Friday Focus - April 8, 2022

 

Great Things I Noticed this Week:
*Students speaking up for a peer when they saw others being unkind.
*Use of the Employability Skills as a focus of conversation when returning back from break - looking at how they are each expected in the classroom. It was great to hear one student who recently started working and said his boss has a lot of the same expectations! This is exactly why we're teaching employability skills and using them in our conversations with kids (and also Work Habits at middle school).
*Our juniors were emailed their ACT scores. I've heard several conversations from students talking about their results - some proud of what they accomplished and some already wanting to retake it for a better score in the future. Isn't it great to hear academically focused conversations?  (For those of you just as eager as me to see the full list of scores, I haven't received it yet. All I know is what students have reported to me).
*We have a senior who spends half of his day as a Youth Apprentice for welding who is such a shining star there that they had him go speak at another school as a representative for the Youth Apprenticeship program. What an incredible spotlight!
*I heard some high school students complaining about the new IEB rules (well, they're not new, we're just rebooting them to utilize our time well!). Why do I include this in Great Things I Noticed? Because it's just like when I make choices to eat healthier and I complain about needing to eat vegetables and no chocolate...I know it's good for me, even if I don't like it. And...let's be real, when I do eat the vegetables, I do feel better! ;)

Upcoming Events:

Monday - 3:15 IMC EP Training - this one is not required and not really a training; rather the time/space/chocolate/support for you to work on your documentation log. 

*The Middle school will be taking the Forward test next week Monday - Wednesday.

Friday - No School

Planning ahead for the week of May 30th: As you know, Dr. Thompson already shared that May 31st is the last day we can be in the high school so this will be a day of packing before it is closed off for construction.  June 1st will be a day of professional learning in the IMC for MS/HS combined on our target based work. Becky Peppler from First (Garth's organization) will be with us this day to support our continued work. You will then have time on June 2nd to work on learning targets, assessments, rubrics, etc. More details will come as we get closer. 

One thing you can do is keep a folder (in Onedrive of course!) of examples of student work that demonstrates different levels of proficiency for your learning targets. This can help you in the future as you develop clarity for students in the following year. 

"Nuts & Bolts"

*Next week's HS IEB doc is HERE.

*We've been having some continual issues at both building levels of behaviors that are not being good digital citizens:

• Taking photos of others and air dropping them in class to others to make fun of others.
• Air dropping memes as a distraction in class. 
• Taking pictures on phones and posting them to social media to bully others
  

Back in my day, we had some of this, but it was with passing notes in school. Obviously it's much tougher to deal with now, but I ask you to continue to be vigilant with following through on the expectations for phones in class (they should be put away in high school and NOT at all in middle school) and to address when you notice airdropping distractions or taking pictures of others without their behavior.  I'll be looking for some videos that could be used in aspire classes to address these issues to share with you all. If you know of a good one, please share so we can help prevent cyberbullying and class distractions together.

Reminder from the Tech Department: 

• Technology Spring Cleaning (Reminder message from the Tech Department)
• Trash those old digital files before saving to the cloud!  Check out the staff resource page for more saving tips or stop by the tech department for a quick one-on-one session.
• Turn off your classroom display by holding down the power button on the board or the remote control. You can give your board a quick clean by spraying a microfiber towel with the pink rejuvenal spray and wiping it down.
• Encourage students to clean their iPad by cleaning yours too! Spray a microfiber towel with the pink rejuvenal spray to clean the screen and the case too.  DO NOT take the iPad out of the case to clean and DO NOT spray directly on the iPad.

Blogs, Quotes & Tweets:

*Why Your New Classroom Management Plan isn't Working