Dutch Fork Elementary
Faculty/Staff Newsletter Week of February 10th
Superintendent's Priorities
- Focus our work decisions on/around our district strategic plan.
- Identify areas of achievement to improve.
- Provide Chick-Fil-A and Moe's like customer service for internal and external community.
- Strengthen the structure and quality of communication both internally and externally.
- Promote a work and learning environment where students and staff feel safe physically, emotionally and socially.
DFES Beliefs
- We believe all people deserve to feel safe, valued, and loved.
- We believe all children are naturally curious about the world around them.
- We believe learning is a social process.
- We believe inquiry fosters an environment of noticing and questioning.
- We believe in learning from multiple perspectives.
- We believe in learning from authentic primary and secondary sources.
- We believe in encouraging learners to be risk takers.
- We believe reflection should lead to change and growth.
- We believe learning should lead to social action.
- We believe our actions should be aligned to our beliefs.
Shout Outs
- Huge thanks to S. Burke, M. Drayton, N. Jefferson, and C. Walker for joining us (admin team) at last Saturday's district teacher recruitment fair. They represented us well as we spoke to a number of teacher candidates interested in our school and system.
- School closures due to inclement weather required swift processing of details, organizing, and communicating. Grateful for the work done to ensure students got home safely. Huge shout out to our cafeteria staff for ensuring students were fed in a 45 minute window and those who volunteer during bag lunch pick up. Additional thanks to our front office staff that filled numerous calls while also assisting parents/families who picked up student before 11:15. I recognize that there were efforts made that I am not aware of and to you I say thanks as well. Great team effort.
- The week of February 3-7 was designated as National School Counseling Week. I wanted to shout out our very own Sara Beckman. Sara is incredibly helpful with supporting both or students and colleagues. She also fills in for Brandon and me on the occasions (we try to minimize them) we are both out of the building simultaneously. We are grateful for her work the impact she makes at DFES.
High -Leverage Literacy Practices at DFES
During curricular conversation (pd) this past Tuesday we took time to exam and discuss essential elements of engaging and effective literacy instruction. We also spent time discussing the elements our teachers consider for their most successful lessons.
The word cloud below is a representation of the conversation from Tuesday. We are committed to growing and fine-tuning our practices together for our students and families.
Based on input from our teachers (this past Tuesday) we will designate time on Tuesday, February 18 to conduct non-evaluative walk-through's to celebrate grade and school level literacy instruction and also identify opportunities to build greater consistency with what we know and what we do regarding effective literacy practices. Further details to come next week.
ELA curricular conversations Tuesday, February 11th at 3:15 p.m.
School Improvement Council Meeting Wednesday at 6:00
Data Team Coaching
Mr. Gantt and I will be attending a district data tam coaching meeting with consultant Lissa Pijanowski Thursday from 1:00-3:30. Mrs. Pijanowski will provide insights and patterns that she has seen working across our system and offer coaching for school administrators to further support site based data teams.
Please see S. Beckman if needed during our absence.
USC Dance Marathon - D5 PJ Day
School District Five is excited to support this year's UofSC Dance Marathon initiative with a D5 Pajama Day on February 14. DFES will participate along with other schools in our system.
Participation includes the following:
- We are asking participating schools to encourage students to wear dress-code approved pajamas to school.
- Photos of Pajama Day will be shared on the district/school social media sites, tagging UofSC Dance Marathon with @uscdancemarathon. UofSC is also encouraging its college students to wear PJs on Feb. 14. As always, please make sure our students have media consent forms allowing us to post photos.
- As part of Pajama Day, UofSC Dance Marathon is collecting handmade Valentine Day cards for children at Prisma Health Children's Hospital.
- UofSC Dance Marathon/Prisma Health have provided the attached card writing guide. All other school guidelines apply.
- Schools can have card making activities or ask students to bring handmade cards to school. Card making is not mandatory. However should your class participate please send cards to the front office by 12:00 pm as district staff will pick up cards from schools by 2 p.m. on Feb. 14th.
- Remind notifications with this information will go out to families at 6:00 p.m. today.
Friday, Feb 14, 2020, 08:00 AM
DFES
We develop students who care about the world we live in and express critical thinking through natural curiosity and wonder.
Email: jscott@lexrich5.org
Website: www.lexrich5.org/dutchfork/cfm/
Location: 7900 Broad River Road, Irmo, SC, USA
Phone: 803-479-9544
Twitter: @dfes_principal