Thursday Thriller
April 28, 2022
Shout Out to Katie Henry! She is amazingly patient when working with some of our toughest kiddos. Yesterday afterschool she was patient, firm, supportive and helpful with one of our new SEL students. Thank goodness she was there because OMG I would have blown a gasket! "Katie holds students accountable and balances the trust and rapport with them." -Chad P
GREAT JOB, Katie!
Shout out to our Math Department! They have completed a year of lesson study with our ReadyMath consultant and are now digging into the essential standards to refine them. Tedious work they are get'r done!
District Orchestra Festival A M A Z I N G!!
NUTS-n-BOLTS
1. Welcome to Dilsey Welck. She is our Temporary Kitchen Manager at Garrison. Dilsey was with us during COVID so it's as if she is coming back home. WELCOME, Dilsey!
2. May 11th we will have a parent meeting for incoming 6th grade students and families. This informational meeting will be about 1 hour. The goal is to welcoming families, give them a sneak peak of the 6th grade registration form which 5th grade students will receive next year, share the sports and activities 6th graders can be involved in; basically calming any fears or anxieties parents may have. We will again have parent night for Q & A, accessing Skyward, etc in September.
3. Here is the line up for the last week of school and the following Monday because it is not traditionally the schedule that had been in place pre-COVID.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15th -8th grade students will practice at the Fairgrounds
schedule coming. 7:00 will be the recognition ceremony on the
Pepsi stage
THURSDAY, JUNE 16th -8th grade students go to the YMCA and return around
1:00-1:30 which is what they have done in the past and attend the
last couple of periods of the school day
FRIDAY, JUNE 17th -Because we still have another half day on Monday, 8th
grade students CAN come to school. This is a full day of school
with an activity afternoon planning in the works. We will have
a dance (god help me) for an hour just for 8th grade students.
While 8th grade students are at the dance, 6th-7th can participate
in other activities. Then the last hour ALL 6th-8th graders can
go to the dance. Yaneth has ideas for activities. Beth and Robin
are planning the recognition ANY ONE WANT TO HELP with the
ACTIVITIES afternoon?
MONDAY, JUNE 20th -NO SCHOOL for 8th GRADE STUDENTS. Everyone
else has school. The thinking was shorter class periods and
students could help clean, put things away, etc??? I am open
to ideas.
The Wednesday and Thursday are non negotiable times. Another idea is when 8th graders return from the Y we could do their dance then. We would still have an activity afternoon on Friday for 6th-7th grade students. I will STRONGLY encourage 8th grade students that they don't have school Friday or Monday. I know, like seniors, traditionally they have not returned but since we have Monday I'm unsure. I will check with Pioneer so we are on the same page.
4. Wednesday collaboration on May 4th can be with your team. Carina and I will be in the library if you have questions regarding the schedule for the last week or anything else that you are pondering. :D
5. Next week is SBA. Hopefully, if you have questions regarding test administration you have gotten a hold of Steve. Communication regarding SBA and bringing a CHARGED Chromebook to school will go out on Sunday. Please see Steve's email that he sent today. :D
7. Certificated staff-you will be receiving eVAL notifications. As Carina and I finish up our observations, you may receive 2-3 notifications. Nothing to worry about. Just giving you a heads up to glance at eVAL or ignore it. :D
Something to Ponder
The month of May is next week! SBA, iReady, celebrations, retirements, grading, and more can make the most stable of persons break out into an anxiety attack. Maybe I'm just telling on myself. Oh wait! I'm not normal. LOL!
The last few weeks can be a great time to 'experiment' on your students for things you would like to try next year.
Going back to one of the greats: Dave Stuart, Jr.! This week #1 of his 6 Things.
Hope you find a gold nugget. :D
A quick disclaimer
You can't focus on six things at a time — that's a recipe for crazy. Any writer who tells you otherwise has a cold relationship with their editing scissors.
Instead, the idea is that you aim as a professional at mastering the use of these six elements. Your goal at all times is to simplify your planning and instruction — you want just the fundamental work that produces student growth. This buys you time and energy to grow in one or two of the T6T areas while keeping stable the remaining four or five.
You push in 1-2 areas per year and maintain the rest. (I describe this thinking in the book's conclusion. It's really important.)
So what's the plan in my classroom for the rest of this school year?
That last section promised to be my plan but ended up just being premise. This section actually will be my plan. This is the stuff I want to focus on during the remaining weeks of the year because these are the things I'd like to do when next year starts. “Finish like we want to start” — I got you, Dr. T.
Thing 1. Attempt a single intervention with each child for each of the five key beliefs before the end of the year.
This actually isn't as time-consuming as it sounds because I'm going to use the same exact intervention for every child, and all but one of them will be administered with the entire class simultaneously. This is pretty cool because it works — there's a huge consistency throughout the literature on how the beliefs can be influenced at scale given the proper intervention (e.g., This study in Nature).
- Credibility: A moment of genuine connection for each child.
- (Time required: 1-2 minutes per student, typically before or after class or during an independent work portion of the lesson. For an in-depth discussion, see this interview with Jen Gonzalez.)
- Value: UVA researcher Chris Hulleman's Build Connections intervention.
- (Time required: 15 minutes. Doubles as a content review and discussion exercise.)
- Belonging: I brainstormed a few clever ideas for this one, but then I realized that I haven't done the Values Affirmation intervention with these year's students. Check.
- (Time required: 15 minutes. We'll use it as a warm-up.)
- Effort: The best method for cultivating the effort belief (more popularly referred to as growth mindset) is explicitly teaching students the kind of effort that works best for a given endeavor. My high school students all have exams between now and the end of the year. I will explicitly show them how to study key terms and teach them why the method works so that they can experiment and modify. The goal is thoughtful effort, wisely selected, intentionally applied.
- (Time required: 15-30 minutes. Basically a mini-lesson with during class practice and feedback from me while I check for understanding.)
- Efficacy: A big part of efficacy is defining success clearly and wisely. We'll do a WOOP. (I actually call it GOOP wit my students, switching out Goal in for Wish. Feel free to switch Purpose in if you'd like.)
- (Time required: 15 minutes initially, 5 minutes or so each week for a check-in.)
Quote
“Starting strong is good. Finishing strong is epic.” – Robin Sharma
Little Humor
I went down the rabbit hole of standardized testing memes. :D
