Carnival Thank You!
Thanks to all of you for your help with the school carnival! There was a huge turnout and more silent auction baskets than every before! Our exhausted PTO ladies left last night feeling that it had been a very successful event. Thanks to all of you who got ab workouts bending over to pick up pins, got sore thumbs from arm wrestling and may have blisters from the many prizes you pinned on fishing lines. There are many benefits to our annual carnival, but one of the biggest is the sense of community that it builds for our kid and their families. Much appreciation to all of you!!
Instructional Rounds Friday
On Friday, the Building Leadership Team, along with Janet Avery, will be doing Instructional Rounds at Jefferson. Please do not plan anything out of the ordinary. Instructional Rounds are a set of protocols and processes for observing, analyzing, discussing and understanding instruction and student learning. They are not walk-throughs or observations. They are a 4 step process where a group of educators:
- Identify a problem of practice from a theory of action that is guiding our work. (As a staff last year we identified Engaging Students in Learning (3c) from the Charlotte Danielson Framework for Teaching)
- Observing Classrooms, as individuals or in small teams, gathering descriptive non-evaluative evidence.
- Debriefing using the ladder of inference.
- Focusing on the next level of work.
Instructional Rounds are for all staff members. This process is starting with your Building Leadership Team so that they can experience it and then share with you what they have learned. With the information they gain, we will be developing a plan to train everyone and give all of you a chance to go on Instructional Rounds. We hope that the patterns we begin to uncover will help us move forward as we improve learning opportunities at Jefferson. If you have questions, please ask Angie or your BLT Rep.
SCARF: A Brain-Based Model
In your boxes this week, you will find an article on the SCARF Model. SCARF stand for:
- Status- is about relative importance to others
- Certainty - concerns being able to predict the future
- Autonomy - provides a sense of control over events
- Relatedness - is a sense of safety with others
- Fairness - is a perception of fair exchanges between people
I found this article very insightful about how we work with one another and the awarenesses we need to have about ourselves. One quote summed up the premise of the article for me:
"The model enables people to more easily remember, recognize, and potentially modify the core social domains that drive human behavior. Labelling and understanding these drivers draw conscious awareness to otherwise non conscious processes..."
I hope you find the article full of things to consider for yourself and your teammates. I found lots of things to consider and thoughtfully 'chew' on.
Teach Like a Pirate Author to Keynot CSI - P20 Conference
Dave Burgess, trainer and author of Teach Like a Pirate will be keynoting at the P2o Conference on July 12-13 at CSI. For more information, check out this link. Another one of Dave's books is P is for Pirate: Inspirational ABCs for Educators. Here's on of my favorites:
Spring Ordering and Purchase Requests
Each year in the spring, each grade level team will be given a budget to make purchase for the next fall. Usually this is around $100 per classroom, but I ask you to work as a team to maximize your spending power. You do not need to budget for copy paper, construction paper, dry erase markers (unless you want a special kind), or other basic office supplies. If you have questions about specific items, please ask your BLT or me if your have specific requests.
Note:
Our budgets at the school level are lean and complex. Some monies can only be spent for PD, others can only be spent for Title 1. We get a school budget that runs from June to June and we have to make it last. There is also no carry over. For example, though I set a budget for certain large items like copy paper, our actual usage can limit spending in other areas, because it just would not be good to run out of copy paper. :-) There are lots of mitigating factors to budgets and we try to make the most of all of them to provide what is needed. Please always error on the side asking what you would like or need. If you have something small like a stapler or scissors, don't keep using the old thing that jams and wastes your time. Just let us know in the office. If it is a big grade level curriculum purchase, I might not be able to accommodate the request immediately, but have your BLT rep. let me know what you are needing (any ordering information and estimates help) and how it meets the needs of our kids. I will look for an opportunity to support the purchase as soon as I am able. Having it on my radar is always best.
Help us Share the Great Stories
PLEASE help share great things going on at Jefferson. If you have an engaging activity or learning happening in your room, snap a few pictures (make sure to watch for kids in your rooms who can't have pics shared), write a few lines about what was happening and send it to my email. I'll have folks at the district office share what's happening on our Facebook page and school website.
More Comments from the Parent Survey
"My son's teacher has helped my son improve in so many areas in such a short time that it just astounds me. My son looks forward to coming to school every day, and his teacher makes the difference."
"Since we moved to Idaho we have had nothing but great experiences, especially with this school and all of the teachers."
Intentional Leadership - A Lesson for All of Us
Check out this article from The Leader in Me Blog
Kids of Hope - Diego's Message
A Link to a video Janet sent to administrators. It is a great reminder.
Have a great week!
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