Faculty Meeting
Monday, March 11, 2019
Registration is open
1. Your room needs to be visitor ready. We will be walking through some time this week. Please remind your class of their visitor greeting. There definitely will be more visitors for the lower grades than middle school but everyone should have "visitor ready" at the back of their minds.
2. What students are returning and are not returning should not be a topic of conversation in class. However, if you do hear from a parent or student that they are moving to a new school, please do let us know as this is important information.
If you have your own kids here....
Talk to the business office if you have any issues.
Dismissal
1. Not being on time. I believe enough has been said about this and why it's important but it still happens every day with one class or more.
2. Students not being supervised... its natural that teachers want to chat with co-workers after school but your eyes and your attention still needs to be on the students. You need to know when they leave and who they leave with and you need to be keeping an eye on them while they are waiting. Please and thank you.
3. Conferences with parents in cars that tie up the parking lot. That is not the time or place. Very brief conversations are fine if you need to have a longer conversation, have the parent park and meet you in your room after you are done.
New policy about lesson plans for planned absences
In addition, if copies have to be made, please make all of the copies in advance. Do not leave them for the sub to do. And, knowing who the sub is can be helpful, so that you know whether you need to prepare busy work or leave actual teaching.
New policy for field trips
Field trips need to be planned and permission slips need to be sent home far enough in advance that parents have a week to return the form and payment before the deadline.
Due to on-going problems with this particular topic, you must email to me a list of your CONFIRMED chaperones 3 days before the trip. We will not have a poorly supervised trip leave here again as it did recently (We did not know until after the kids were on the bus).
Title1 Submission, IXL
IXL was paid for through Title 1 funds. It has expired. We are working on getting a bid to pay for it out of pocket but the cost K and up is over $15,000. So, Soraya will be getting a bid on specific grade levels and if we can swing that, we will get a bid on something less expensive for the rest.
The problem is that it literally took a half of a year to get teachers and kids on board with this and now everyone seems to appreciate it but the time is up. We will keep you posted. In the meantime, tell your parents and students that we are having technical difficulties.
Truly Caring about our students....
Our students need and deserve teachers in their lives that really do care about them and about what they have gone through and are going through. Just like in every school, some of our kids have grown up in loving, stable households without any real problems to derail them. However, some of grown up in different circumstances and have had adverse childhood experiences also known as childhood trauma.
It is estimated at nearly 70% of children experience at least one ACE and some experience many more. This is across cultures, races, income levels, etc.
Our kids need teachers that understand them as individuals and treat them as individuals. Rules are rules and policies are policies but to every rule and policy there is an exception or an opportunity for grace.
Our kids need teachers who are willing and able to go above and beyond to help each child achieve and this means setting aside a cookie cutter approach to teaching and learning.
Teaching and mentoring is hard work and sometimes it can seem thankless. Sometimes the kids can make us a little cuckoo and sometimes the parents can frustrate us. Sometimes we are very weary and sometimes we feel that we are spreading ourselves a bit thin. For these reasons and others, it is important that Holy Cross teachers have a true calling to be part of this ministry and a true heart for these kids as they are our future.
I truly hope that everyone has engaged in self reflection as we begin to look ahead to next year, to see if in fact we have inside us what is needed. I hope so.
Adverse Childhood Experiences
Yearbook
Your responsibility is to do your collage page and if you lead an activity, you can also work on your activity page.
If for some reason you cannot do this, see Maydelline. Make sure that your collage pages feature every student in the class and it should show a variety of activities. In other words, do not just take some photos of kids on the same day and doing the same thing and call it a collage. it should depict the school year.