UAI Staff News
Volume VI
Issue 24
February 11th, 2019
(76 instructional days remaining)
Announcements
UAI Celebrates Black History Month. UAI is pulling out the stops to celebrate Black History Month! From showcases celebrating student narratives inspired by Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye, to highlighting Historically Black Universities, to celebrating unsung heroes in STEM, to honoring the work and talents of our young women in Girls' Inc's Winterfest - the list is seemingly endless, and if I missed something - it's only because there's so much wonderful happening here at UAI. It's a true, true joy to see us come together, breathing life into the very mission of our school! Ok, now I'm tearing up...before I get too mushy, I'll let the pictures speak the thousand words I can't!
Black History Month Assembly. This Friday will be our school-wide assembly celebrating Black History Month. Many shout outs to Kelly, Vanessa, and Jen for organizing this event for our school! The assembly will take place last period on Friday. As per usual, we will be calling students up to the gym by grade. This Friday, please keep students in 6th-period classes until your grade is called up. We will begin calling students up between 1:50 and 1:55 on Friday. Also, as per usual assembly protocols, all students need to have everything with them when they come up to the gym. Teachers need to actively help keep students engaged in the assembly. At the end of the assembly, we will be dismissing students by grade via rapid dismissal.
Teacher Passion Projects. The Shippy Foundation is funding teacher passion projects for all Urban Assembly Teachers. Check out the RFP (request for proposal) here. I strongly encourage you all to apply! The Urban Assembly is also offering a workshop to support your application. They have a wonderful team of folks who are highly skilled at transforming your ideas into proposals! The workshop is THIS Wednesday 13FEB19 at 4PM at 90 Broad Street (just one stop from UAI on the R train). Click here to register. The application is due March 1st.
Updating What Ready to Learn means at UAI. Your feedback matters! In the Perception Institute Feedback, we heard folks wanting to talk more about the school rules and the need to update them to ensure respect for all. While that workshop was not the time and place, we are now creating one! I am forming a committee representing all UAI constituencies - teachers, parents, students, partners, deans, counselors, and support staff - to rethink our Ready to Learn policies around dress code, electronics, and food. This committee will meet after school on Wednesdays from 3:00-4:00 to discuss collected feedback, recent research, and goals for UAI's Ready to Learn Policies and expectations for their implementation. If you cannot make that time, your voice still matters. You can
- share your thoughts in person with me, Annie, Jen, or Brodie
- share your thoughts in this anonymous survey.
- share your thoughts by leaving a note (typed or handwritten) in one of our mailboxes in the main office.
This committee will meet Wednesdays during the month of March to put together a proposal to submit to staff, students, and families for feedback, revision, and approval. To be clear, we cannot abandon the rules while we revisit them. Until we have a fully approved and improved system in place, the current system needs to stay in place. We will move forward with change, but we also cannot create chaos in the process of doing so. So, as we move through the process, we will keep upholding the current system. The main goal of our work in the committee and then as the community as a whole is to create a shared understanding of the purpose and goals of UAI's Ready to Learn policies AND to provide the community with a clear and succinct articulation of rules that demonstrate respect for all.
To Do This Week
Monday PD. This Monday's PD will be grade team time for PLOPs and Grade Team Meetings. We will begin PD together in Room 409 for staff-wide announcements with everyone. Please sit by grade teams. Then, after, teams will meet to complete PLOPs and when finished, go through grade-team driven agendas. We will have Grade Team meetings on 11FEB19 and Monday, 25FEB19 to complete the remaining PLOPs for the year. As a reminder, there is no Tuesday outreach time this week (because we had extended time last week!)
March NOT Madness. We've received feedback around PD structure and the Consultation Committee shared ideas that folks want to have in their PD options. For the month of March, PD will be centered on self-care - whatever that best means for you! Some love mindfulness and health & wellness. Some get self-nourishment through the work. Some want to improve themselves through connecting to the UAI community. For some, it's a combination of those! Here's some of the workshop options we've developed for March. Also, there's still time to add - so if you have an idea, please let us know.
[Required for All] Survey Focus Group. As I mentioned at the January PD, this is something that we all need to do as a community in preparation for the Learning Environment Survey coming up next month. I need everyone to sign up for at least one Survey Focus Group in the month of March to review our schools' performance in various indicators and to discuss how UAI is showing strength and/or where UAI needs to improve!
[Staff Choice] Health and Wellness. There will be an array of health and wellness options throughout the month of March to support teacher self-care. Tangerine Yoga Studio is running a Yoga workshop. Our very own Ms. Vanessa will be conducting an Aroma Therapy session. Art Therapy with "Pinots" - yeah, probably no vino, but some healthy smoothies perhaps, and painting. We're also having an expert on Mindfulness lead the staff in strategies aimed at decreasing stress and managing emotions. In addition, Jen has launched a Go Fund Campaign to bring self-care opportunities (like massage) to our hard working UAI staff.
[Staff Choice] Blind Spot Book Club. This one comes from a Staff Recommendation. Blind Spot is the book that Paul suggested to us during his workshop last week. Ms. Suzannah suggested that we form a book club to read together as a community. Those who are interested should definitely sign up. It's totally fine to sign up for the book club for three out of the four weeks in March (or whatever combination you'd like).
[Staff Choice] Planning and Bulletin Boards. There is no end to the work we need to do to make the best learning experiences and learning environment for our young women. In preparation for SLCs in March, we will need to refresh our bulletin boards to showcase the work we do with students each day. The stretch from February break to April break is a long one this year. Putting your best and most engaging lessons before our students will definitely make the time fly!
[Staff Choice] Staff Circles Pilot. One of the recurring themes of our consultation committee and teacher feedback is finding a method to improve communication at UAI. Community Circles are used in Restorative Justice practices to build community a respond to issues through constructive dialogue. Before fully committing to this structure, we want to take time to explore its fit and efficacy with our UAI staff and family. Topics of discussion during this pilot will be driven by participants and school needs. If you are interested in learning more or helping us determine and/or shape how circles could work for UAI, please do sign up (for as many as you want!).
All March PDs will begin with everyone in 409 to share staff announcements. Then we will break out into the rooms of your selected PD options. Please make sure to complete this survey TODAY so we can organize the rooms and get you to the workshops you want!
When you Need to be Absent or Late. This weather is wacky and the flu bugs abound. Get that Purell out and grab some Clorox wipes for your classroom surfaces (we have some in the main office storage closet). Transit has gotten worse, and trains are stuck with signal errors and sick passengers. Give yourself some extra transit time to help avoid these problems. However, if that all fails and you do fall sick (or need to care for a sick family person) or if you are gonna be late, remember the new policy started this Fall.
- Sick Days: You must call the principal (that's me!) at 917-776-0460 by 6:30AM on the morning you are calling out. During that call, I will let you know if you should put in a call to sub-central. I will also work with you to figure out your lesson plans and copy needs and how to coordinate that. Sometimes calling out happens. But if you don't give us a chance to coordinate well, it creates undue stress on your colleagues and students. Call me when you are calling out.
- Personal Days: Personal days need to be approved beforehand. Please submit forms to Brodie at least one week in advance of the date you need. Mondays and Fridays preceding or following school holidays will not be approved.
- Arriving Late: If you are running late, please call Kiri no later than 8AM. Like when you're absent, we need some time to coordinate coverage. I know it's not always predictable, and sometimes you're stuck underground with no service. However, in the times that you CAN please do call me so we can be organized and provide students with the best standard of learning in your absence.
[NEW BLOG SECTION]
Student Support Services Updates
This past Friday, Jen and I met to review the impact role of our social-emotional & counseling support team. The work that Jen, Lauren, Jennifer, Marni, Danielle I, and Doris do on a daily basis isn't always completely evident nor always clear. Folks get the SEL updates in the various forms, but the complete narrative of how all of the Student Support Services work outside of the classroom to enhance student academic achievement still needs to be told. The first step in doing this will be including weekly updates for the entire team in this section.The mission of the student support team is to provide the necessary social-emotional supports for the entire UAI community (students, families, and staff) to ensure student academic success and realization of the school’s mission.
The key areas in which this team works are
- Social Emotional Learning - SEL classes in 6th & 9th grade and SEL counseling groups provide wide-spread support to most UAI students. For those students requiring extra guidance in developing social-emotional competency (e.g. students requiring mediation or recidivists requiring intervention), the team works with the deans to identify and support these students in need.
- Next Level Guidance - Our students matriculate in 8th and 12th grade to their next phase of learning. Our team supports our students and their families in selecting optimal matches for the level - individually adapted to each student & her families desires and needs.
- Student Activities in cultivating and coordinating partnerships (Girls Inc. and NYU Tandon School of Engineering), organizing school assemblies and celebrations, and in curating and publicizing student opportunities.
- New Student Recruitment by organizing recruitment events and cultivating relationships with school counselors to create pipeline relationships with elementary and middle schools to secure school enrollment.
Per Session Opportunities
Join the Hiring Committee! After the February break, we will be launching into our hiring season. Our first Hiring Fair will be on Saturday, March 9th. At UAI, our philosophy is to find the best and brightest teachers for our students. To achieve this, we cast a very wide net at the start of our hiring process and look for any and all possible candidates who could be a good fit for our school. If you are interested in joining the committee, please send Kiri or Annie and email. We currently have two Hiring Fairs on the docket (March 9th and March 23rd), and there will be an array of city and district hiring fairs coming up (dates are still TBA).
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