UAI Staff News
Volume VII
Issue 19
January 2nd, 2020
Announcements
Staff Birthdays This Week.
Happy Birthday to Val on Friday (03JAN). Enjoy your day!!
Happy New Year!! The turn of the calendar year is always a time of personal reflection and forward planning & resolution making. It is also a great time to reflect and set resolutions towards meeting the school's goals and end this school year even stronger than last.
Reflection: For the school, our goals this year fall into three main buckets: Graduation, College Readiness, and Supportive Learning Environment.
- Graduation. Our CEP goal is to reach an 85% graduation rate for all students and 75% for students with disabilities. Looking at the number of students who have satisfied graduation requirements for Regent Exams and the number of students who are currently passing all their courses, we are currently on pace to exceed our goal for all students and end the year with a 90% graduation rate. For our students with disabilities (of which there are 8 in the cohort), 2 of the 8 are not actually enrolled at UAI (one was discharged years ago as an LTA (she had major heart health issues which conflicted with school) and one has been at home school since she enrolled at UAI (and still is). Of the special education students at UAI in the 2020 cohort, 100% of them are on track to graduate in June. So, if they changed the cohort rules, we'd be exceeding our goal. As it is, we are currently meeting it.
- College Readiness in English & Math
- Our CEP goal was to graduate at least 57% of the Class of 2020 with college ready scores in both Regents Math (>70) and Regents ELA (>75) by June 2020. Currently, 61% of all student in the Class of 2020 are College Ready in both math & ELA. Unfortunately, none of our students with disabilities will graduate college ready. Given these individual students' current capacity, we do not have enough time to push them to college ready by June. Many will certainly reach college ready levels in ELA or Math by then, but we do not have enough time to push them to both, particularly when each of them have satisfied ELA and Math exam graduation requirements, but are still working on passing 2+ other exams. Graduation takes priority over college ready.
However, we are not too late to address this issues with each of our underlying classes. In grades 6-11, each teacher in all subjects play a role in elevating our students numeracy, reasoning, and literacy skills. Middle School ELA and Math performances play a pivotal role in preparing students to excel on high school regent exams, including Regents Math & ELA.
For both MS English & Math exams scores, we have had four years of sustained growth in proficiency, however we still lag behind state and city proficiency levels. We are closing the gap overall, but the gap is widening for our students with learning differences. We are closing the gap for our English language learners, however, outperforming our city & state peers. Our goal this year is to raise proficiency in all middle school grades in English to 48% (up from 42%) and in Math to 35% (up from 29%). When we give the next benchmark in MS, we will be able to report on our progress towards that goal at that time. - Supportive Learning Environment
- Our CEP goal in this bucket is centered on Attendance. Specifically, we are using a two-pronged approach of elevated instruction and targeted attendance intervention to decrease the percent of all students in grades 6-12 who are chronically absent students to 21%. At present, we are currently exceeding that goal with an overall chronic absentee rate of 18% for all students,
Resolution. We still have many places to grow and improve, even in the midst of our successes! Our work around instruction and addressing implicit bias continues to improve learning experiences for our students which has resulted in significant advancements towards our goals in graduation rate, college readiness, and supportive learning environment. We will continue that work this month and throughout the spring term to grow our practice even more. To that end, as we move forward into 2020, your new year's resolutions for professional improvement to should include goals around
- Improving your instruction for all students and making specific goals focusing on specific populations (e.g. SPED & ELL or Asian, African American, or Latinx)
- Recognizing and addressing your own biases
To-Do This Week
Monday Professional Development. This Monday, we're going to continue the 3-part series aimed at supporting teachers in planning and executing high quality turn and talks in their classes. Before the break, the first of these three parts used the protocol of teacher consultancies to help the presenting teachers improve lesson plan for the turn and talk. This upcoming Monday, subject teams will help the presenting teachers rehearse the lesson, paying particular attention to teacher moves and execution. The final part on January 13th, will be a review and reflection of the lesson. Teachers will have the opportunity to watch a video recording of the planned turn and talk and then provide feedback for the presenting teacher.
Teacher Core Subject Teams -Note: For this round of subject teams, we're going to focus on core subject turn and talks and integrate breadth & elective subjects into the core teams. This is strictly for planning and preparation logistics in running these consultancies
- (8) MS ELA - Sarah M (Presenting), Marsha (Facilitating),
- Phillan, Kristina, Christina, Cassandra, Laura, Pauline
- (8) HS ELA - Joey (Presenting) Rebecca C (Facilitating)
- Tiffany, Rebecca F, Damon, Elana, Jessica, Juelle
- (9) MATH - Jamie (Presenting), Kiri (Facilitating)
- Alison, Cherry, Matthew, Danielle Ro, Joanna, Nina, Judy
- (9) SCIENCE - Amanda (Presenting), Rachel (Facilitating)
- Sarah R, Amy, Emma, Nick, Tom, Elena, Jelissa
- (9) SOCIAL STUDIES - Brodie (Presenting); Annie (Facilitating)
- Jake, Natalie, Kelly, Suzannah, Nadine, Giselle, Brenda
Monday Agenda
- 3:00-3:05 - Blog Announcements
- 3:05-3:10 - Setting Our Intention - What is the focus of the Rehearsal? What feedback is needed?
- 3:10-4:05 - Lesson Rehearsal
- 4:05-4:10 - Staff Journal & Reflection
Tuesday Family Outreach. High school advisors must begin reaching out to advisees to advise families of Regents Week programming. Joanna will share schedule and lists this week. All advisors, should share that the end of the MP3 ends on Friday, 17JAN20. The Spring Term and MP4 begins the next class day (21JAN for middle school; 28JAN20 for the high school). There is no school this month on Monday, 20JAN20 (MLK, Jr. Day) and no school for students on Monday 27JAN20 (Chancellor's PD Day).
<<REMINDER>> Gradebook Audits Continue. Because MP 3 is credit bearing if students pass, we need to make sure all gradebooks follow school grading policy, which is submitted to the NYCDOE and Superintendency each year. We will be randomly checking grade books throughout this month and January to ensure all gradebooks are in alignment. As a reminder,
<<REMINDER>> Gradebook Audits Continue. Because MP 3 is credit bearing if students pass, we need to make sure all gradebooks follow school grading policy, which is submitted to the NYCDOE and Superintendency each year. We will be randomly checking grade books throughout this month and January to ensure all gradebooks are in alignment. As a reminder,
- Grades are cumulative - Grades are a reflection of work students have been doing since September.
- The Lowest grade for anything is a 50. So, in other words, we do not use zeros or any grade less than 50.
- The Only failing grade on report cards is 55. If a student's overall average is between 55 and 65, teachers must choose to give the student a 55 OR a 65.
Social-Emotional Learning Updates
No Updates This Week
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