EMS Friday Focus
January 25, 2019 #18
EMS 2018-2019 Goals
ALL EMS students and staff will feel connected to our school community - safe, respected, seen, heard, and valued.
All EMS students will find meaning in the work they are tasked with.
Weekly Message
Team -
The courageous choices that many of you have made this week have provided me energy and faith that we are indeed moving towards our goals. In the spirit of collaboration and sharing the good spirit I wanted to share with you a few powerful examples of how we are moving towards ensuring ALL our students feel connected to our school community and find meaning in the work they are asked to do.
- holding circles with students using the same questions on the Trauma of Race that we used in our faculty circles last week. Thank you Jim!
- creating and teaching a new curriculum to increase student voice, actions and experiential learning. Thank you Antony, Eric and Jeremy!
- holding circles to support students in reflecting, sharing and processing the issues of harassment in our community. Thank you Kathy!
- teaching lessons on the Children's March and thus addressing and discussing the role of racism in our history. Thank you Katie, Laura and Ashley!
Here are some additional circle resources that can support the continued work to have these hard conversations and continue this courageous work.
With gratitude and in partnership,
Meg
TASKS
- Reminder, students need to contribute and reflect on one piece of work in every core and exploratory class by then end of quarter 3. An example of this type of powerful work can be seen below in our student's - Ali and Rukyia's goal setting documents for their Habitat class. Students find meaning in the work they do in many different ways - including considering ways in which they seek to grow personally. Please see this document for more detail.
Announcements and Logistics For the Week
A reminder that there will be 2-4 times this semester that students involved in the Habitat project are engaged in off campus trips. The first of these will be an all day trip is next Tuesday, January 29th. We will be leaving at 7:15 am and returning at 3:30 pm. The class is headed to Middlebury where students will visit the build site, consult with Habitat folks, tour the Middlebury Campus, eat at the college, and, finally, beginning the process of planning the structure by participating in a class with Middlebury College students. On
Thursday - January 31st - we will have a visiting composer Alistair Coleman - from Juilliard. Students in Music composition will have the honor of working with him during 6th period in the band room. These opportunities are some of the many that inspire and encourage our students - thank you to Graham, Cathy and Michael for making this possible. Please see the list of students above who will participate.
Wednesday's Faculty Objective
SWBAT:
1. Identify specific strategies to help facilitate circle discussions.
2. Use music as a brain activator to engage students in their learning.
3. Identify actions we can take as educators given our bias'.
Calendar:
Connecting To Best Practice
The Flexible Pathways Initiative, created by Act 77 of 2013 and found in 16 V.S.A. § 941, has charged Vermont secondary school educators to create personalized learning environments that offer flexible pathways to graduation and a planning process by which students and educators can reflect on and document student learning over time. (Taken from the Vermont Agency of Education Webpage)
PLPs: The implications of the above for all Vermont educators and EMS teachers in particular, is that we must facilitate this process for all students in all classrooms where content is being delivered. If we choose not to we open ourselves up to audits and micro-managing. For this reason, every teacher in the building is asked to prioritize and commit to the following:
In every core and every exploratory class, students should upload and reflected on a minimum of two pieces of work by May 10th.
Please be deliberate about making time for this to happen and provide feedback to ensure that students are invested and see meaning in the process.
Doing so sends a message that reflection has value and is an integral part in the learning process.
Note: Every students have created PLP frame that has links to all classes. All that they need to do is populate.
Here is a link to what students should already have done.
Here is link to the spreadsheet and student PLPs. While it is true that our district and building have had mis-steps when it comes to the PLP process, this is something that we must do with fidelity. By being purposeful in our delivery, we send a message that reflection has value and is an integral part in the learning process.
In closing, I thought I’d share an article that appeared in AMLE. When students are truly invested in this process, their reflection not only provides us with insight on their mastery and shortcomings of measurable skills, but, of equal importance, provides opportunities for dialogue and connection on a deeper level. As we all know, students often share things in their writing that gives us pause. By providing opportunity for purposeful reflection and the back and forth exchange of ideas, we can better understand and connect to them as people and learners.
Link to the EMS Blog: This week's entry "The Case For The Space" by Mr. Schoembs
Do you have a tool, lesson plan, idea, video, article, or something else that directly connect to one of our our "EMS goals" and to our "indicators of success"? If so, please let us know using this form. Compensation will be as follows: Blog Contribution- $25, Teach Meet presentation- $25, workshop presentation- $100