Clif Notes - 8/26/19
50 Years Of Equipping The State & Now Global Workforce!
Dates to Remember
26 – First Day of School Freshman & Seniors
27 – First Day of School Sophomores & Juniors
28 – All Students Attend School
30 – No School/ Offices Open
September
2 – No School/Offices CLOSED
3 – No Faculty Meeting
4 - Underclassmen & Staff Photos
Delcastle's Center for Child Development Partnership
I would just like to thank the entire staff for the high level of engagement during our PD sessions last week. Kudos to all of our PD presenters, especially the United Way of Delaware and the University of Delaware. Below is a letter that was sent last week regarding the Poverty Simulation. Also, below the letter is another letter that the CEO of UWDE sent:
Good morning, Principal Hayes!
First, let me begin by thanking you soooooooo much for allowing United Way of Delaware to facilitate the Community Action Poverty Simulation Experience as part of Delcastle’s Professional Development Day. It was a huge honor. We, too, are extremely glad we were able to make it work. Your team (and Mr. Kevin Thomas especially) was amazing to work with! As the fearless leader of such a great team, we hope that you were pleased with the quality of the event, facilitation, engagement/structure and responsiveness and collaboration of the entire team of United Way staff and volunteers. Ultimately, we trust you will see the fruits of our collective labor by way of heightened awareness, deepened empathy from/by your staff but most of all utilization of all the tools and resources your staff was connected to (e.g.: 2-1-1, community-based services, etc.) in order to better serve and support the Delcastle student body and their families this coming school year.
As discussed, if you could, please forward this thank you note to Delcastle Professional Development Day staff, we’d appreciate it. The questionnaire (and calls to action) is embedded within. While several staff did complete the hardcopy of the survey, there was lots of missing/blank information, feedback, and some did not complete it at all. We truly do value your (and your staff’s) voice and the feedback on the overall Community Action Poverty Simulation Experience and tool will be invaluable as we continue our efforts to leverage this tool to raise awareness and advocate on behalf of the individuals and families in our schools and communities who are struggling to make ends meet EVERY day.
Please feel free to reach out again and often. We appreciate you, your leadership and continue to champion the awesome and great work our educators do in building tomorrow’s leaders today!
Jamee E. Boone | Senior Vice President, Philanthropy and Engagement
United Way of Delaware, 3rd Fl. | 625 N. Orange St., Wilmington, DE 19801
(302) 573-3795 | jboone@uwde.org
Dear Delcastle Staff,
On behalf of the Board of Directors of United Way of Delaware, thank you for participating in the recent Poverty Simulation at Delcastle Technical High School. If we’re to improve socio-economic conditions for everyone in Delaware, it helps to have a common understanding of the debilitating impact that poverty has on thousands of Delawareans every day. I hope you found the simulation informative; but more importantly, I hope you found it enlightening. Thank you again for sharing your time with us.
As you reflect on your experience, you may be wondering: “How can I make a difference?” Here are a few ideas:
· Write a Letter. Tell your local newspaper about your Poverty Simulation experience and how it may have impacted your view regarding poverty in Delaware.
· Get Others Involved. United Way can organize a Poverty Simulation for employers, civic organizations, church groups and others. Contact Jamee Boone at jboone@uwde.org or (302) 573-3795.
· Volunteer. Be a reading buddy for a child, a mentor for a career-curious high school student, or a financial coach for a family struggling with debt. Contact Wanda Barrett at wbarrett@uwde.org or (302) 573-3757
· Put Your Wallet to Work. You may not have time to volunteer, but United Way has the strategy to put your donation to work. A quick and easy texting UWDE to 40403 is all it takes.
We invite you to share your insights, take action and join the movement to improve the quality of life for all Delawareans. Frankly, the community is counting on us.
If you did not complete and turn in the survey at the Poverty Simulation, please take a moment to provide some feedback. Your voice matters! *Star Survey Now*
Sincerely,
Michelle A. Taylor
President & Chief Executive Officer
Thank You
Lunch Schedules
Schoology
In an effort to ensure that all staff members receive the latest information, we will post information on the Schoology Update section of Delcastle’s Faculty & Staff Info 2020 Page. Our entire faculty and staff have been loaded into Schoology. If you would like to send information out to the entire staff please send it to Kristina or one of the other secretaries who will post it for you. Also, please refrain from using the Delcastle distribution list to communicate school-wide information. The distribution list has been modified multiple times. We cannot always control who adds or eliminates someone from the distribution list. As a result, some staff members do not receive the appropriate information.
Discipline Corner - Browning & Hollis
Welcome Back!
Please be visible during class change in an effort to set the tone for the school year.
Below you will find information regarding the clipboard procedure. If you do not currently have the correct clipboard, please stop by the main office.
It is important that you use the forms in the tray in the discipline office. The monitors are checking all students to ensure that a teacher has approved their leaving the classroom.
Have a great first week and remember first impressions are long lasting with students.
CLIPBOARD FORMS
………………………………………………………………
CLIPBOARD DESIGNATION
A Wing – RED RED
B Wing – GREEN GREEN
C100 Wing - Blue BLUE
C200 Wing – Yellow Yellow
C000 (Basement) – Purple Purple
Note: Trying a new weight of paper to avoid the curling and reformatting of the hall clipboard sheet.
Thank You!
Instructional Focus
We will provide students with an abundance of opportunities to improve their Communication skills through the use of Purposeful Reading, Writing, and Discussion (Speaking & Listening).
The Most Fundamental Skills for Success by Erik Palmer
The Most Fundamental Skills for Success
The cliché is that if you asked a fish about water, the fish would reply, "What's water?" Completely surrounded it, the fish doesn't even recognize water as a separate entity and certainly doesn't realize water's importance.
This is how it is with listening and speaking. They are so deeply embedded in so many aspects of our lives that most of us don't think about them much. Like the fish with water, we take listening and speaking for granted. It's time to change that—to bring listening and speaking to the forefront of educators' minds and to purposefully teach the listening and speaking skills that are the foundation of so much of human interaction.
This is probably the right time to mention that, yes, I prefer the phrase "listening and speaking" to the "speaking and listening" that's more common in English language arts standards and discussions of those standards. And the reason I turn the phrase around is to emphasize that in life and in all learning, listening is the predominant language art.
Listening Comes First
How do infants learn? What is their first exposure to language? Listening. We all listened before we spoke and well before we read or wrote. Even our most visual and kinesthetic students have a learning history that began with listening. Appendix A to the Common Core ELA/Literacy standards examines the crucial connection between listening and learning. One of the references is to a study by Sticht and James, who "found evidence strongly suggesting that children's listening comprehension outpaces reading comprehension until the middle school years" (Common Core State Standards Initiative [CCSSI], 2010b, p. 26). In other words, all of us were auditory learners once, and all of our young students will gain more from listening than from any other input.
Even after reading comprehension catches up and students are able to effectively get information from print, they still take in a tremendous amount of information from listening—to their teachers, of course, but also to one another and to speech delivered via various electronic media. The International Listening Association claims that 85 percent of a student's learning is derived from listening (Mackay, 2005). It would be a challenge to find a teacher who doesn't believe that we can improve student learning by teaching them to listen well.
Listening + Speech = Classroom Communication
If listening is the primary way that students take in information, it makes sense to pay close attention to what they're listening to. In the classroom, it's most likely to be spoken language—lectures, certainly, but also process explanations, project instructions, one-on-one conferences, presentations given by classmates, and discussions in groups. Education is fundamentally and unquestionably grounded in oral communication.
Studies reveal that students spend 50 to 75 percent of classroom time listening to teachers, other students, and audio media (Bass, 2005). Teachers lecture, explain, and cajole. We answer questions, present, and lead discussions. Most of our important directions, announcements, and explanations are oral. Given that so much teacher time is spent speaking, it would be wise to figure out how to do it well. And when the teacher is not talking, students still spend time listening—to other students as they present, to videos shown, to each other as they work together. You have heard many student discussion comments and probably hundreds of student presentations. How many were impressive? Would learning improve in your classrooms if those comments and presentations were well spoken?
Oral language dominates even outside of traditional instructional approaches. Some might point to the flipped classroom as an exception, but this model doesn't reduce the amount of listening students do; it just moves listening to the home. In fact, flipped instruction absolutely requires that the teacher command impressive oral communication skills. It is difficult to make a riveting presentation for a 10-inch screen. Requiring students to watch much of what teachers are currently putting out there amounts to cruel and unusual punishment (Palmer, 2012).
It's no different with online instruction. In my state, Colorado, a student in a rural high school who would otherwise not have access to AP Physics can now link up to an AP Physics classroom hundreds of miles away. But in order to do well in this environment, the online learner needs strong independent listening and media literacy skills, and she needs her faraway AP Physics teacher to have strong speaking and media presentation skills.
With so much of learning based on listening, we have to make sure that both the listeners and the speakers being listened to are competent. Let me be clear: I don't want my emphasis on listening and speaking as the core skills of language arts to devalue the work of reading teachers or discourage the teaching of writing. We and our students certainly read and write to learn, and we must make our students competent readers and writers. But think about how we teach reading and writing. Think about how much listening and speaking is involved. The water is everywhere, and everything depends upon it.
Now let's get more specific and look at the crucial roles listening and speaking play across content areas.
(Next week we will continue with this reading)