Hawk Herald
News and Notes for Teachers- Feb 5
Dear Staff
Congratulations on finishing the semester. You have set up some routines and systems to help students through the rest of the year. We are all concerned about the current climate in our building and I hope we can all work together in the weeks ahead to make our current systems more consistent, implement new ideas and communicate in a more effective way. I welcome your collaboration.
Thank you ,
Mary
AVID site meeting
Monday in room 230
Academic Seminar
10 minutes for TELL survey
Honor Roll-Thursday
Meetings and Events
Monday-5 Check your Advisory Calendar
- AVID site team 3:30 rm 230
Tuesday-6
- Team Meetings-Cooper hawks and Red-tails Pod 4
- Basketball game SMMS @ Brown
Wednesday-7 Feeder Principals CEL training rm 234
- Academic Seminar 7:50
- Attendance 10:10
- District Volleyball Tournament @Evergreen
Thursday-8
- Team Meetings-Sparrow hawks and Royal hawks pod 1
- District Basketball Tournament @SMMS
Friday-9
- SST
- Proud Principal Awards
Mid-year Goal Reviews in Perform
Push, Don’t Pull, Students in Poverty
In this article in Education Update, Sarah McKibben interviews Philadelphia educator and author Linda Cliatt-Wayman, who took on the challenge of leading one of the city’s most troubled high schools. When she first arrived, staffers from the Department of Justice showed a video reenactment of the Columbine shooting as part of an assembly on nonviolence. Students burst out laughing and the principal thought they were being disrespectful and rude. But when she convened a roundtable of students afterward, one said, “That’s nothing compared to what we see on the streets each night.” Cliatt-Wayman thought, “Oh my God. They can’t even relate to the pain of other people because they’re so wounded. OK, yes, they need rules. They need consequences. But they need some fun and a whole lot of love.”
This was reinforced when a girl was brought to the office for being extremely rude to teachers. “Stop talking to me, Ms. Wayman,” said the girl. “Will you please stop talking to me because nobody loves me. Nobody on this earth loves me.” From then on, Cliatt-Wayman began and ended her morning and afternoon PA announcements, “If nobody told you they loved you today, remember I do, and I always will.”
An ongoing problem at the school was teachers from middle-class backgrounds pitying their students and lowering expectations, including giving high-school students third-grade reading material. Cliatt-Wayman’s message: “You are a teacher. No, you may not understand a lot about what their home lives are like, but you know about teaching, so I need you to go into the room, build relationships with the children, and teach to the highest level possible and expect those kids to reach it. Because if you do that, they will.”
Cliatt-Wayman made a point of being in the halls between classes to touch base with students. “I always tried to find out a little piece of information in their daily lives that would get me to that bridge to say something to them,” she says – checking in on a sick grandmother, passing along a teacher’s compliment. “You cannot delegate your work away. You have to be part of the system. You have to let everybody see you’re working as hard as everybody else, and you all work together. My teachers, my God, they were beat down. They had the burden of being in those classrooms with those kids every single period. And they were very challenging children. So the one thing I had to do as a school leader was make them realize I was their main support. It’s me. Whatever you’re doing, whatever you need support with, you come see me, and I’m going to be the person who gets that support for you, no matter what it is.”
TELL Survey
You may have been hearing about the TELL survey from various groups in education. The survey is designed to gather information regarding the state of education & funding in Oregon and the impact on our schools and your voice is important! I placed a letter in your box which shares information about the survey. Each letter has a different anonymous access code that can only be used once. Feel free to switch with another licensed staff member to further promote anonymity. The survey opens February 1st. We will have 5-10 minutes at the end of Academic Seminar on Wednesday, February 7th as well. An FAQ of the survey is linked below.
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