Week of January 14th

UAI Staff News

Volume VI

Issue 20

January 14th, 2019

(90 instructional days remaining)

Announcements

Mr. Tom, the Green Team, and NY Sun Works Launch UAI's first Hydroponic Farm!  This past Saturday, Mr. Tom's classroom in B49 transformed into a living classroom.  With the help from a grant and labor from the folks at NY Sun Works, Mr. Tom and the UAI Green Team installed a variety of indoor systems to cultivate crops and teach methods of sustainability.  Many thanks to Tom for working so hard to coordinate and follow through on this amazing opportunity for our girls.

Perception Institute.  As a reminder, we will be continuing our work around Implicit Bias on Monday, January 14th.  This is the workshop that was originally planned for December.  We will be working with Rachel Godsil from the Perception Institute to investigate how bias evolves and how we can learn to develop our own awareness and thus our capacity to guard against the negative impact that implicit bias can often incur.  As a reminder, we will not have family outreach time on Tuesday the 15th.  Instead, we will combine that time with Monday PD time so that on Monday, January 14th, we will meet in the Library from 3-5:25PM

To Do This Week

Tuesday Family Outreach.  Because Monday is one of the three extended sessions we have for our Implicit Bias work, we will not have extended time on Tuesday.  If you have not called home regarding students who are failing your classes, yet, please make time this week to reach out to families to let them know the status of students who are currently failing your class.  The last day for Marking Period 3 (for both MS and HS) will be this Friday, January 18th.  MS classes will continue, but those days will be included in the 4th MP.  Grades will be due on Wednesday, 23JAN at 3PM so that we have time to prepare report cards for distribution on the first day of the Spring Term.

Intervisitation Sign Up.  We are hosting another round of classroom intervisitation to see how planning robust look-fors in your lesson planning lead to higher levels of student intellectual engagement throughout the lesson.  This week Kelly and Alison are hosting visits:  16JAN19 Kelly in US History and 18JAN19 Alison in 6th grade math.  Please email Kiri and Annie directly if you want to join the visit!  Sarah & Phillan and Meaghan and Megan will be hosting visits in the next round!

Chancellor's PD on 28JAN19.  The PD committee is still finalizing the agenda for that day with LDC and teacher leaders.  We will be publishing the final agenda in next week's blog.  The day will be focused on teacher feedback and effectively assessing student thinking and crafting effective feedback to further push student thinking and achievment.

[Final Repost] Summer School Planning.  As we close out the fall, we will begin to plan for the summer.  UAI hosts summer school for several other UA schools in the summer.  We have not finalized programming (because we still need to know who will need what).  However, please complete this brief form to share your interest and availability for working summer school this year.