Week of November 16th, 20

UAI Staff News

Volume VIII

Issue 17

November 16th, 2020

Principal's Message

It is a LOT of work to continually connect and check in on our students and their families.  On top of that, you are all working diligently hard to learn a whole new set of digital skills and pedagogical techniques.  However, it is all worth it!  Across all subjects, across all areas (creating connections, academic rigor, fun & engagement, and individuation), our parents and students have ranked your efforts consistently as "Pretty Good" to "Excellent"!  In addition, our parents and students recognize and appreciate your work!!  You can see all the data for yourself HERE, but here are some samples of their appreciation this first marking period!!

• Some Quotes from Our Families 
• I want to say that the staff is amazing and very helpful.
• They are all the best!! They make learning fun.
• Their availability to students... many teachers made themselves available to students and it gave the student confidence to feel that if they were having a tough time, someone was there to always help. This mattered to my daughter because it made her feel like her teachers were reliable and available.
• They all made my child feel engaged and safe throughout the past Marking period. They all helped my child after our travel that its okay if she missed work and zooms she will make it up. They helped her make up her work.
• My daughter said Mr.Tom for pushing her to do her best, but I say all the teachers does that. Great support.
• Amazing work ethic despite the current climate.

• Some Quotes from Our Students 
• Teachers in the class made me feel valued and respected 
• They taught something interesting and they engaged with me alot
• Trying their hardest to help us learn new things.
• The teachers listening to students issues and making us feel known. 
• I want to say thank you teachers for teaching me and I feel it is a great success to be at UAI this year I’m so happy.

Thank you all for everything you have done to launch this crazy COVID school year!  I look forward to seeing what you deliver for our students and families for Marking Period 2!!

Don't Forget To Scroll To the Bottom to See This Week's Per Session Postings

Birthdays This Week

No Staff Bdays this week!
DO EMAIL ME if this is incorrect!

Monday, 16NOV:  Aaliyah Y (6), Makeilah S (9), Shalanay (10), Jomesha (11)       

Thursday, 19NOV:  Marie C. (6), Myalynne (8), Destinee M (9)

Friday, 20NOV:  Ghada (6), Marie J. (8),  Sunanda (8), Nyjayah (9)

UAI Committee Updates.  As promised, we will be providing weekly updates on the progress of our three committees working to transform UAI into a fully inclusive and anti-racist school!  Throughout this year, many folks will have ideas and concerns about ... whatever is happening at UAI!!  Please feel free to reach out to ANY individual on any of the committees to share your ideas and concerns.  

No longer should anyone feel that they have to come to school leadership about concerns.  Of course, all are always welcome, but our committee structures provide staff with many folks of many different affinities that can help highlight your ideas and/or concerns!  All you have to do is reach out and/or share your mind when the committees reach out to you!

Committee Updates....

Staff Circles Committee (Members: Annie, Jennifer, Juelle, Marsha, & Nakita) The SC Committee met last Monday to plan the goal for the next staff Circle. To plan, we engage in a Circle planning protocol (CPP), as you can see here in the minutes. We reflected on the staff feedback and determined that we should continue the work of individual self-awareness. As part of our mission, we must look inward in order to build relationships and form the antiracist/fully inclusive school we all hope for. In this Friday’s staff Circle, we will reflect on our journey as educators, so that we can challenge assumptions we make about each other and our students.

School Restructuring Committee (Members: Annie, Courtney, Jen, Kiri, Laura, Marsha, Nadine, Nina, and SarahM). The SRC will be meeting on Monday at 4:15 to review staff feedback from the last two meetings and our surveys.  We will begin drafting school wide policies around Zoom and Google Classroom and for structures/systems for implementing the DOE Grading Policy.  As always, you can track our meetings following our minutes and agendas via this LINK. 

The Equity Team (Suzannah, Nina, Elana, Kelly, Phillan, Annie, Nakita, Rebecca C, Damon, Ms. King (Kianna’s mom), Ms. Barnes (Alyssa’s mom), Ms. Martuscello (Veronica’s mom), Kianna King, Emily Payamps, Jerlai Tyner, Jamilah Alshawish, Salia Naschel).  The Equity Team took a pause last week because of conferences, but will resume this week to dive into data analyzing GPA to identify disproportionately by race.

Advisory Conferences.  Thank you to all of you!!  We met our goal of completing at least 80% of our advisory conferences.  We ended the week with 402/495 conferences completed!  Nicely done everyone!

Also, thank you for completing the survey.  We were able to collect some invaluable information about home learning and technology!  One of the most revealing bits of information is how many of our students have unreliable access to WiFi.  Only 86% of our students replied yes, and that correlates to our average daily attendance rate, which is about 85% right now.   This means that when students are absent, communication that relies on WiFi access will likely not work!  Starting with MP2, if students aren't responding to emails or Google Classroom announcements, there is a real non-zero chance that WiFi may be the problem.  Call them to find out what's happening, and then make your evaluations from there.

 

MP1 Grades.  Marking Period 1 Grades are due at 3PM on Wednesday, 18NOV20  Advisors will be charged with emailing out report cards on Friday.  As a reminder:

• All passing grades are numerical from 65-100
• All failing grades are "NX" only.  Please feel free to use the report card comments and/or provide more details, including actual numeric performance in an anecdotal in Skedula.

Grade Team Meetings.  Starting THIS Friday 20NOV20 we will begin to have weekly grade team meetings from 8:30-9:15AM.  These grade team meetings will be used to follow up on a variety of items including student attendance, outcomes of interventions (for all students and for ENL and SPED students), recommendations for intervention, and identifying student cases for escalation.   This is an additional meeting to our 2PM staff meetings.  So Fridays for teachers will look like:

1. 8:30-9:15AM - Grade Team Meetings
• Agenda Items
• Weekly Attendance Review
• Weekly ENL/SPED Intervention Assessment
  (What worked, what didn't, what needs to change, and why)
• Weekly GenEd Intervention Assessment (Who needs what and why)
  
  
2. 9:15-2:00PM - Reset Days & Office Hours (which includes lunch & prep time)
• In place of Reset weeks, for MP2, we're going to spread the days out throughout the MP2 Fridays.  Here's a calendar of what to expect (Note for PE, Spanish, and Theater, your classes move to asynchronous assignments on Reset days):
  
  
• 20NOV - Advisory Connection & Report Card Distribution
• 04DEC - Reset Day - Connect with Course students & Families who have missed assignments.  Provide final deadlines for the assignments. Log outreach in Skedula, cc parents and advisor.
• 11DEC - Office Hours - Traditional Office Hours & Small Group Work  
• 18DEC - Reset Day
• 08JAN - Office Hours
• 15JAN - Reset Day
• 22JAN - Office Hours
• 29JAN - Reset Day
  
  
3. 2:00-2:50PM - UAI Staff Meetings
• Please see Staff Meeting Calendar for Agendas.

Per Session Postings

To Apply for any of the following per session opportunities, please COMPLETE THIS FORM and email the appropriate point person listed in this posting.  

No Postings this week

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