Friday Focus - November 22, 2019

Great Things I Noticed this Week:
*Problem-solving conversations among staff focusing on solutions. Together we are better!
*Students in ELA focused and hard at work to write strong essays. They were writing about big themes/claims such as loyalty, jealousy, growing from adversity and trust.
*I had a conversation with a new student this week to find out what he thinks about Dodgeland compared to his previous school. He said the biggest difference is the teachers--our teachers are very friendly to students and seem to really take time to work with individual students, "they seem like they care about us kids here."

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*If we are not telling the stories about the great things happening in our schools, then people will make up their own stories. Facebook can be a place of people complaining and spreading negativity or we can use it as a place to share the good work happening here. I'd like to ask your help with this...if you ever have a moment in class that you can snap a picture of to share with me and a sentence or two. Maybe a hands-on activity, experiment, students collaborating, presenting, etc.
 In addition, I would love to start highlighting one staff member a week on our Facebook pages. This is a great opportunity for us to connect with our community and share why we work at Dodgeland. If you are interested, please share with me:

• Your hometown/where you graduated from
• Your career experience (this could be years taught, previous positions/schools, etc.)
• Family, hobbies, fun facts that you're comfortable sharing
• Why you love Dodgeland
• Picture(s) of you, your classroom, your family...again what you're comfortable with (otherwise I have to take your school picture off the website, but you probably have more fun pics!)

*Reminder - When we go into administrative hold it is an expectation for all staff and students to remain in classrooms with doors closed. It isn't just that we want a quiet hallway. ;)

Tech Tip of the Week:
Kajeet, hotspots. Just as the students can check out a Kajeet hotspot to work or research or read outside of school, so can staff. If you fill out the form, you can pick up a hotspot at the end of the school day. Works well at conferences or if you have cellular service but limited or no WIFI. Here is the link to the form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdFMTsR96WPQRSieTlkmngJSngLgOUqKv_GLvTxXVisJ1VAeQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Inspirational Thoughts:
We are at the point of "disillusionment" at this time of the year.

The best thing you can do for yourself at this time of year is take care of yourself and take care of each other. Please take time to relax, rejuvenate and enjoy your families, because I know you've been spending a lot of time here taking care of your classrooms. It's time for you all to Balance Like a Pirate! Do something for yourself to fulfill your personal quadrant in life. Do something totally fun to fulfill your passions quadrant-read for pleasure, go see a movie, craft or whatever makes you happy...do it! :)
*I will be up in the middle of nowhere northern Minnesota where the internet hardly exist so I will not be checking emails over break. 

Friday Focus - November 15, 2019

Great Things I Noticed this Week:
*I was so incredibly proud of our students who were in the musical last weekend. Not only did they perform well, but they did so with some very challenging topics that many of our students face. They amazed me! Kudos to Bryce for writing a script to address these issues while highlighting the talents of our students!
*Students in small groups, using the rubric for their projects to make sure they included everything they needed and to the level of quality to be proficient. Students recorded their self-identified score on the rubric, writing notes about why they felt their project was at that level of proficiency. Wow-this means students know their target and are able to self-assess (and have time to readjust if they realized something was missing). Talk about ownership of learning!
*Staff members working with students after school for additional support/help...it's amazing to see both teachers and students volunteering to stay and continue to work. Such dedication!

Upcoming Events:
Incompletes need to be changed to grades TODAY :)
Wednesday - PreACT Results workshop for 9-11th graders
-Middle School: this means we are running periods 5-8 in the morning, then all ms/hs will have periods 1-4 in the afternoon.  Lunch/Aspires are normal times
-MS Faculty Meeting

On Tuesday, November 26 we will be flip/flopping ms/hs advisory and lunch to accommodate a middle school field trip.

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
-HS course proposals are due Friday, November 22


Tech Tip of the Week:
Schoology Resource: Guide to Using Rubrics. Working through the Schoology PD course (located in your Schoology Courses) and there are some great resources! This week is a Guide to Using Rubrics, useful now but will be very useful in our future grading practices! I use them often and like that if I save a rubric to resources, I can reuse it again or make changes to something the students find familiar (the vocabulary we use, the expectations for assignments we use). https://support.schoology.com/hc/en-us/articles/201001513-Guide-to-Using-Rubrics

Blogs, Quotes and Tweets:
*The First Key to Connecting Well With All Students is to Like Them; This Often Takes Work The teacher who wrote this brings up a challenging question-when we have a student that seems impossibly behind and impossibly undermotivated, how do we communicate with them about school? The answer is in your control!

Friday Focus - November 8, 2019

Great Things I Noticed this Week:
*After 10 minutes of reading in study hall, students were given 5 minutes in small groups to each share about what they were reading.  I heard several responses that showed this helped students share/get book recommendations with each other: "Ooh, I want to read that when you're done!" "What's the book before that to read first?" "If you like that book, then you would like this one..."  Lifelong readers have a community of readers and this is definitely helping to build that!
*A class activity focused on improving students' behaviors in class. The class watched a video on teachingchannel.org with the purpose of observing the students. Then a class discussion was held about what they noticed in the students' behavior in the video to compare to the behavior in their class. Students identified all the appropriate behaviors the teacher expects in class and this gave students the opportunity to voice for their peers to hear that they want to learn more and not be distracted by others!
*Teachers coming together to problem solve how to be proactive and consistent in multiple classrooms with a common behavior concern in a student.
*We have so many incredible students going above and beyond to lead. I see kids working hard academically while also having some late nights with sports. Several middle school students have helped ensure a new student not only adjusted and made friends, but have also been helping to ensure that he is safe with severe food allergies among peers. Our students in the musical have been putting in many hours this week to prepare for their 4 performances this weekend. Some of our FFA students returned from the national convention. Our HS Student Council and FFA have been preparing for Veterans Day assembly. This list could go on and on!  Even if you have some students making poor choices, don't let them overshadow all the good that is going  on! #DodgelandProud

Upcoming Events:
Today - Veterans Assembly at 9:30
Wednesday -previously scheduled HS faculty meeting. This time can be used for planning for PreACT workshop results.

Other than that, I don't see anything else on next week's calendar --what am I missing?

"Nuts & Bolts" Notes:
*Do you have parents that  you know you would better be able to communicate with by text message? We have areas where cell service isn't awesome so parents don't always receive our calls, or see Dodgeland on caller ID and maybe don't want to answer, or we are calling at a time that doesn't work for them.  Google voice is a tool that is available to us to use to be able to text parents without using our own cell phones. If you would like to utilize this, please let me know and I can quickly show you how.  Please know if you use this to communicate with parents, that you will need to make sure to save all texts back and forth (not deleting any).

Tech Tip of the Week:

Resource Week and the topic is Copyright. If “Creativity powers the best classrooms”, who is being creative? Are students creating original works or are they “borrowing” everything? And who knew that teachers and education are not specified in Fair Use doctrine? A few resources to help us learn more and a few suggested resources to find fair use photos and music. 

Quick Video: https://youtu.be/rUtGWs8VovY Resource Articles: https://www.iste.org/explore/Digital-citizenship/Find-free-and-fair-use-photos, https://www.iste.org/explore/digital-citizenship/preventing-collisions-intersection-creativity-and-copyright 

Blogs, Tweets & Pins:
*Tell Yourself a Better Story this School Year - this post was such a good reminder to myself to not create a story about what is happening and listen with curiosity rather than judgement. In some of the student/parent matters I deal with, this is such a good reminder, because we often only see the tip of the iceberg and do not know what's hiding underneath!