Week of May 17th

UAI Staff News

Volume VIII

Issue 41

May 17th, 2021

Principal's Message

EOY Reflections on one Extremely Hard, and Challenging Year.  We are in the final laps!  Most of our AP classes have successfully finished their exams and they are now complete.  This week and next week are the final new live lessons of the year, and we are two weeks away from our culminating activities week!

Most, certainly, this year has been like no other.  As you think about and plan out you culminating lessons, assessments, and activities, keep in mind how much the learning landscape has shifted, and make space with your students to reflect on the gains of this past year.  

There are endless accounts of where each of our students and each one of us missed the mark or fell short.  Failure is most useful when we focus on the lessons and growth woven into the failing.  Make time over the next few weeks to provide the support and guidance to your students to not only celebrate the successes but also to help them to author their own growth narrative out of a year of incredibly obstacles and inevitable missteps.

Make time over the next several weeks to listen to your students' experiences in learning with you this year.  This could take whatever form works for you and your students - e.g. conferences (individual or small group), journals (with teacher response), circles, creative piece, performance piece...etc. The goal is to hear back from your students about what they experienced and what they learned with you throughout the year (in advisory and in your classes) AND to help them reflect and harness any shortfalls in performance into lessons they will take into next year as they continue to grow as learners. 

Just as importantly, this is feedback from students that you also need to hear.  When students articulate the successes in their own learning stories, they are really giving you feedback on your impact.  So, as we wrap this year up, take stock of your own work.  Listen and reflect on your own successes that show up through your students' stories of struggling, learning, surviving and thriving through one heck of a school year!

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

Birthdays This Week

Damon, Tuesday 18MAY

Jake, Thursday 20MAY

Student Birthdays

Sunday, 16MAY21: Alaa (7), Aniyah S (6)

Monday, 17MAY21: Fatoumata S (12)

Tuesday, 18MAY21:  Lucia (6)

Wednesday, 19MAY21: Christelle M(6)
              Thursday, 20MAY21: Adrianna M (11), Rana A (9)

Friday, 21MAY21: Dominique M (12)

Saturday, 22MAY21: Danae S (9)

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

Staff Circles Committee  (Members: Annie, Jennifer, Juelle, Marsha, & Nakita) See agenda/minutes here. Last Friday, we held our last formal Circle of the year. The purpose of the Circle was to do one more inward reflection of our individual ABAR work. We looked at the three biased-based beliefs of color blindness, deficit thinking, and poverty disciplining and investigated how each of the biases show up in our practice (see slides). Our next and final Circle will be June 11th. This will be a more fun, light-hearted staff Circle to commemorate our year doing this work together. 

School Restructuring Committee (Members: Annie, Courtney, Jen, Kiri, Laura, Marsha, Nadine, Nina, and SarahM).  The SRC agendas & minutes are always open for staff access.  The team is working on evaluating the progress of our collective work on moving UAI towards becoming an anti-racist school.  Currently, we have catalogued and evaluated the work of all three steering committees (Circles, Equity, and SRC), and now we are planning engagement activities for staff on May 21st.

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 planned for their next meeting on May 20th where we will meet with a principal from Williamsburg HS of the Arts to discuss how her school transitioned to mastery-based grading.  Also, we are developing a calendar to plan out the professional development that will support the staff in the transition towards mastery-based grading.

NYC School Survey.  Above are our current school survey results.  About one-quarter of our students have taken the survey and only 15 families have finished.  Thank you to all the staff who completed the survey on Friday!  For those that were absent, I shared survey codes and directions with you directly this weekend.  So please check your inbox!

This week please make it a priority to have students take the survey during advisory.  If students are absent please call home to have them take the survey and please reach out to families to make sure they also take the survey.  We are trying to get at least 75% of students and families to complete the survey by next Friday, 28MAY.  

Summer Rising.  We have the opportunity to return to school better, and that first opportunity is with our summer programming.   It will be a long path back for our students to return to remembering what in-person school was really like, and we want summer to be the first taste of remembering that school can be fun and yes, it's cool to love learning!

Please share THIS LINK and encourage ALL families to join our first info session this TUESDAY MAY 18th at 5:30PM.  
                 Meeting ID:  883 3049 0046
                 Password:   751131

Please also announce in Advisory and Talk it Up as an opportunity for students! 

For now, all programs are in-person.  We really want kids to come into the building and re-experience how much fun in-person learning can be.  We may have remote options...but that is still very much TBD.  In Person learning is the priority.  It will be safe (all existing protocols in place AND have weekly testing).  

We have three summer offerings for students.

Octavia Project:  A summer STEAM camp for Middle School students (female/female-identified/non-binary) focused on developing their creative inquiry through STEM projects with creative lenses.   In addition the Octavia Project incorporates near-peer leadership opportunities, guest speakers, and leadership development throughout the summer program. This program is open to all current 6th-8th graders and incoming 5th graders.  Visit the Octavia Project to Learn more

Girls Inc Summer Camp:  A summer empowerment camp for Middle School Students (female/female-identified/non-binary) focused on developing our young people to become Strong, Smart and Bold!  This summer's programs will be "Girl Boss" focusing on financial literacy, "Wellness Lounge" focusing on developing SEL skills, and "Summer Sports" which will be an exploration in various outdoors activities.  In addition, Girls Inc is planning a wide variety of trips, speakers, and career exposure activities. This program is open to all current 6th-8th graders and incoming 5th graders.  

Schools for Kids by Kids:  This homegrown summer seminar program was developed and will be taught by UAI staff.  In this program, students will be invited to research and study how schools are currently structured, rethink how schools should be structured, abolish the structures that should no longer be there, and create an action project to make the changes they would like to see. You can talk to Rachel, Judy, Joey, or Nakita to learn more about the work!  This program is open to any current 8th (or incoming 9th) through 12th graders.

Home & School Visits.  Jen & Kiri are beginning home visits for our students who are most non-responsive to our outreach.  We're hoping that these visits push kids back into school or into your zooms.  We'll share a list with whom we successfully made contact to the grade team with follow up.  Once you receive follow up notes from Kiri or Jen, please make sure you and/or your co-teachers pull the student into a one-on-one conference (in person or in a breakout room on zoom) to FIRST welcome and reconnect and THEN find out what they need to re-engage successfully and FINALLY list concrete things to do (1-2 max per day - and due that same day or the next day...not a week or long view).  We want their first experiences back in class to feel warm, welcoming, and we want them to get the feeling of success and accomplishment.  That way, we'll keep them coming!

MP4 Log of Support. Continue working on the MP4 Log of Support.  

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.  

Per Session Posting  There are several curriculum development opportunities for summer per session.  Please submit your interest via the Per Session Interest form and email Kiri. ELA & Other course offerings will be made available based on budget availability. FY 2021-22 budgets release in about two weeks.

1. NEW POST: English. I want to finalize course scope and sequencing - work that we began touching upon PRE covid this July. Primarily, I want to finalize course text titles, benchmark expectations, and materials lists by July 15th. All ELA and SPED/ENL ELA folks are invited to apply. This would be about 10 hours of work, all zoom, with a mix of meeting time and work time as determined by team. There is also an additional five hours for up to three team leaders of this work that will be selected based on their experience in the classroom, demonstrated expertise in a range of works, and depth of understanding or requirements for global assessments like the NYS Middle School exams, HS ELA Regents, and AP Lang, and Lit.

2. Social Studies.  We need to build a course on African Studies - centering the cultures & histories of Africa in the study of Global History.  This will be a Global History Course for students, leveraging the NYS Global History standards involving the study of African cultures, histories, and achievements on the world stage.  Teachers selected for this Social Studies Course Planning will receive 40 hours to study & develop teacher mastery of African history and to plan and create

1. A Course Overview & Syllabus, with Course and Unit Objectives

2. Detailed Overview of first two units - with daily objectives, rubrics, and assessments.

3. Narrative Lesson Plans for all of of the first unit

2. Math & Science.  Posting Closed Applied: Nina, Nakita, Jamie, Rebecca F Staffed: Nina, Nakita, Jamie, Rebecca F

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