Week of Sept 6th

UAI Staff News

Volume X

Issue 2

September 6th, 2022

Ready, steady, GO!  Tomorrow we officially launch the 2022-2023 school year.  Like I'm sure many of you feel, I am feeling both anxious and excited!  

 

Most of all, I am really looking forward to having our entire staff back so that we can connect and align in our shared goals of bringing our students the highest quality learning experiences that they both dearly need and most certainly deserve.

These last few years of COVID have been hard on us all, however, this fall is the first fall since COVID broke that I finally feel UAI is back on course.  We have mastered the firehose of information that we were required to learn to ensure we had robust COVID safety protocols in place.  We also know more about the learning gaps - both academic and social emotional- that the mandated periods of isolation and missed school days created.  These last few years have left us with a depth of knowledge and skills that we never knew we would need, and that will only serve to enhance our skills in teaching & working with our students.  

While we certainly did not choose the challenges COVID brought to us, we have all benefited from the lessons learned.  Equipped with our new skill sets AND with our old ones, we finally have both the circumstances and the capacity to truly hit the ground running!

Equally exciting is the promise of seeing all of our students again!  On Thursday, our kids will arrive experiencing the same anxiousness and excitement that we all feel.  There is a giddy joy to starting new things.  This is probably one of the best things about working in schools.  Each year we get to experience the first day of school giddiness - and as you prepare for tomorrow and Thursday, I encourage you to hold on to consciously release the anxiety that bubbles in that giddy excitement and instead, push yourself to embrace the joy that awaits!

Ahead of us will be a year of challenge, and it will also be a year that we conquer, work around, or just survive each challenge as a cohesive unit, aligned in pursuit of our goal to bring Equity, Rigor, Power, and Joy to the work we do for our kids and their families each and every day!

Welcome to what I hope will be the best year yet at UAI!!!

Important dates. 

• Tuesday, 06SEP (8:30AM-3:20PM).  First Day of School for all Staff (PD Day).  
• 8:00AM Breakfast (from Panera - Optional)
• 8:30AM All staff report to room 205L (The Farm, formerly known as the library)
• 8:30-11:30AM - AM PD
• 8:30AM - Welcome and Principal's Address - all staff
• 9:25AM - Opening Staff Circle - all staff
• 10:15AM - Equity Restorative Practice
• Deans, Classroom Staff & Counselors
• 11:30AM Lunch on UAI (From Potbelly - all staff invited in room 205L) - all staff
• 12:20PM Meet in Teams all staff
• 12:20-2:00PM - PM PD
• Grading Policy Review, Planning, and Google Classroom Setup
• Room 405 - Math Team, 
• Room 415 - Science Team
• Room 507 - Social Studies Team
• Room 309 - English Team
• Room B53 - Middle School Team
• Initial Meeting & Prep Time
• Room 303 - Deans & Counselors
• Initial Meeting & Work Time
• Room 145 - Operations Team
• 2:00PM -3:20PM Classroom Setup (Classroom Staff) and Work Time (all other staff)
• A few reminders
• Please don't drag furniture and scratch floors (stick something that alleviates the friction under the feet/corners of heavy furniture eg. cardboard, cloth)
• Do not throw out books
• Do not put things in the hallways other than trash.  If not trash, please put aside in your room and work with your peers to find it a new home.  Complete this form to let the entire school community know that you either NEED or NO LONGER WANT something that is in your assigned room(s). 

• Wednesday, 07SEP (9AM-3:50PM).  Professional Development Day for Staff
• 8:30AM Breakfast (from SLJ in the Cafeteria - Optional) - and yes! It IS a later start!
• 9:00AM All staff report to room 205L
• 9:00AM-11:45AM - AM PD
• 9AM - Community Building & Review of School Handbook and General Staff Policies - all staff
• 9:20 AM - Learning Lab Setup - Classroom Staff
  (all other staff - meetings & work time for rest of day)
• 10:15AM - Classroom Protocols - Classroom Staff
• 11:45AM Lunch on your own!
• 12:30PM- All Classroom staff report to room 205L for PD on Advisory
• 2:30PM-3:20PM Classroom Setup
• A few more reminders
• All hallways MUST be clear of everything except trash
• No furniture or Books can be left in hallways

• Thursday, 08SEP.  First Day of School for Students
• All students will have Advisory 1st period.  Programs will be delivered in Advisory, and students will follow regular schedules starting 2nd Period.  
• We'll have Advisory 1st Period for both Thursday & Friday (09SEP), followed by regular program afterwards.

• Other dates.  
• Mon 12SEP.  First After School PD Day 3PM in 205L
• Mon 26SEP & Tue 27 SEP.  Rosh Hashanah - NO SCHOOL

Announcements & To Dos

Program Review.   I have to own that when I named the program as "Final" I ended up being super misleading.  My bad - and apologies!!  The truth is, each year a school's program is never really final until the school has actually been in session for a few weeks and we've had a chance to see who is actually attending and we've had a full run through to knock out all the kinks that we may have missed in program set up.   

This year, we've been surfing some last minute hurdles - more than usual, but nothing unmanageable. In the last few days, we've had some staffing shifts AND some enrollment changes.  So, I've had to close out some ICT sections and move some teaching assignments around (largely based on balancing class sizes and maintaining (to the extent possible) student requests.   Individual programs have been impacted.  Please make sure to check to see if yours has changed!

CLICK HERE to see the program and class lists.  I renamed it to UAI Schedule 06SEP22 - which is much less confusing.  Please reach out to Liza (lizab@uainstitute.org) and Kiri (kiris@uainstitute.org) if you see any mistakes or have questions about your program.  

Transition to DOE Gama.  We are still working on transitioning to the new DOE Grading, Messaging, and Attendance platform (which I think they're calling GAMA - Grades Attendance & Messaging App).  The Grading component has some glitches that will not be fixed by the start of the term, so for the Fall at the very least, we will using Google Classrooms under the UAI domain (aka - using your UAI gmail account).  Attendance will be manual for the first two weeks (see WiFi Upgrade below).  The goal is to transition with the least amount of stress and confusion as possible.  So we will step slowly but smartly with adopting this new system.  They just released training for the system last week - which is way too tight a turn around for learning how to master the systems and launch the school year!  So rather than jump into chaos - we're gonna adopt the slow and steady tortoise strategy to win the DOE GAMA race.

WiFi Upgrade.  The DOE DIIT (Dept of Instructional and Information Technology) has scheduled our building to undergo a WiFi upgrade beginning at 3PM on Tuesday.  They *say* that everything should be ready to go and functioning by the first day of school, BUT all staff should plan to do internet independent activities for the first two days of school - just in case things do not go as planned - as can often the case with all things DOE.  That means that Attendance for the first two days of school will be on bubble sheets and google excel sheet (which we will share out during the Advisory PD on Tuesday afternoon).  

Per Session Postings

For ALL per session activities (view all 2022-23 postings here), please complete Per Session Application Form

06SEP22

After School Opportunities.  Do you have a special talent or interest that you want to share with our kids?  Are you interesting in running a club or class after school?  Please sign up for UAI after school by completing the per session form and emailing Kiri.  We are looking for someone to run our Stoked after school program and we also have a ton of keyboards and drums in case any of you have hidden talents out there!  All other interests are welcome.  After school begins 19SEP.  You can select the days/hours you want to work (but it must Mon-Fri and be between 3PM-5:30PM)

22AUG22

Classroom Set Up.  Open to all staff - all staff automatically approved - Just show up to work (and don't forget to clock in and out). A maximum of 10 hours (per session training rate) is approved for pay (though you are welcome to work beyond that if you wish - but any time over 10hrs is volunteer!)

Planning Time.  Open to all staff.  Stuff will receive up to 5 hours (per session training rate) to individually plan for the opening lessons of the year in their classes.  

ILT Team Planning.  Each ILT team department (ELA, Math, Science, SocStds, MS) will have 60 hours to work with their teams.  These team meetings will be in addition to teacher planning time (teacher training rate).