Week of December 3rd

UAI Staff News

Volume VI

Issue 15

December 3rd, 2018

(117 school days remaining)

Announcements

More on "Multiplication if for White People" Raising Expectations for Other People's Children, by Lisa Delpit.   The lessons from this book are endless.  This week, I found the following ideas from the chapter, "Warm Demanders:  The Importance of Teachers in the Lives of Children of Poverty" particularly inspiring:

• Successful teachers of low-income, culturally diverse children know that their students are "school-dependent"...Children who are not part of the mainstream [privileged culture] are dependent on schools to teach them whatever they need to be successful. 

• ...[Inequity], family issues, poverty, crime and so forth all affect poor children's learning opportunities....[The] quality of teaching has six to ten times as much impact on achievement as all other factors combined.

At UAI, our mission is to bring the type of learning and educational experiences our students need to successfully compete in STEM fields and careers.  Inherently, our mission is one of social equity.  In order to build the skills and resilience necessary for our students to overcome the hurdles placed before them, our students depend on UAI and the amount of work, effort, and attention to quality that our teachers put into planning and executing high-quality instruction everyday.  Instructional work is neither easy nor simple.  Our work each day is to plan and execute the best learning experiences that push student thinking to higher order levels and use that level of thinking to acquire new knowledge and skills. 

Last week, several folks expressed interest in intervisitation for classroom management.  When students' minds are challenged and when they are provided with entry points with which they can actively engage in the challenge, behaviors follow suit.  Behaviors are a by-product of instructional planning.   While it can be necessary at times, the goal in instructional planning is not to find ways to control behaviors.  Rather, the goal is to perfect learning activities and lesson execution so that student behaviors promote critical thinking.

Each visit will have the same agenda.  All visits will start in Room 401.

• 10min Review the lesson and examine the look-fors and protocols for classroom visiting
• 15min Classroom Visit
• 20min Debrief & Discuss the Visit and Lesson Plan

Please click the link to sign up for a specific classroom visit.  You will be provided with coverage if you teach during the same period.  To the extent possible we will try to get everyone into their first choice!  Here are the visit details:

• Wednesday, 05DEC at 8:30AM:  
• Earth Science; Exploring Convection with Ms. Kristi 
• Thursday 06DEC18 at 9:25AM:  
• 9th Gr. ELA; Writing Strong Arguments with Ms. Cassandra & Ms. Rebecca F
• Friday, 14DEC18 at 8:30AM:
• 8th Gr. CC Algebra; Exploring inequalities with one variable
• Date still TBD
• Spanish II; Irregular Verbs - finding and applying patterns

Girls Inc. Does it Again!  This month, seven High School Girls Inc. participants were invited to the Adidas Creator Farm in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They worked in groups and were guided by women who work in a wide range of roles across the sneaker industry to create a design and sales/marketing strategy for a shoe. The girls had an amazing time presenting their new creations to a group of talented Fashion professionals. 

To Do This Week

Annual UAI Winter Staff Celebration.  Our annual winter celebration will be on Friday, December 14th from 4-6PM at Commonwealth Bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  Please give Del $20 if you wish to attend.  All are welcome!  If you'd like to bring a guest, you are welcome to do so.  Please just give $20 for them as well.  The $20 includes an open bar and food (TBD - but I am open to suggestions if you have any!) from 4-6PM.  

Monday PD.  This Monday is the first Monday of the month.  We will be meeting in Grade Teams in Room 409 to continue writing plops for December and January.  All teachers should meet in 409 for announcements.  Please complete this brief survey so that we can make sure we cover your concerns.  After announcements, we will go straight into PLOPs and/or team meetings.

Tuesday Outreach.  This Tuesday, please focus your energies on reaching out to families to get emails.    Please CLICK HERE to see which of your advisees still need an email.  We want to improve the reach of our newsletters, and direct email to families is the best bet.

Conference Outcomes.  As a school, we saw 60% of our families in person.  While I know some of you had phone-conferences with your families, the in-person conferences have much more impact.  Face-to-face conferences better enable us to build critical relationships with families that lead to student achievement.

As a reminder, Tuesday Outreach is designed for phone conferences.  We should be conducting phone conferences with each of our advisees at least once per marking period.  By now, you should have had at least two phone conferences with each of your advisees.  These conferences should be reviewing student progress and setting goals.

No Per Session Updates This Week