Week of 03AUG19

UAI Staff News

Volume VII

Issue 1

August 3rd, 2019

(180 instructional days remaining)

Announcements

It's August Already and Summer School is Almost Done.  It seems like it was literally last week that we were saying graduating the class of 2019 and saying goodbye to one another.  Hopefully, you have all had a chance to relax somewhat and I hope that you still have amazing plans for the month that remains.

At UAI, we wrapped up credit recovery and mandated middle school last week, and we are ready to launch summer school Regents Prep on Monday.  Big applause for Kelly!!  She took on summer school coordination for the first time, and has done an amazing job in organizing and facilitating summer processes and summer learning.  Kelly, with Joanna's support, will also be running Regents Prep and Regents Exam week, so if students reach out to you, please direct them to her.  hank you so much Kelly and nicely done!

Summer Reflection.  This year, the DOE has completely revamped the Comprehensive Education Plan (CEP) process that is the tool we use to set and plan school goals.  For the last several years, our instructional focus has been explicitly around improving the quality of instruction in the classrooms and strengthening our school culture.  We have made significant strides in both, and we still have a ways to go.  When we are together again in September, I will share more information and specific details, but for now, I will give you the broad strokes.

The quality of instruction and rigor of instructional tasks dictates how well students perform on state exams and in our courses.  In order for students to perform well and achieve, our students and their families rely on us to create high-quality learning experiences that motivate and challenge our students to learn and grow.  We will continue to work on developing the quality of our instruction through our Artisan Teaching Teams in both middle and high school, external PD opportunities and support through New Visions, CUNY LINCT, MSQI, AP for All, and Algebra for All.

In addition to improving teacher capacity, we are also introducing intervention groups for our students who struggle the most in reading and math.  We also heard student and teacher request (via the surveys and consultation committee) and we are introducing elective classes for grades 6-9 next year.  Our students will also continue to receive Girls Inc Opportunities both during the day and after school and we will continue to provide them with strong in-school experiences aimed at cultivating their Social Emotional Growth.

Instructional Quality and School Culture will continue to be our major areas of focus, however this year, with changes in the CEP, we will have additional metrics attached to them. For UAI, because we are a 6-12 school we have mandated goals for both MS and HS.  They are:

• NYS Middle School Math & ELA Performance.   We are still waiting for state results, so I can't share concrete figures yet, but the goal is to improve the number of students scoring at proficiency in both Math & ELA by at least 10%. 
• HS Graduation Rate.  Our current HS rate is 82% with an expected final rate of 87% by the end of August.  Next year's Class of 2020 is significantly stronger - both academically and social emotionally - and as a result, we are predicting a final graduation rate of 92%
• College, Career, and Civic Readiness.  This is a hard one to explain digitally.  In this goal there are two metrics involved - the state guidelines (which calculate the number of AP classes kids take, the type of diploma that is earned, and several other metrics) and the city is looking at the number of students scoring college-ready scores in Math and ELA (>70 in math and >75 in ELA).  On the stateside, we always do exceedingly well because so many of our students take advanced coursework (in AP or through NYU).  So the goal is to continue that success by adding more AP experiences (AP Lit, AP World History) and broadening access.  On the city side, we have already succeeded last year's College-Ready percent (which was 49%, CO 2019 is already at 57%).  So, we are going to enhance the goal, and setting goals around getting more of our students in 4-year college settings.  
• Attendance. For the first time ever in the history of UAI, our student attendance has been so low that we missed state benchmarks, and are a level 1 (which is the lowest level) for attendance rate.  Overall, our attendance average is 87%, but our students who are chronically absent are 14% in the MS and 31% in the HS.  These numbers need to change.  Annie is putting together a committee of teachers to lead this work and we will be rolling out the plan when we come together in September. 

Following our progress in all these areas will be tricky, but we have two very strong guide rails to lead us on our way. 

1. When we plan and effectively execute lessons that get kids thinking and give them access to throught-provoking and intellectually challenging materials, our students want to learn.  They will show that with their feet (increased attendance) and their engagement paired with our instruction will result in higher exam scores, higher course grades, and thus increased graduation and college, career, and civic readiness.
2. Strong instruction requires an equally strong learning environment.  Students need to feel known (teachers know their work, know what they need to grow and know who they are), feel safe (students take intellectual risks without fear because teachers & staff create & maintain safe classroom & school spaces), and students feel supported and included in our classrooms, our texts, and our community.

Implicit Bias Work.  This year to support our work in instruction and school culture, we will be continuing our work around Implicit Bias.  Please email Kiri directly if you would like to join the PD committee to plan these sessions or if you want to learn more!

To Do

Building Access.  The building still has summer school in session with various schools in our classrooms.  This will be the case through Regents Week. The building is closed the week of August 19th, but starting Augst 26th, you are welcome to come in and begin room set up anytime.

UAI PD Days.  We will be offering training rate per session for teachers from 8:30-12:30 on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (Aug27-29) to come in and begin room set up.  We will be offering teachers new to UAI a new teacher orientation on Aug 27 at 10AM which will introduce new teachers to school-specific systems and procedures (taking attendance, using Skedula, email groups, tech support, UAI teacher forms and DOE forms).  All returning teachers are welcome to join, too.

Staff PD Launch.  We will have our full staff PD launch on Tuesday, 03SEP19 at 8:30.  It will be a full day of PD on both days, agendas to follow soon!

Orders.  If you did not get a confirmation from Nancy, then your orders were not processed because they were not filed correctly.  In order to have ordered processed, you need to go to shopdoe.org and fully checkout.  Once you have fully checked out, your order is sent to FAMIS and Nancy can then process it.  Nancy will be in the office on August 15th to process orders next.  Please get anything to her by that date, or you'll have to wait until October.  September is too pressed with enrollment issues to guarantee purchasing.

Planning Documents.  I am still working on updating the planning templates for the year.  Those should be coming out this week!  These include a pacing calendar, lesson template, and [NEW] Course Syllabus and Grading Policy (that will be distributed to parents on curriculum night).

Staff Bios.  Finally, send me a new headshot and updated bio to include in this year's staff directory before the 20AUGust and it will be included in the next blog post