After School Program
UAI Staff News
Volume XI
Issue 04
September 18th, 2023
Along with the Positive Climate rubric (introduced last week), these two rubrics round out the Emotional Support Domain of CLASS, which is critical to cementing a solid and nurturing foundation for learning in each of your classrooms.
Core Value ---> Equity: UAI's core value of Equity can show up in many ways in the classroom. With respect to today's focus on the Emotional Support Domain, Equity shows through when we maximize Teacher Sensitivity. Taking on the perspectives of our students is key to elevate and center their voices in our decision making and instructional moves.
There are two extremes on the continuum of traditional classroom management...and in the case of all extremes - neither are good.
- Respectability Based Authoritarianism - Do what I say because I am your elder and I said so...
- Excessive Student Choice - Students run the show - and chaos is the norm.
The Teacher Sensitivity Rubric provides clear expectations on how to avoid these extremes and aim for behaviors (teacher & student) that describe the teacher's role & responsibility to attune to and anticipate student emotional & academic needs, and the subsequent student responses to the consistency of their teachers' responses to their needs. Having a well-developed capacity to read and respond to student cues (verbal, facial, written, etc.) is critical to anticipating and successfully responding to potentially disruptive behaviors that will derail your lesson.
Developing your capacity to recognize & appropriate address your students' needs in the moment is THE way to construct a fully inclusive learning environment, and the pathway to ensuring that everyone of your students experience success and belonging in your classroom.
Core Value ---> Power: While both of these rubrics describe what to look for in the teacher's capacity to perspective shift and step into the shoes of their students to leverage empathy & understanding, Regard for Adolescent Perspectives also focuses on cultivating student power. Planning lessons and activities that allow for student voice and choice is the first step to creating space for student power. Integrating student experiences and adapting to their responses in the moment is key to investing students in their learning and amplifying intellectual engagement.
The true secret to being able to do this well is to have high levels of fluency in your CONTENT. If you know what you are teaching inside out, upside down and backwards - you will be much more capable of responding to unexpected student responses in their discussions, questions, and work. There is nothing more potent to developing student academic identity than connecting an original thought of their own to the class' overall learning objectives. To be able to explain which piece of their thinking is true and which needs a little work helps them understand how to keep working on refining their skills - that they are not all wrong leads to the want to be all correct! Once you have that want, that desire to think & learn, you have successfully lit the spark to learn and you are well on your way to maximizing intellectual engagement.
This is not easy. Doing fun things is definitely the easier path to getting kids active and entertained. Finding gems within their thinking is more nuanced, but so, so important to shaping student self-concept as intellectuals and learners. It is this self-concept which is the kernel of their power.
On the surface, these three rubrics seems straightforward enough. But they lead to profound and powerful teacher moves and students behaviors that will undergird learning for the entire school year.
Please make the time to review this entire domain and all 3 Emotional Support Domain rubrics. The CLASS systems lends specific, concrete language around what types of behaviors and interactions result in a strong Classroom Environment (Danielson Domain 2).
(Create Strong Emotional Support by Maximizing Each of These Areas - Aim for High)
Achieving high levels in each of these categories consistently
Achieving high levels in each of these categories consistently
will lead to Effective or Highly Effective Practice in Danielson 2a & 2d
Here a quick article that talks about the importance of cultivating strong emotional support and the science of belonging. From that article, a quick quote that sums up so much:
"I know it sounds obvious, but asking good questions—and listening to the answers—that’s the solution to so much."
Important Upcoming dates
- Monday, 18SEP23 - 2nd PM Office Hours and Monday PD
- Monday, 18SEP23 - MAP ELA and Math testing begin this week. Please reach out to Marsha (ELA) and Judy (Math) for details.
- Monday, 25SEP23 - Yom Kippur, NO SCHOOL
- Tuesday, 26SEP23 - Affinity District IM Algebra I Learning Walk
- Wednesday, 27SEP23 - NYSED Enhancing Principal Leadership Visit - CEP Literacy Goal
- Thursday, 28SEP23 - Zoom Curriculum Night 5PM-8PM
- Zoom Meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81765931467
- Meeting ID: 817 6593 1467
- Passcode: UAIZOOM
- Tuesday, 03OCT23 - High School Application Period Opens
- Monday, 09OCT23 - Indigenous People & Italian Heritage Day - NO SCHOOL
- Wednesday, 11OCT23 - 2nd Day of Elevate Study Skills in 6/7 and 8/9 Learning Labs
Announcements & To Dos
SyncGrades and Attendance. We have been doing GREAT work on Attendance in SyncGrades. There are still some minor kinks, but mostly things have worked themselves out. (When ATS comes back on later today, I'll reload, and hopefully iron all the kinks out).
Your efforts in taking attendance in your classes everyday has not gone unnoticed. It's really, really, helping us keep on top of kids both for daily attendance and school lateness.
Our counselors & parent coordinator have been doing herculean efforts to make sure to call every single kid who is absent or late to school each day. It's a LOT of work, and you can do your part to help them by making sure you accurately take attendance in your classes everyday. Keep it up!! It's working!!!
Weekly Outreach Log. Please complete the outreach log by midnight tonight. You MUST document all 55 minutes of remote time. I will be checking this log first thing tomorrow morning - mostly to see how it went for the first time through. Please make sure you log your time and interactions before that! Many, many thanks to so many of you who have already entered their information! It's much appreciated!
Monday Office Hours for September. Monday, 18SEP23 is the second Monday of our Staff Work Time & Office Hours. If you have not already done so, please use this time to create your course syllabus for Thursday night's Curriculum Night. The syllabi will be collected on Tuesday, 19SEP23.
Monday PD. This Monday we will be giving time to teams to plan for Thursday's Curriculum Night, and time for PLOPs from 3:00-3:30.
From 3:30-4PM, folks will meet in subject teams to plan for curriculums night. In particular, teams should make a plan on how to do the following (including who is talking when and how you will share electronic resources)
- Course Expectations. Please Provide an overview of their courses, and what families can expect students to learn, and how much at home work vs. in-class work they can expect to see from your classes.
- Family Engagement. Please Provide a list of resources and/or ideas for how families can support your class at home (e.g. math games, spaces for homework, encourage reading, practice speaking in spanish, running lines for theater, etc.)
After School. There are opportunities for staff to offer after school clubs! They are clubs of your own (or kids') proposals. All clubs are good to go - you just need to have a solid list of at LEAST 10 consistent kids to earn per session for the work. Please complete THIS form if you are interested in running an after school club. Clubs are planned to launch the week of October 1st.
Per Session Postings
For ALL per session activities, please complete Per Session Application Form"
Classroom SetUp. All classroom staff are invited to come in to set up and plan for up to 10 hours all together any day this week Monday-Friday 9AM-2PM. Staff must clock in AND out each day, and cannot be in the building after 2PM. Please adhere to guidelines set out in the blog post above. All Staff MUST also apply to this position by completing the "Per Session Application From" - see link above. [Posted 27AUG23] - Posting CLOSED and JOB is over.
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