Hampton Bays Middle School
Monday Memo #5
Learning By Example
Dear T.E.A.M.
I hope you've enjoyed a nice weekend, and are looking forward to what is certain to be an exciting five-day school week. Thanks for making last week's visit from the NYSMSA Leadership Team and our Open House Night a success. Thursday night had an overwhelmingly positive energy level. It was so great having a house full of middle school families to start the new school year. I can't thank you all enough.
A topic that has captured my interest in the last several years is professional learning. I view this as different from professional development, which is equally as important and relevant to the work we do as educators. In both cases, we, as educators, as called to push ourselves to be great, for our students.
This year, you can expect to see, hear, and be invited to take part in a number of unique professional learning experiences. Some will be with your teams, departments, interest and groups. Some will be organized and others, more organic and choice-based. All will challenge our thinking and call on us to collaborate with others.
We need to share these because learning is something that's better when it's shared. This Smore is one such example. Your positive feedback and sharing resources contributes to our colleagues' professional learning each week. So, keep sending resources my way and I'll be sure to add them to the weekly Smores.
If you are so inclined, take a look at the following article. It's called, "Never Too Late: Creating a Climate for Adults to Learn New Skills" and can be found at the following link:
The contents of this article capture the essence of the work we can do in schools, if we decide to do it. Keep talking to me about how you think we can evolve our practices as educators, who are learners first. We have so many amazing teachers in our building - let's keep building something amazing together.
So besides reading the articles this week, and planning to visit the San Gennaro Feast this coming weekend, another component of my weekend will be attending Edcamp Long Island.
To learn more, click the Edcamp Long Island link: http://edcampli.weebly.com/ .
And here is the registration link, if you're interested in joining me for this FREE event, along with 480 registrants: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/edcamp-long-island-2nd-annual-oct-3-2015-tickets-16268821483 .
I'm looking forward to seeing everyone this week, in and out of our classrooms. As always, thanks for your hard work and your dedication to our students and middle school program.
Dennis
5 ARTICLES TO PUSH OUR THINKING
4 BLOGS FOR REFLECTION
3 IMAGES TO DISCUSS WITH KIDS
2 HIGHLY EFFECTIVE INSTRUCTIONAL TOOLS
1 "MUST WATCH" VIDEO CLIP
HBMS Photos of the Week!
Let's keep sharing and celebrating the great things happening in our classrooms and school.