Bethesda Caper
Friday, January 8, 2016
Reflecting on our short week:
We know it was a loaded week. Tuesday started with staff development and a full day of reflecting about students as individuals. I know it was a long day and you wished you would have known exactly what was going to happen on Monday. We don’t like being blindsided, so we would never want to do that to others. Please know that was not our intention. As an Admin team, we decided not to send out the file until you returned. Not to hide what we were doing, we figured the file was too overwhelming to send without explanation.
Our goal is to always be transparent and now that we have gone through the new LSPI/RBES which is aligned with the new WSA, we all know the process. Our RBES will look like this again next year, so now you will be ready because we will go through this again. Of course we will work together to develop a more flexible schedule that will allow more “classroom time”. In addition to this long day, we found out we were burglarized over the weekend, so we had to do an inventory. It is never fun to be given last minute tasks. Yesterday we had the opportunity to reflect on our amazing school. Although our Gallup results show our school is highly engaged as compared to the county and other educational services, we recognize we can improve our level of engagement. In order for everyone to be engaged, we must build on your strengths and remove barriers we do have control over.
Your feedback is appreciated and we will take it very seriously as we plan for next year. Well today is Friday and we made it through the week. We had a great celebration on the announcements today and we can see you all are working hard with your students. I am so proud of our Bethesda Family and appreciate the work and honesty you all give. Just like family, we will have our ups and downs. Please hold on to the “ups” to keep us going, communicate the “downs”, so we can improve. Have a great weekend!
Calendar
Monday, January 11
- 9 AM-ATEAM
- Fire Drill
- 7:15-7:45-Cardio Club
- 10-11 AM-Title I Volunteer Orientation
- 2:30-3:30 PM-BUILT
- 2:45-4:30 PM-Sparkles Club
- 5:30-6:30 PM-Title I Volunteer Orientation
- Admin Send Grading Changes to Teachers
- 7:15-7:45-Cardio Club
- 10-11 AM-Title I Technology Wksp.
- 3:15-4:10 PM-Staff Mtg.
- 4:30-5:30 PM-SSLT
- AP Mtg.
- CLT
- Last Day to Change Grades
- 2:45-5 PM-Cheer Club
- 2:45-4:30 PM-Student Council
- CLT eclass
- Report Cards Printed
- 8-11 AM-District Support Planning
- 3-4:30 PM-Reader's Rally
- 4:30-6 PM-Girls Scouts-Cafeteria
- 5-8 PM-PTA CFA Night
- Spirit Day
- GRITS and GAB
- 7-7:45 AM-Music Club
- 7:30 AM-Special Ed. Mtg-cafe
- Report Cards go home with Cardinal Newsletters
LOOKING AHEAD
Monday, January 18
- MLK-Student/Staff Holiday
Tuesday, January 19
- College Week
- Access Window Opens until 3-4-16
- GKids=Data Pull (GCPS)
- 7:15-7:45 AM-Cardio Club
- 3:15-4:10 PM-Commitee
- College Week
- CLT (K,2,3)/HOST (1,4,5)-LA
- 2:45-5 PM-Cheer Club
- 2:45-4:30 PM-Student Council
- 2:45-3:45 PM-Mentee Mtg.
- College Week
- CLT (K,2,3)/HOST (1,4,5)-LA
- DLI Visitor
- 3-4:30 PM-Reader's Rally
- 100th Day of School
- College Week
- College Panel for 4th & 5th graders
- Spirit Day
- GRITS and GAB
- 7-7:45 AM-Music Club
- 7:30 AM-Special Ed. Mtg-cafe
- 8:30-9:30 AM-BMT
February Calendar Feedback
The February calendar has been updated. Please look at it now on google calendar and provide feedback by Friday, January 15th to our anonymous board or your BUILT Leader. BUILT Leaders, please provide all feedback to me-Yolanda Lanuza by Friday January 22nd. I will be printing calendars and getting them in boxes on Friday, January 29th.
International Night is TONIGHT!!!
Collaborate with your team and determine who will be signing up for the stations located on the soda machine. If you can please complete the sign up this will let them know who will be covering that station.
Once the stations are filled in, they will still need assistance with crowd control so you can just ask them today if they need anything.
This is our last PTA event and we appreciate the support! Parent and Teachers working together to make our community a great one :)
SAVE THE DATE: Teaching and Learning Pre-Conference and Conference
Please mark your calendars for the second annual GCPS Teaching and Learning Conference! This year, the conference will take place at the ISC on Thursday, June 16 and Friday, June 17 from 8 AM - 4 PM at the J. Alvin Wilbanks Instructional Support Center. Several departments will offer pre-conference sessions on Wednesday, June 15 at various locations throughout the district. More details will come in February.
What: Teaching and Learning Pre-Conference
When: June 15, 2016
Where: Various locations throughout the district. More to come in February.
What: Teaching and Learning Conference
When: June 16-17, 2016 8:00am - 4:00pm
Where: J. Alvin Wilbanks Support Center
2016-2017 Calendar
Step 1:
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Step 2:
To detach, double-click the attachment. Click <Save>, and specify the drive and directory in which you want to save the file.
Title : 2016-17 calendar (presented 11/19/15, rev. 12/3)
This calendar was updated 12/3 to reflect new teacher orientation dates.
GCPS' 2016-17 school calendar calls for the first day of school to be on Mon., Aug. 8. The calendar calls for a weeklong break at Thanksgiving (Nov. 21-25) and nearly two weeks forwinter break (Dec. 22-Jan. 3). Students would return to school Thu., Jan. 5, following a staff development day on Jan. 4. Spring break is scheduled for April 3-7. The last day of school will be Wednesday, May 24.
GCPS may make up any inclement weather days by using scheduled make-up days and/or extending the school day or year.
Planning/Staff Development Days:
Throughout the school year, teachers are scheduled to work 10 planning/staff development days— Aug. 1-5, Oct. 10, Jan. 4, Feb. 20, and May 25 and 26.
If March 31 is not needed as a snow make-up day, it may be used as a teacher planning/staff development make-up day if teachers are unable to work on one of the scheduled planning/staff development days (#1– #8).
12-Month Employee Holidays for 2016-17
July 4, Sept. 5, Nov. 24-25, Dec. 22–30, Jan. 2, Jan. 16, April 7, and May 29
Direct questions about this calendar to Eric Spoto in the office of Strategy and Operational Support at 678 301-7265.
eCLASS CLT- January 14, 2016
For next weeks eCLASS CLT you guys are on your own. Your administrator will be there as a support, but you will not have a facilitator. This will be a time for your team to collaborate and ensure that everyone has their Cyber Day plans ready in the event we are out for snow day. This is also a time that the team can share examples of what they are doing in their class with eCLASS
Bethesda's Strengths
Have you taken the Strength Finders assessment? What was confirming? What was surprising? We are excited to become a strength finders school. Once you have your report, the most important next step is to read through the long descriptions. This may seem obvious, but surprisingly, most people don’t do it. They just read through the brief, three sentence description, thinking they will come back to it later and never do.
Once you have completed the online assessment, you will receive a comprehensive Strengths Discovery and Action-Planning Guide that is based on your StrengthsFinder 2.0 results. This guide includes:
- Your top five theme report, built around the new Strengths Insight descriptions
- 50 Ideas for Action (10 for each of your top five themes) based on thousands of best-practice suggestions we reviewed
- A Strengths Discovery Activity that helps you think about how your talents, investment, experience, skills, and knowledge work together to build strengths
- A Strength-Based Action Plan for setting specific goals for building and applying your strengths in the next week, month, and year
- You can find this by logging into https://strengths.gallup.com/signin/default.aspx
- If you haven't already, please take the assessment and use the link below to share your top 5 strengths. For next week's January 12th faculty meeting bring your Strength Insight and Action Planning Guide
Here is the link to post your top 5 strengths: http://padlet.com/msmincey/strengthfinderschool
Technology Stewardship
I know this is long, but in light of our recent break-in, I just want to give you a few quick reminders about technology security and storage for your teacher laptop, your student laptops, the Nooks, the IPads, and project carts.
Storing School Technology in Your Room
Please make sure that you have all devices secured in a locked cabinet in your classroom and at the end of the day. All third, fourth, and fifth grade classrooms have locking two-drawer file cabinets for storing technology. Other grade levels, if you have a locking file cabinet or an art cabinet, please store your devices there. No technology should be left out on your desk, on tables, or on student desks when you leave the building. This includes your laptop, student laptops, iPads, and Nooks. Finally, you should lock your door every night.
Storing BYOD Technology
Students who bring their own technology are responsible for keeping their devices out of sight when you leave your classrooms. These students should keep their devices in their book bags when they are in use, and you should always lock your door when you leave your room to go to lunch, the playground, the computer lab, or the media center.
Securing Technology Off-Campus
Student laptops, Nooks, iPads, and cameras from the project carts should never leave the building. You may take your teacher laptop home each day, but please remember to secure it properly in your car and at home. Do not leave laptops in cars in plain sight in your car. This invites theft of the computer and possible damage to your car. Also, please don't leave laptops in hot cars for extended periods of time. As mentioned in the next paragraph, heat is not good for computer equipment.
Proper Care of School Technology
Please make sure when you are storing any device that it is powered off. Running equipment can produce a tremendous amount of heat, and when they are stored in closed or tight spaces the heat cannot escape. This is dangerous for the equipment and could present a fire hazard, so just remember to power everything down before you store it. This is includes returning computers to the storage carts in the media center. When you use the student laptops they MUST be powered off when you return them to the carts. Please supervise your students when as they return equipment to make sure that it is powered off and plugged back into the chargers.
Project Carts
I want you to use these carts!!! However, please, please, please, make sure that you are checking the inventory on the cart before you return it to the media center. Each cart has an inventory sheet attached to the top of the sheet. Additionally, project carts are not to be kept in your rooms overnight.
District Support Plan
Schedule at CLT after each session
(Contact your coach with date and they can facilitate.)
Session 1 Monday, Sept. 21: (Video One & Protocol will be posted in BUILT folder in Communities by Sept 29th.)
Session 2 Tuesday, Oct. 27: (Videos & Protocol will be posted in BUILT folder in Communities by Jan 25th. Please choose one or both)
Session 3 Monday, Jan. 25
Session 4 Monday, Feb. 8
Session 5 Monday, Mar. 7
Hello everyone,
Please keep this survey going…Dojo again please!. Each one counts in a different way, so please complete it and participate. This survey is a state survey and it counts for CCRPI. As you know, we are trying to get the highest rating. Non-participation or low participation could adversely affect our CCRPI STAR Climate Rating. Last year we were a 5 star rating school. This one we can control!!!
Please Dojo this link out to your parents and let them know this is important for our State school ranking. If you are a Bethesda parent, please complete it asap.
Georgia Parent Survey: http://apps.gadoe.org/schoolclimate/parents.nsf/Survey.xsp
Thanks for your participation right now here is our participation number: Great start!
Remember our Focus
Analyzing the Standards (Stay true to the standard)
Building Capacity (Lifelong Learner)
Conquering the Workshop Model
Stay on Pacing (Super important)
(Master this first and then continue to build capacity to add on.)
We are listening!
Please continue to share your perception of our school. Is it really anonymous? YES IT IS! Since it is anonymous, we really can’t follow up when we don’t know specific situations (who, what, when, where, etc.). If you post something and want results, please be as specific as you can, otherwise the situation will continue. Remember, you can come and talk to any of us in confidence. We are here for you and genuinely want the best work environment.
Just like relationships, positive school climate takes work…hard work…we all want the same thing, so let’s work together to get there. Share your thoughts here Click Here to Open or face to face (always best way to communicate).
Staff Birthdays
Saturday, January 09, 2016
- Julie Warner
Monday, January 11, 2016
- Lyndsey klempay