South Middle School
Staff Weekly Newsletter: September 16th - 20th
Week at a Glance
- Fall Pictures (All Day, PE/Careers/Health Classes, Small Gym)
- OrRTI Site Visit (SMS, 11:30 - 12:30 p.m.)
Tuesday, September 17
- AVID Site Team Meeting (SMS Library, 7:00 a.m.)
- TIDE Meeting (GPHS Library, 5:30 - 7:00 p.m.)
Wednesday, September 18
- Staff Meeting - GLTs (SMS Library, 7:37 a.m.)
Thursday, September 19
- Safety Committee Meeting (Lingo's Office, 7:00 a.m.)
- Fire Drill (see email for announcement)
Friday, September 20
- MS Tailgater to Football Game! (SMS, 5:30 - 6:30 p.m.)
Supervision Schedule
Supervision Schedule (8:10 - 8:25 a.m.) - 15 minutes a day as assigned.
Team 3:
6th Grade Hall: Sheppard
T @ 7th/8th Grade Hall: Davis
8th Grade Hall: McGarry & Rastellini
Large Gym: Bigelow/Baertschiger
Parking Lot AM: Thompson
Parking Lot PM & Buses PM: Wolford & Moore
Daily Supervision Schedule:
Parking Lot/Exit AM: Aguilera, Huerta, Karbowski & Admin
Parking Lot/Exit PM: Aguilera, Kindrick, Karbowski & Admin
Cafeteria AM: Miller/McCarty & Hopkins
Bus PM (3:09 - 3:25): Hopkins, Admin & Team Teacher
Staff Shout-Out
Thanks for being patient as we balanced loads...there still might be a little bit this week, but for the most part, Morgan, Laura, and Kim knocked it out of the park on Thursday and Friday while still dealing with kids in crisis situations! Thanks to everyone for the teamwork.
Weekly Article
Helping New Teachers Avoid Some Common Traps
(Originally titled “Avoiding the Siren Calls”)
In this Educational Leadership article, Mark Wise and Beth Pandolpho (West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District, New Jersey) list several “Siren calls” that lure novice teachers away from a successful first year. Here are five not-so-effective practices that newbies may carry forward from student teaching, misguided PD workshops, or their own years as students.
• Siren call #1: Stay on top of the details and everything else will fall into place. Following this advice can make teachers look like bureaucrats and distract them from what matters most: getting to know their students. “Teachers who ask students about their lives and share theirs in return,” say Wise and Pandolpho, “can bridge the divide between adults who seem to have all the answers and students who are still figuring things out. These meaningful relationships can also support and inform a new teacher’s classroom practices and policies.”
• Siren call #2: The most important thing is preparing lesson activities. This runs the risk of students being busy with things that aren’t part of a well-planned unit focused on key knowledge and skills, big ideas, essential questions, and transfer goals. It also lulls the teacher into believing that when students complete the activities, it means the lesson was successful – which might not be the case. Framing solid lesson objectives is not just a compliance exercise; it’s at the heart of moving students toward important learning outcomes.
• Siren call #3: When students are working in groups, the lesson is student-centered. Not necessarily, say Wise and Pandolpho: “New teachers may earnestly, but mistakenly, assign ‘group’ work that consists of routine tasks that could just as easily be completed independently… A group-worthy task challenges students to generate new ideas and revise their collective thinking in their quest to solve a problem, answer a question, or create an original product. It requires the unique talents and abilities of all members as they work independently and together to create a final product.”
• Siren call #4: Quick-hit checks for understanding do the job. Asking “Does anyone have any questions?” or asking students to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down signal does not give a teacher a good sense of student mastery. Neither does calling on a few confident students who have the right answer, and taking the quiet compliance of the rest of the class as evidence of learning. “The importance of checking for understanding in a thorough way cannot be overstated,” say Wise and Pandolpho. The key is getting information on all students’ learning and fixing misconceptions and errors in real time.
• Siren call #5: Exit tickets are the best way to get a handle on student mastery. The problem with this kind of end-of-lesson check-in, say Wise and Pandolpho, is that there will be at least a 24-hour delay in following up on students’ errors and misconceptions. “Imagine a football team down by 20 points at halftime with a coach who doesn’t offer any new ideas,” they say, “or a violin tutor who does not provide feedback when a measure is played sharply out of tune… Timely feedback can be just as powerful a tool for classroom educators as it is for coaches and music instructors.” New teachers must have a sense of urgency about during-lesson, on-the-spot checks for understanding, followed immediately by appropriate praise and correctives.
“Avoiding the Siren Calls” by Mark Wise and Beth Pandolpho in Educational Leadership, September 2019 (Vol. 77, #1, pp. 22-29), https://bit.ly/2m9rLet; the authors can be reached at mark.wise@ww-p.org and beth.pandolpho@wwprsd.org.