Week of April 19th

UAI Staff News

Volume VIII

Issue 37

April 19th, 2021

Principal's Message

Happy Birthday To Jen!  Monday, 19APR21 is Jen's Birthday, and it's not only a great time to celebrate yet another journey around the sun for her, it's also the perfect time to recognize and celebrate all the amazing things she does for our students, their families, and our staff at UAI.  (FYI - this is the pic her mom posted for one of her birthdays, so I'm just copying the great and amazing Susan!)

As our Director of Student Support Services, Jen oversees many, many different buckets of work.  Jen supervises & supports our counseling team to support student & family mental health, research and complete applications to high school & college, and provide social emotional support including lessons, counseling groups, and resources for teachers to help our students grow their SEL skills.  

Jen also works closely with Aisha, our new parent coordinator to create strong conduits between our students homes and school.  There has been clear, constant communication with our students' families this year, and that has been one-part the work of our amazing advisors, and the other part has been Jen's efforts via Skedula, Remind, social media, managing the website, and our weekly newsletters.

Jen also oversees all of our external student opportunities and partnerships, like our work with Girls Inc and NYU Poly.  Her work with our college counseling team and with Girls Inc provides our students with a wide array of extracurricular activities both in after school and in the in-day programming.

Finally, Jen's work with the committees like the Culture Committee, the School Newspaper, and with New Student Recruitment has been tireless and fearlessly led.  As a result, through her leadership with the hard work of those on her teams, Jen brings the heart and soul (and JOY) of UAI into our community each and every day.

Yes, she's a bit of a whirling dervish, but that piece of her charm is exactly what brings the fun into our community.  In addition, her love and commitment to each of our students and her compassion and firm encouragement in light of their challenges are the things that both our students and families praise most.  They are also the core of what makes her work invaluable at UAI.

Happy Birthday Jen!! Thank you to Susan for pushing you into the world.  We are the all the lucky beneficiaries of your joy, love, and unwavering commitment to our kids and our school!

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

Birthdays This Week

Happy Birthday To:

Monday, 19APR21:  Jen

Saturday, 24APR21:  Phil

Student Birthdays

Sunday, 18APR21:  Zoe N(8)

Monday, 19APR21: Najlaa M (9)

Tuesday, 20APR21: Arryenna (9), Kirsten
(8) Zariah J(6)

Wednesday, 21APR21: Tiffany B(9)
              Saturday, 24APR21: Fatimata L(11), Otaesha (10), Lisa J (7), Aidan (8)

UAI Committee Updates.  Please see updated dates for Spring 2021 Staff Meetings.

Staff Circles Committee  (Members: Annie, Jennifer, Juelle, Marsha, & Nakita)

The Circles committee met last week to begin planning for the next staff circle, which will be centered on chapter 6 of Dr. Love’s book. See agenda/minutes here.

School Restructuring Committee (Members: Annie, Courtney, Jen, Kiri, Laura, Marsha, Nadine, Nina, and SarahM).  The SRC agendas & minutes are always open for staff access.  No new updates this week.

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).   This week the Equity Team met to discuss how the UAI community can become more active in social justice movements.  We discussed the most recent killing of 20-year-old Daunte Wright by police in Minnesota and want to figure out how we can become more active in the fight against systemic racism and killing of Black and Brown people in our country. 

Thursday's meeting was focused on revising the grading policy that the 10th-grade teachers are going to test pilot during the 4th MP.  10th grade teachers will be piloting a grading policy that focuses more on feedback and student mastery of content and skills learned.  

Agenda from 4/15/21

School Opening.  Tomorrow, we will be the last time we have a reopening this year!  Thank you to everyone who has been updating Annie and me (and the schedule) to provide us with information we need.  The next and final phase is to see who actually shows up, and then to input all the changes into Skedula (beginning on Thursday, so that they will be finished by Monday 26APR21).  

MP3 Grades Due Wednesday. Please review the UAI grading policy and make time in your week to grade and provide feedback to students each week.  Grades should be posted weekly, as a reminder.  All grades needs to be submitted via PADS by the EOD of Wednesday, 21APR21.

The Final Marking Period. We are finally in the last lap!  It has been quite the marathon of a year, but this final marking period will allow us to pull it all together and ensure that our students successfully land.  As you reflect on student progress this year, and in this final marking period, frame your thinking about their growth in an asset-based mindset.  In place of examining their deficits, search out what they achieved this year.  

In my own check-ins with folks on teacher evaluation, I've had the joy of listening to so many of you dig deep into your own achievements throughout the year.  Whenever we begin something new, we are never proficient and there are lots of different ineffective and developing aspects to beginning to master a new skill.  Remote teaching was brand new to all of us.  Therefore, I wanted to explicitly see where you were able to carve out success in the first round of teaching like this.

Similarly, Remote Learning was completely alien to our students.  There's probably a lot of things that went awry for kids, and for some, they are still trying to find their footing.  However, that doesn't mean that they haven't had their own share of success - just like their teachers.

So, this marking period, encourage yourself to resist the urge to analyze the deficits.  In this topsy turvy year of COVID, there are so many deficits to choose from, that it can be unproductive to chase them all down.  Conversely, chasing down the achievements and analyzing how and why those achievements happened will lead the way to leveraging students strengths and getting them to better understand what they are good at doing and how they can end the year for themselves in a place of confidence and strength.

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.  

Summer College Advisor Posting closes next week, 25APR21

This position is for 48 hours this summer to work with bridging students to college and supporting

11th grade onboarding to the college application process. Must be a DOE pedagogue and have

college counseling expertise. Please complete per session interest form and email Kiri.

Summer School Per Session Post.

We are still looking for teachers, but here are the postings so far.

Please complete the per session interest form and email Kiri 

• 2 Administrators (Must have Admin certification) - Marsha & Brodie

• 1 Teacher Coordinator of Summer School - Kelly

• 4-7 Teachers (subject to student enrollment): Suzannah, Nadine, Cherry, Joey

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