Week of November 27th

UAI Staff News

Volume V

Issue 13

November 27th, 2017

[School Days 54-58]

Announcements

School Girls; or The African Mean Girls Play. Although last week was a very short week, we made the best of it at Girls Inc at UAI! Last Monday, ten middle school students attended School Girls; or The African Mean Girls Play, written by Jocelyn Bioh, in the MCC Theater. This is a play based on the true story of Ghana promoting an American born Ghanaian to be Ms. Ghana in the Miss Universe Pageant. In this powerful play, Bioh addresses colorism, deceit, cliques, friendship, acceptance, and common insecurities faced by school girls around the globe. It was smart, funny, and touching. Afterwards, our young women were invited to stay for a Q&A with the stars of the play including the writer and producer. It was such an enjoyable evening for our students! 

This Week's To Dos

Announced Observations Round Finishes this Week.  There were some last minute changes due to the early dismissal on Wednesday.  See below for the updates!  Remember, we want to give you feedback on lesson plans prior to your visit, so please make sure your most recent versions of your lessons are linking into your Pacing Guides.  LDC teachers, please email Annie & me the PDFs of your LDC lessons.  We want to help you plan for Turn & Talks, Writing, and Feedback!

• Completed - 13NOV:  Cherry, Chris, Judy
• Completed - 14NOV:  Sursattie, Tracy, Elana
• Completed - 17NOV:  Jake, Natalie, Suzannah
• Completed - 20NOV:  Katherine, Cassandra & Michelle, Tiffany
• Completed - 21NOV: Giselle, Matthew & Alison
• Completed - 22NOV: Matthew & Alison
• Upcoming - 27NOV: Marsha, Christina, Kristina
• Upcoming - 28NOV: Kelly, Danielle, Jamie, Rebecca
• Upcoming - 29NOV:  Amanda, Meaghan, Damon & Paula, Tom (rescheduled)
• Upcoming - 30NOV:  Diana, Phillan & Sarah, Elena (rescheduled)

Monday PDs in December.  This year's over-arching school goal is to increase instructional rigor and student thinking (intellectual engagement) during our lessons.  Thus far, we have been using Monday PD to work on your lesson plans and increase your ability to be specific and intentional about your look-fors.  As mentioned earlier, we are now ready for our next step, Assessment. 

• Each Monday, you will have from 3:30 as time to link your lessons for the week into your Pacing Guide.  On Monday 27NOV17, you'll have the full PD time to lesson plan and get ahead for this week and next. 
  
• From 3:30-4:10, we'll have a short PD on 
• 04DEC17 - Effectively Gathering Assessment Data with Turn & Talks
• 11DEC17 - Using Writing to Assess Student Thinking & Learning
• 18DEC17 - Strategic Feedback - Figuring out what to say, why to say it, and how.
  

Prepare for Upcoming Midyear Reviews.  It's hard to believe that we're already almost halfway through the year!  After the completion of this second round of observations, we'll move right into the 3rd round (which will be unannounced again) and we'll begin scheduling midyear reviews.  Reviews will begin next week, but I wanted to give you a lot of lead time to think, reflect and prepare.

• Focus School Goal.  Our main priority goal this year is to increase instructional rigor and student intellectual engagement [Rigorous Instruction & Collaborative Teachers].  To achieve this, we have focused on through improved planning & assessment.  Between now, and your midyear review, reflect on  your progress with the following:

• Improvement in Planning (e.g. UAI Pacing Calendar, Narrative Lesson Plans, Backwards-Designed Unit Plans)
• Impact on Student Learning (e.g. samples of Student Work with your feedback, Student achievement (grades in course or performance on tests/benchmarks), Student Academic Growth)
• Growth in Co-planning with Peer Teachers/Coaches (e.g. quality of planning, quality of lesson execution (Advance Observations) impact on student learning, outcomes of co-planning survey - this will be coming to teachers during PD tomorrow!) 

• Second School Goal.  The second goal that we will discuss during midyears is our school goal around increasing Strong Family Ties.  Our goal is to increase strong family community ties by increasing both quantity and quality of in-person and phone interactions between teachers and families.  This year, each student in your advisory should have had at least 4 interactions and at least 1 in person, all documented in Skedula:  1 welcome to UAI phone call in September; at least 1 in-person visit during MP1, MP2, or SLCs; and at least 2 10-15 minute phone calls for MP1, MP2, or SLC.   Specifically, review and reflect on the following data points:
• Number of successful contacts (in person and phone) per advisee (as evidenced by Skedula anecdotals) 
• Growth Advisee attendance rates from September (you can see this in Skedula)
• Academic Performance of Advisees from MP1 to MP2 (again Skedula)

• Midyear Reflection and Refocus. The Midyear is your opportunity to stop, review your various data points, and reflect on your growth and development.  As teachers, we often get too wrapped up in keeping students doing and busy and we don't make the time to step back and evaluate longer-term progress as shown through student thinking and achievement.  This is one of the big times in the year to take stock of our work thus far.  Where we are strong, we will continue. Where we struggle, we will analyze and refocus spring goals for growth.  Here are some logistical things to keep in mind
  
• First Year at UAI?  Teachers who are in their first year at UAI or are up for tenure can expect to be scheduled first for their reviews (schedule will be released next week).   More explicit details on the Midyear will come in next week's blog.  For this week, look back at your planning documents and reflect on your student outcomes (Do your lesson plans result in positive student outcomes? How do you know? Why or why not?)
• Are you up for Tenure this year?  Teachers who are coming up for tenure are required to submit a formal portfolio of any of the documents or data points listed above.  These will become part of their final portfolio of work to be submitted for tenure recommendation.  The portfolio consists of three parts (1) a letter explaining why you merit tenure and how the documents you submit are illustrative of your growth and achievement (THIS YEAR - we will add more later); (2) samples of student work (with feedback that shows how students used your feedback to improve performance; (3) complete UAI Pacing Calendar with linked samples of Narrative Lesson Plans and all Units are Linked.
• Everyone else?  You will have the same reflection question:  Do your lesson plans result in positive student outcomes? How do you know? Why or why not? - most importantly, how do you plan to show Kiri/Annie your progress through planning documents and student work? 

NOTE:  Please do not wait to prepare.  Begin gathering your planning documents and reviewing your student work, exam achievements, & growth.  Review and think about what these all say about your growth as an educator and pedagogue.  Jot your thoughts down as you reflect.  Talk to your planning partners to hash it out! 

week of nov 20

UAI Staff News

Volume V

Issue 12

November 20th, 2017

[School Days 51-53]

Announcements

Girls Inc and Glamour Women of the Year.  Last Monday evening, fourteen of our hard working seniors attended the Glamour Women of The Year awards at Kings Theater!  With such names in attendance as Serena Williams,  Chimamande Ngozie Adichie, Peggy Whitson, Nicole Kidman, Tracy Ellis Ross, Gigi Hadid, Ruby Bridges, Maxine Waters, Zendaya, Anna Wintour, the women behind #metoo, and so many others, you know there was deep inspiration and empowerment for our students to grow stronger, smarter, and bolder from their powerful stories and successes. We had a wonderful week of both middle and high school afterschool programming and finished it with the middle school Fall Bash. They enjoyed an early evening of dancing freely and hanging out with friends. It was great to see so many smiling faces as they let go and just had fun! 

Quality Review and PPO Results.  After three long weeks of evaluation, we are now ready to reflect on what we've learned, and move on towards our next steps.  Both the Quality Review (QR) and Principal Performance Review (PPO) use the same rubric.  Here are our results.  

Areas of Celebration.  Both the Quality Reviewer and Dept. Superintendent Richie Cintron agreed that we have a strong positive learning environment (1.4).  We, too, celebrated out work in SEL, and the impact it has already had on student behavior and classroom culture.  Additionally, teacher supervision (4.1) and leveraging resources (1.3) were also celebrated by both reviewers. 

Conflicting Reports.  Both reviewers had opposite evaluations of our work in Curriculum (1.1) and Teacher Leadership (4.2).  The Quality Reviewer did not recognize the growth and achievement we've had in these indicators and judged them to be developing. However, both Richie (Dept. Supertindent) and our Superintendent (Fred),  have been working with us throughout the last three year, and thus have a much deeper understanding of our work at UAI.  Richie found these areas to be Highly Effective/Effective.

Areas of Growth.  The next step after our work with Unit and Lesson planning has always been a closer look at assessment and using those outcomes to impact our pedagogical practice.   Without a clear understanding of where we wanted our units and lessons to land (e.g. designing backwards from the unit assessment and being explicit about our lesson look-fors), we weren't ready to effectively use assessment to impact and improve our pedagogy.  At the beginning of the year and only 1 marking period into our planning work, Assessment (2.2) and Pedagogy (1.2) are logically expected to be in their nascent stages.  We are working to improve these areas and both evaluators agreed, rating them as developing.  

This Week's To Do's

Our Next Steps.  We have just finished our benchmarks and teachers are beginning to use that macro data (and that of the DRP) to adjust lessons and units to address student learning needs.  These macro level moves are important, but where we will get the most effective traction will be on leveraging our look-fors in the lessons.  As we move forward in our observation cycle for November, Annie and I will be giving explicit feedback on how you plan for use assessments in your lessons and how you are able to respond to the data generated by students and make adjustments, during your lesson.  

• First - Refine your Turn and Talks.  Students discussion should be used to support higher order (DOK 3 or 4) thinking.  Don't use T&Ts to support student recall or identification.  Use these DOK stems to support your development of Level 3 or 4 prompts that drive student thinking.  The actual discourse students have will enable you to assess thinking.  Your planned look-fors during the T&Ts will help you have a focused lens as you listen to students.  Things to think about as you plan: 
• How will you use student discourse to further achieving the lesson objective?
• How are you tracking student understanding?  If certain students are lost, what will you plan to do?  If students easily understand and are waiting for you or others, what will you plan to do?  If it's always the same students who are lost/bored, how will that impact your future planning?
  
• Then - Transform Thinking into Writing.  Discourse is a tool to support developing thinking. Ultimately, we want to cultivate this thinking so that students will be best prepared to show mastery through work-products.  Too often, we wait until the very end of the lesson to demand students to show us their thinking in writing.  Challenge yourself to ask why you place writing prompts where you do during the lesson.  Is it about timing or lesson part?  If so, change that.  Writing should be the natural punctuation to rigorous thinking (after discourse where they had to reason - not recall).  Writing can also vary in form - notes students create (not copied) like answers to the questions they just discussed, solutions to problems that the discourse helped them figure out, revisions to a process or another piece of writing after analyzing error/problems. 
  
• Finally - Work on your Feedback.  Feedback can be verbal or in writing, but students can't grow if they don't understand what they need to do and why.   Giving effective feedback is a hard skill to master.  It is impossible to give quality feedback on low-thinking tasks.  In order to have something to talk about, students have to be thinking deeply.  That's why turn and talks and writing come before this step. Once you are consistent in your planning for student discourse and writing, you will need to also plan for when and where you intend to give feedback. 

Announced Observations.  Below is the remaining schedule to announced observations. There were necessary changed due to the PPO visit.  So, please review the schedule!  We want to give you feedback on lesson plans prior to your visit, so please make sure your most recent versions of your lessons are linking into your Pacing Guides.  LDC teachers, please email Annie & me the PDFs of your LDC lessons.  We want to help you plan for Turn & Talks, Writing, and Feedback!

• Completed - 13NOV:  Cherry, Chris, Judy
• Completed - 14NOV:  Sursattie, Tracy, Elana
• Rescheduled - 15NOV:  Amanda, Megan, Meaghan
• Rescheduled - 16NOV:  Damon, Paula, Tom
• Completed - 17NOV:  Jake, Natalie, Suzannah
• Upcoming - 20NOV:  Katherine, Cassandra & Michelle, Tiffany
• Upcoming - 21NOV: Elena, Giselle, Matthew & Alison
• Upcoming - 22NOV: Diana, Phillan& Sarah
• Upcoming - 27NOV: Marsha, Christina, Kristina
• Upcoming - 28NOV: Kelly, Danielle, Jamie, Rebecca
• Upcoming - 29NOV:  Amanda, Meaghan, Damon & Paula, Tom

Monday PD.  For this Monday's PD, we will be using the time to finish our DESSA evaluations.  Lauren has regrouped your students so that you are evaluating students you actually work with.  She will be working with you on Monday.  Monday after Thanksgiving, you will have the entire PD to complete the unit planning work that we began on Election Day.  As a reminder, you need to have your unit assessment, unit overview, and all daily aims linked/listed in your Pacing Guide.

Monday PDs in December.  This year's over-arching school goal is to increase instructional rigor and student thinking (intellectual engagement) during our lessons.  Thus far, we have been using Monday PD to work on your lesson plans and increase your ability to be specific and intentional about your look-fors.  As mentioned earlier, we are now ready for our next step, Assessment. 

• Each Monday, you will have from 3:30 as time to link your lessons for the week into your Pacing Guide
• From 3:30-4:10, we'll have a short PD on 
• 04DEC17 - Effectively Gathering Assessment Data with Turn & Talks
• 11DEC17 - Using Writing to Assess Student Thinking & Learning
• 18DEC17 - Strategic Feedback - Figuring out what to say, why to say it, and how.

Staff Celebrations.  On Tuesday 12DEC17, we're going to put our regular Advisory Outreach work on hold and take time to celebrate and appreciate one another.  To make this a special Sursattie has volunteered to organize a potluck of sorts.  Stay tuned for more information from her!  

In addition, our annual staff party will be on Friday, Dec 15th.  Location is still TBD, but the other details will remain the same!  Staff celebration will be from 4-6PM.  Food (also TBD) will be provided as will drinks.  We ask that any friends/family join us at 6PM.  This year, the cost will be $20.  Please give money to Ms. Del.

SEL Update

In SEL this month, 6th and 9th graders have been focused on responsible decision making, particularly in the face of pressure from others. Students have been exploring how their daily choices can better align with their core values and future goals. This week, students will learn to identify peer pressure and practice ways to resist making poor choices, around topics ranging from misbehavior in school to drug/alcohol use or dangerous sexual activity (for HS students). Some of these methods include:

• Avoid settings where pressure could take place

• Leave the setting if pressure begins to take place

• Suggest an alternative to the poor choice

• Explain why this choice isn't right for you.

Students will also practice saying "no" in ways that feel natural to them, and will practice persisting in saying "no" in the face of unrelenting pressure.

Week of November 13th

UAI Staff News

Volume V

Issue 11

November 13th, 2017

[School Days 46-50]

Announcements and To Dos

Superintendent's Review (PPO Visit).  Our deputy superintendent will be visiting us on Wednesday, 15NOV17 to conduct our next formal evaluation.  As was true with the Quality Review, please have your current unit plans and your lessons for this week linked to your pacing calendars in preparation for his review.   Richard Cintron has been our deputy superintendent since we joined the Affinity Superintendency.  As a formal principal and quality reviewer, Richie has a skilled eye and as a very supportive critical friend, he has provided us with pivotal feedback over the years.  You may remember that he visited us at the start of the year to discuss the importance of planning, so please be sure to emphasize efforts in your planning documents.  Richie has also been a critical friend of UAI and his feedback has helped us grow to where we are today!

Here is a re-post of some of the look-fors we have for your planning and thinking this week:

Clarity of Objective.  Do the kids know what they are supposed to learn for the day and why? We'll be asking kids, but also, make an opportunity to pause the class and connect their current activity to the days' learning objective and why/how it connects to the larger unit plan.  This should not be belabored ... make it no longer than a 30sec check-in.

Student Thinking.  Are students thinking or simply doing?  Use Webb's Depth of Knowledge to assess your lessons to see what level of thinking you're demanding.  It should never be the case that for the 10-15min that we are in a class, there is only Level I or II thinking.   Make sure you are planning for thinking and not just planning for management or participation.  That said, not every struggle is equal.  Select the 1-2 places where you really want to go deep and get kids to use their brains. Create appropriate challenge (not too hard, not too easy), place in appropriate scaffolds that help strugglers overcome unproductive struggles and support all students in pushing their thinking to the next level.  This is the productive struggle that we've been talking about in PD and in observation debriefs.

Also, make sure your narrative lesson plan includes your "Look Fors".  Everything you do has a rhyme and reason.  You are trying to evoke something from your students.  What is it?  Be clear and articulate in your planning about what thinking you want them to show you.  

Check for Understanding.  After you've planned and articulated your "Look Fors", make sure you're actually looking for them from everyone!  To get a quick sense of this from your students and to improve student discourse, plan to have several quick Turn and Talks.  Ask a question or leverage a misunderstanding.  For example, "Ooh, as I was walking around, Kiri was saying <insert interestingly wrong idea> and Annie was saying <correct concept>.  I want you guys to turn to your partner and discuss who's idea is more on-target and why."  Then, go around and listen to the kids.  Try to find your look-fors or interesting misunderstandings.  Use what the kids said to start your full class conversations.

When we walk into a room, doing a quick turn and talk is the fastest, easiest way to demonstrate student thinking and demonstrate student questioning and discussion.  I'm encouraging you to do one (even if not originally planned) during the time that we are in your class!

Using your assessments.  The assessment data you get from collaborative learning groups (e.g. small groups or Turn and Talks) either written or verbal is valuable intel.  You need to use this information to further your lesson and/or make in-lesson adjustments.  If kids are not getting it, pause and say that! Don't just barrel on.  Connect to your teacher soul.  You're only teaching if your students are learning!  If your kids aren't learning, then make it your responsibility to stop the lesson and try a reboot or redirect. What really helps you do this is if you can identify the part(s) of the lesson that you're willing to sacrifice and the parts that are essential and if missed will be given more time.  The essential parts are...you guessed it...the productive struggle!

Monday PD and Benchmark Grading.   All non-LDC teachers need to report to room 409 for benchmark grading.  LDC teachers should report to room 305 as usual to work with Marsha & Rebecca.  All math and science teachers will be grading the Earth Science benchmarks.  All other teachers will be working together to grade the Global benchmarks.  CC Algebra, MS exams, and the USH benchmarks have already been graded.

Tuesday Outreach and Shooting for 100%.  One of our school goals this year is to improve our Supportive Learning Environment and Strong Family Ties through increasing the quality and frequency of home-school communications.  Between Thursday and Friday, 45% of our families completed student-led conferences.   60% of parents reported having had only 1 or no contact with the school.  At this point in the year, all advisors should have contacted each advisee at least three times (once to introduce yourself in September, once to provide an update on academic progress, and once to schedule for SLCs).  To improve our communications, we need to push ourselves for this upcoming marking period.

Let's shoot for pushing our current 45% completion of SLCs to 100% by the end of November.  We'll be using our Tuesday family outreach time to do this.  Please enter your schedule for Tuesday outreach in this Advisory Conference Scheduler.  Support staff will be using this document to call and confirm appointments for you.   All appointments should be scheduled for 3PM on Tuesdays. Counselors (Lauren, Jennifer, Marni, Martine, or Danielle I.), deans (Doris, Courtney, or Isaiah),  and admin (Kiri, Annie, Jen, or Brodie) will all be on hand to provide support when needed! 

SEL Update

Lauren has created DESSA groups to help us more accurately complete the DESSA.  She will be working with teachers next Monday to complete this work.  If you'd like to complete the information sooner, please do reach out to Lauren to find out more!

Add this calendar to your own!  See that little "+" sign in the bottom right-hand corner?  Click on it to have it show up in your personal google calendar!

Per Session Posting

Benchmark Grading.  The remaining benchmarks will be graded using per session.  Brodie & Joanna will be coordinating testing grading and per session.  Teachers will have about 3-5 hours (depending on amount of exams) to complete grading.  Please submit your willingness to grade to Brodie.  

Open Houses.  We are also looking for teachers to assist with tour and our open houses on Monday, 13NOV17 and Saturday 18NOV17.  Please email Jen for details

07NOV17 Election Day PD

Election Day PD

Goal for the day

In order to make our common planning time more effective and impactful, we need to get ahead in our planning (i.e. be weeks ahead of planning instead of planning day-to-day).  Tomorrow, we'll use the day to create enough advance planning to be able to more effectively engage in lesson rehearsals and review of student work.  We will do the same in January's PD to get a jump on the spring planning, too.

NOTE:  We are in the midst of some severe register loss, so breakfast and lunch are on your own tomorrow!  Sorry!!

Agenda

• 8:30 - Welcome and Overview of the Day
• 8:45 - DESSA
• 9:15 - Write next unit's assessment & take it
• 10:15 - Write Unit Overview and generate list of unit objectives/topics
• 11:15 - Lunch
• 12:15 - SLCs and Benchmarks
• 12:45 - Write lesson for announced observation
• 2:45 - Email Kiri & Annie a link to your pacing guide with all deliverables listed below
  

• Deliverables for the day
• In your Pacing Guide, you need to have
• Your Unit Overview
• Your Unit Assessment linked to the calendar
• Your Lesson Plan for the Announced visit - also linked to calendar
• All lessons for this week (06NOV & 08NOV) need to be linked into pacing guide
  

Date of next observation

• 13NOV:  Cherry, Chris, Judy
• 14NOV:  Sursattie, Tracy, Elana
• 15NOV:  Amanda, Megan, Meaghan
• 16NOV:  Damon, Paula, Tom
• 17NOV:  Jake, Natalie, Suzannah
• 20NOV:  Katherine, Cassandra, Tiffany
• 21NOV: Elena, Giselle, Matthew & Alison
• 22NOV: Michelle & Diana, Phillan& Sarah
• 27NOV: Marsha, Christina, Kristina
• 28NOV: Kelly, Danielle, Jamie, Rebecca