We will be relaunching Inquiry Pods next week. This Monday, we want to review some important topics.  Here's the Agenda
• 3:00-3:20 Behavior Interventions.  Ms. Annie will review the behavior intervention protocols and do a quick Q & A with teachers about selection and follow up for students.
• 3:20-3:40 Suicide & Child Abuse Required Training. Jen will provide the yearly mandatory training on how to identify and report signs of possible self-harm or abuse of students.
• 3:40-4:20 Writing an Effective PLOP. Bring your laptops on Monday.  Kristin and Christina will circulate to help you all complete and write effective PLOPs for this month's upcoming IEP reviews.

• [WEDNESDAY, 19OCT16]  PSAT for 10th & 11th Graders.   All 10th and 11th graders are taking the PSAT on Wednesday.  It will be a full day of instruction after lunch.  All other grades are going out on trips.  After advisory, 9th grade needs to move to the basement to prepare for their trips as we will be using the 4th & 5th floors for testing.

• [THIS WEEK] Launch Collaborative Reasoning Groups & Conferences.   If they are not already happening, Collaborative Reasoning Groups (formerly known as Unison Reading) & Conferences should be fully up and launched by the week of 17OCT16.  If you need help in launching these, work with your coach this week to get them up and running.  For additional support, see Ms. Colleen.

• [THIS WEEK] Upload Grades.   Many of you have already begun uploading grades, as per the school policy of weekly updates.  For those who are still struggling with meeting weekly updates, please reach out to your coach or Ms. Colleen for support.  In particular, please post participation grades at least weekly.  This will help students self-manage as they see their behavior, attendance, and use of SEL strategies like SLANT and Accountable Talk Stems impact their performance.
  
• [THIS WEEK] Uninterrupted Instruction.  Continue to reinforce classroom norms and SEL routines (SLANT and Accountable Talk).  You've done so much work setting up the class expectations.  These past few short weeks have done their part to undo that. Make it a point to use these next three weeks to cement what you started to build in September so that you have an amazingly smooth rest of the year!

Announcements

Why Attendance Calls Matter.  Teenagers sometimes make bad decisions, and Brooklyn can be a scary place if you find yourself at the end of some bad decisions. Being a parent of a Brooklyn kid, I can completely relate to the anxiety our students' parents express when they call me upset that the school did not reach out to them. When we don't make calls home, we create a loophole in communication.  Our families work to send their children to school. Our job is to make sure parents know when their child absent - to make sure that the loop is closed and that home and school are on the same page.  Contractual time exists for you every day to make these calls. Many UAI staff have found ways to keep this time sacred and have made and documented outreach home. Unfortunately, this week, I have had a few parents express their shock and confusion about kids who we marked absent.  They sent them to school, but they didn't make it to school, and we didn't call home.  If this happened to our own children, we would all be equally livid with the school (and our child).  Our students and their families need our help to close the loop that teenagers will naturally try to exploit.  Please make sure you are calling and documenting in Skedula.  If you find yourself struggling, reach out to me or Val and we'll help troubleshoot the issues!

The Rigor is in the Routine!  As we begin three solid weeks of instruction (except for PSAT Wednesday), it's important to keep up the work with establishing routines and raising the bar on expectations for classroom conduct & behavior.  Lauren, Jennifer JR, Lori, and Marni are working hard in their SEL classes to lay the foundation for developing skills in our incoming students.  7th, 8th, 11th, & 12th grade teachers should reinforce SLANT and Accountable talk stems with some of the updates that they share each week.  See below in the SEL Updates.   Remember, SEL isn't challenging in the instruction.  The challenge for SEL is expecting strong skills and consistency every day as part of the classroom routines.

SEL Updates

Week 5 of SEL.  In 6th grade SEL this week, students will continue building their ability to recognize how others are feeling and reflect that back to them. Students will also learn about the different levels of listening(include attached photo!!) and discuss how it feels when someone listens at a level less than 4. In their classes this week, please continue prompting students to guess how other people may be feeling based on tone of voice, facial expression, or the situation at hand, and prompt students to demonstrate "level 4 listening," with the goal of understanding what you are trying to say. Students should also practice reflecting back to you what you said, in their own words.

In 9th & 10th Grade SEL, the girls had meaningful discussions about put downs and prejudice. They understand the positive feelings from talking about the things they should "H.I.P.E" in their lives. They also were able to explore when communication feels good with a teacher (shout out to Damon who every class felt spoke to them in a clear and respectful way that they can emulate back to him) and how to build better rapport with the teachers they struggle with by using some of the strategies they use when talking to teachers they get along well with. They thought about what it would be like to switch roles with the teacher in order to better understand their frustrations and how to communicate with a class full of students.

Next week students will explore the impact of technology on their lives. How to break free of being a "digital zombie" and create meaningful face-to-face experiences. They will also learn about empathy and different emotions. Why social awareness is important and how to develop those skills. (However the 10th grade will be doing the Plan-O-Rama lesson to help them learn more about their newly acquired planners)

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Per Session Posting

None this week!