Hawk Herald
News and Notes for Teachers August 20
Dear Staff
Welcome to a new school year! I am excited to be back. There are a number of new faces and programs this year which have as a goal to support you and your work. The Leadership Team met in the spring to look at a first draft of our school improvement plan which is basically an extension of what you have already been doing; explicit language instruction throughout the content, language scaffolding in high cognitive tasks through the use of AVID strategies. We will be in and out of classrooms in the coming weeks watching student learning and seeing all the great things you are doing to connect with your students. I will be setting up meeting times soon so I have the opportunity to meet with all of you individually.THis year we will also be looking at our advisory, climate and culture and implementing a new evaluation.
I am looking forward to a great year.
Mary
SMMS Teacher In-service August 27 - 30
August
16-Coaches Meeting-12:00
21-AVID Site Team-9:00-12:00 (light lunch)
21-Leadership Meeting12:00-2:00 (light lunch)
22-24 8:30 - 3:00 New Teacher In-service
23-Summer Summit
26- Welcome Back Get together-Mendez House @4:00
In-service week (draft to be reviewed at leadership meeting)
Monday, August 27: 8:00 Breakfast
8:00-9:00 Introductions /Warm-up
9:00-11:00-AVID strategies
11:00-1:00 Team Builder +lunch
1:00-4:00 Teacher prep (3)
Tuesday, August 28
8:00 -9:00 Mindset
9:00-10:00 New Evaluation
10:00-12:00 Teacher prep(2 +)
12:00-4:00 District Meetings, on-line trainings, prep
Wednesday, August 29 (all staff) Breakfast 8:00
8:00 –8:30 Warm-up
8:30-10:30-Nuts and Bolts
10:30-12:00 Climate and Culture
12:30 - 4:00 Teacher Prep (3.5)
Thursday, August 30
8:00 – 8:30 Advisory
8:30- 10:30 PLCs and Data
10:30-4:00 Teacher prep (5)
4:00- Dinner
5:00-7:00 Back to School Evening
Summer Summit: August 23rd at Century High School
Click on this link for more information: Summer Summit 2018
This is a completely voluntary opportunity for Licensed and Classified staff to focus on instructional practices. Please have them register on Serebra so that we can have a headcount for lunch. If you have any questions please contact Arcema Tovar for Elementary and Becky Kingsmith for Secondary.
SMMS Welcome
What?
A chance to meet our new staff and catch up with returning staff. BYOB
When?August 26th at 4:00
Where?
Mendez House
2867 SE Brodiaea Ct.
Hillsboro, OR 97123
New Faces
Adam Barash- SS
Cristina Botella-LA
Alex Ferber- LA/SS
Marta Garzon Arango-Science
Ko Kagawa-Coach/ELD Specialist
Tony Sinclair-LRC Specialist
Marcos Alvarez-PE
Kim Walters-PE
Pati Rodriguez-Graduation Coach
Omar Garcia Echeverria, Susana Sanchez Godoy, Indira Anchila, Eduardo Moreno-BA1
Sonia Gomez, Ann Kachmarek-SEA3
Some Data from 2017-18
Demographics: African American-3.3%; Alaskan Nat/American Indian-.9%; Asian 5%; Multiple 9%;Native Hawaiian/other .6%; Hispanic 49.9%; White 31.5%
Attendance data 14% chronic absenteeism
SBAC Math
32% of 7th graders met or exceeded,
31% of 8th graders(down 6% from last year’s cohort)*
19% of 7th graders EL reclassified met
14% of 8th graders EL reclassified met (down 6% from last year’s cohort)*
5 out of 62 7th graders classified SPED met
2 out of 45 8th graders classified SPED met ( up 2 from last year)
1 out 51 7th graders EL met
1 out of 39 8th graders EL met (2 last year)
19% of 7th graders in Hispanic subgroup met v. 44% of White sub-group
22% of 8th graders in Hispanic subgroup met (down 2% from last year’s cohort) v. 43 percent of White sub-group (down 10% from last year’s cohort)
*results affected by test impropriety
SBAC ELA
48% of 7th graders met or exceeded
51% of 8th graders met or exceeded ( up 6% from last year’s cohort)
41% of 7th graders EL reclassified met
28% of 8th graders EL reclassified met (same as last year’s cohort)
6 out of 63 7th graders classified SPED met
1 out of 47 8th graders classified SPED met ( 1 less from last year)
0 out of 52 7th graders EL met
1 out of 38 8th graders EL met ( same as last year)
33% of 7th graders in Hispanic subgroup met v. 64% of white subgroup
38% of 8th graders in Hispanic subgroup met( up 6% from last year’s cohort) v. 68% of White subgroup ( up 6% from last year’s cohort)
Math Ds and Fs- 7th and 8th graders received 53 Ds and Fs in the 1st quarter compared to a total of 86 in the 4th quarter.
Subgroup Ds and Fs-
EL subgroup received 20 Ds and Fs in Math compared to 28 Ds and Fs in Math for Q4
SPED subgroup received 12 Ds and Fs in Math Q1 compared to 31 Ds and Fs in math Q4.
Referrals 1113
Hawk Pride
- Review your Nuts and Bolts for the First Day.
- Plan some tasks for connecting with students and working as a team.
Classroom Basics
- Essential question
- Learning target
- Language scaffolds
Dismissal
Master Schedule link (I will share this document on the 24th)
Connections
A review from last year:
In this article in Educational Leadership, Eric Toshalis (Jobs for the Future) remembers working in a university kitchen that served thousands of undergraduates. He particularly remembers what he and his colleagues said as they carried scalding water or sharp knives through the noisy space: Behind you. “Wherever I was in that kitchen and whatever work I was doing,” says Toshalis, “I heard those two words filling the space with a constant message of safety and compassion. As a result, I knew I was seen, trusted, and cared for. That made me feel like a valuable part of a team, it made me work harder, and it made me want to take care of others.”
When he became a teacher, Toshalis heard a lot about caring for students but saw a disconnect between words and deeds. “For example,” he says, “we’d help students by publicly telling them what they were doing wrong, and then later we’d scold them for not requesting more help. Or we’d shower students with praise for their intellect, then tell them we were disappointed when they didn’t persist in challenging tasks that might broadcast their incompetence.”
All this made Toshalis believe that the classroom was not a good place for many students, that “my fellow teachers and I were cooking up forms of care that essentially made our students disappear, made them understand themselves as untrustworthy, and ultimately made them feel unsafe.” He began to think about ways that classrooms could be more like the safe environment he’d experienced in the college kitchen. Some ideas:
• Being dispassionate doesn’t work. Teachers are told, Don’t smile till Thanksgiving, Don’t let them see you sweat – ways of maintaining control and not letting relationships cloud professional judgment. Toshalis disagrees: “If we want our students to be educated more than manipulated, convinced more than coerced, and even indignant more than indifferent, we have to approach our work with a relational and sometimes passionate orientation. We need to let them see us sweat and smile way before Thanksgiving. Students know we’re not robots, so let’s not try to act like them.” Standing in the hallway during passing time and chatting informally with students is a start.
• Recognize that schools are not a level playing field. Toshalis believes the power dynamics in schools often work against the disadvantaged, that most students know perfectly well who is privileged as schools divert resources to those who “deserve” them, ranking and sorting students. “In the end,” he says, “to truly care for students in a way that allows us to claim authentically, ‘I’ve got your back,’ we have to work with youth to recognize and articulate the political realities all of us must shoulder.” (if you come to the office and say "connection" you will receive a prize)
• Trust has to be earned. “Given how vulnerable students are to our moods, evaluations, and decisions,” says Toshalis, “students need to determine whether we are worthy of risking interpersonal engagement before they agree to learn from us.” And that takes time.
• Students’ anger isn’t a threat; it’s an emotion. “The real threats,” says Toshalis, “are apathy, disengagement, indifference, neglect, cruelty, and violence.” Anger is a thermometer telling us what’s going on inside. Calm down, lower your voice, take it easy are ways to tamp down anger. “Doing so cuts us off from rich, nuanced information we might otherwise use to better construct relational connections and pedagogical interventions,” he says. Anger is actually “the tip of the information iceberg.” It’s best to ask, “Tell me why you’re upset right now. I want to know what happened that made you feel this way.”
• Lecturing isn’t connecting. “Dialogue is the oxygen of healthy relationships,” says Toshalis. “The give-and-take of perspectives, ideas, needs, and desires is what allows us to know the other and negotiate. The familiar IRE – initiate-respond-evaluate – classroom pattern is the opposite of this. “In the mind of a hypothesis-testing, question-posing, edge-exploring, meaning-making adolescent, this turn-by-turn exchange is unnatural and stultifying. It’s why students are animated and engaged in conversations with peers and why they’re often withdrawn and silent in class.” The solution? Ask open-ended questions. Get students talking to each other. Call on students at random. Move away from the front of the class and sit with students. Talk with them. Slow down. Listen.
South Meadows Middle School
Email: mendezm@hsd.k12.or.us
Website: http://schools.hsd.k12.or.us/southmeadows
Location: 4690 Southeast Davis Road, Hillsboro, OR, United States
Phone: 503-844-1220
Facebook: facebook.com/SouthMeadowsMiddleSchool