The CIA Report
September 2017 Edition
Please take some time to read through this prior to the September 26 administrator meeting. If you have any questions, please post them to this Google Doc.
Learning Today... Feeding Your Professional Soul
Resilience is a term that is becoming more mainstream in education. We know that it is important for our students to develop resilience; they need to be able to experience adversity and bounce back to learning. This is something that we work at day in and day out.
But our teachers and our administrators need resilience as well.
Events that happen throughout the day, week, month, and year can sometimes leave us feeling like we're burning out. But our teachers and students need us - and that is why resilience is so critical!
The brief article below offers 5 ways that we can help build resilience. While the title indicates that the article is for administrators about their teachers, I would argue that this is for all of us and it points to ways that we can help each other build resilience.
Teaching & Learning
Curriculum Updates
- Science curriculum development is underway! Curriculum teams have begun to meet with Meghan Aydelott and are working hard to translate the new Missouri Learning Standards into curriculum documents.
- Math (Katherine Schack) and ELA (Kelly Manning) teams are meeting as needed to review the curriculum as it is being implemented (making tweaks if needed) and completing assessment documents.
- Nichole Nolan is supporting teachers as they work to implement additional social studies minutes (at the elementary level) and is excited to support PBL!
PE - Heart Zones K-8
- Our new Lead PE Teacher, Sally Schulte, has been working to ensure that our PE teachers are all up-to-date on their training on Heart Zone monitors.
- Please begin to look for these to be used during PE by October 1. If you aren't seeing the monitors being used, please talk with your teachers to understand why.
- We encourage you to talk with PE teachers and students about the use of the monitors in class.
English Language Learners (ELL)
- Reminder for Elementary Principals - our ELL Parent Outreach night is Wednesday, 9/27 at 6:00 at Prairie View Elementary. It would be wonderful to have one administrator per school to join your teachers and families for this event.
- It can be very daunting for teachers to try to reach and teach their EL students. Please encourage your teachers to collaborate with/ask questions of the ELL teacher for your building. In addition, we have Title III funds that we can use to pay for professional development that is focused on improving achievement for ELL students. If your teachers are interested in attending, we would be happy to send them.
Assessment
Within the next month we are working to make sure all Canvas SGA data and SISK12 SGA data is in Pulse together and reporting correctly. We will email the admin teams as soon as SGA Pre-Test scores are posting correctly in Pulse. Thank you for all of your help with beginning of the year testing!
Elementary
1st grade CogAt testing starts Sept. 25- Oct. 6th-paper/pencil
Fall DRA testing window- Sept. 27th- Oct. 20th
Secondary
Thank you for all of your help & support of Canvas!
The Technology department is working to get all administrators a basic course in Canvas for you to begin working with if you would like. We would also like one administrator per high school to be the Canvas Contact and have higher admin rights within Canvas. Amanda Moody will be in contact with you about this point person.
Professional & Program Development
Everyone -
Learning WITH teachers is one of the best ways to show yourself as a Lead Learner. Please take a look at the wonderful PD that is occurring in the district on 9/29 (Overview of PD Day Groups/Locations 2017-2018) and choose the PD to attend that best supports the teachers you supervise. See you there!
Free PD Opportunity for STEM Leadership - Coding, Discourse in Math, PBL, Robotics, Science: Attend some or all!
WWTD (What would Todd Whitaker do?) - Take a moment to connect with each student by greeting them at the door. Look at this video of a teacher who has a special greeting for each student. What creative things can we do? Challenge your staff (... and you!) to share! This could be a way to increase attendance in your building.
Where is happiness found? Watch this TED Talk by Shawn Achor again… and fill out an Energy Bus award. It will make both them and you more productive!
Overwhelmingly, teachers find peer observations as valuable learning experiences. Check out how Pinapple Charts can make that happen. Everyone - Monitoring implementation of initiatives article - Worth a read!
Technology
COPPA Presentations…
Samantha Knoll and Amanda Griggs will be reaching out to each school to share a 5 minute presentation on COPPA (Children’s Online Protection Privacy Act) and what this means for our faculty and students. Please confirm your faculty meeting time with them.
The intent of COPPA is to safeguard students’ personal information when students are accessing online services including apps and websites directed primarily to audiences under age 13. This legislation applies to a general audience site that acknowledges it is collecting personal information from users under 13.
Dr. Gregg Klinginsmith
Twitter: @GTKling