Roadrunner Report
Week of May 1, 2017
Please click on the image for the entire newsletter
Thanks to all of you
For All you do!
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Southwest Middle School
Our Building
Thank you and building reminders
A reminder that we need to monitor bathrooms regularly. This seems to continue to be our hot spot.
If we were to lock down at any given moment...and it is time. Could you tell us who is missing from your room and where they are? Is it the girl's room on 8th-grade hall or can we locate your student in the nurse's office? media center? You get my point.
DO NOT allow students to leave without knowing where they are going and how much time they will be out of your sight. You are still responsible for the child even when out of your sight.
Help us keep down on building vandalism. When student's exit our rooms for water and restroom breaks ...do they need pens, pencils, markers? Tell them to leave with nothing but what is needed for the trip. (Exception: young ladies may require a purse for the restroom, but it's okay to let them know that you see they have extra materials with them) Hold students accountable for their whereabouts and timeliness.
Thanks for your continued good work and reminding students that we are watching!
Governor signs reprieve on smaller class sizes
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ACCELERATED READER RACE TO THE FINISH
Ready-Set-Read!
Remember that every morning from now until EOGs we are hosting Roadrunner Readers in Advisory. From 8 am til 8:25 am your Advisory Students will become Roadrunner Readers. Please take this Monday morning to explain the rules.
- Everyone will have a book (Ask students to bring them daily)
- Everyone will be expected to sit quietly and read
- Reading time begins at 8 am each morning and ends at 8:20 am
- Teachers can read to students, with students or partner read(level 1) depending on your classroom environment
- Teachers can read a short expert of their own book to model what a good reader does daily
- Teachers will be given five conferencing cards. The cards have both non-fiction and fiction questions; depending on your student's text
- Each day, we will each will conference with one student during advisory about the AR book they are reading. Just choose a Roadrunner Reader in your advisory and ask the relevant questions.
- We will fill out the colored slip in detail and drop the slips in the AR Conference Box located in the PLC room.
- There are many chances to win for both students and teachers, but only if completed correctly and with your name. Teachers’ slips will be randomly drawn and prizes will be awarded to the teacher (and student, too!)
Week 1: April 24-April 28 is ORANGE - Winners are...
Week 2: May 1-May 5 is GREEN
Week 3: May 8-May 12 is YELLOW
Week 4: May 15-May 19 is BLUE
- Week 5: May 22-May 26 is RED
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End of Year Awards Days
Tuesday- June 6th
7th grade 9:00-10:00
Tuesday- June 6th
6th Grade 1:30-2:30
Wednesday-June 7th
8th grade 10:00-11:30
Transitions - Walk with Students / Hall Monitoring for all others
Please be mindful of your teams TRANSITION TIMES
We don't end up with tardy students if we are following the plan set forth mid-year. Teachers must walk with students to each block and to electives.
Support Staff and Encores must be on duty each transition.
Remind students transition is not locker or social time.
- 8:25 - 7th-grade Dismiss to electives
8:28- 9:13 7E1
9:16- 10:01 7E2
- 10:05 - 8th-grade dismiss to electives
10:08- 10:53 8E1
10:56- 11:38 8E2
- 1:25 - 6th-grade dismiss to electives
1:28-2:13 6E1
2:15-3:00 6E2
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Inspiration for the Week
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A Mindset Shift to Continue Supporting the Most Frustrating Kids
By Alex ShevrinAPRIL 24, 2017
On my best day as a teacher, I will talk passionately about progressive pedagogy, empathy as the core of a classroom and diverse student needs. I will say I care about every child, the whole child, and am committed to their growth.
And then there are those bad days. The days where within the first two hours of my morning, I’m called a b*** three times. The ones where my perfectly planned learning activity falls flat because my brilliant student just refuses to pick her head up off the desk. The days when the differentiated lesson I designed just for that one student goes on perfectly but that one student’s chair is empty, missing school again. These are the days that push on my best intentions and idealistic visions. These are the days when reality and philosophy collide, and it feels like my challenging students are behind the steering wheel and I’m just along for the ride.
WHAT’S THE ACTUAL CHALLENGE HERE?
Challenging students aren’t that way because they are inherently bad kids or intentionally creating difficulties in the classroom. To borrow a phrase from Ross Greene, “kids do well if they can,” and if they aren’t doing well, it’s because there’s something getting in the way. When I step back and consider the obstacles in my students’ lives — poverty, trauma, chronic stress — it makes total sense that they are struggling to communicate, regulate their emotions and make progress on learning.
To me, the challenge about challenging kids is the way that I feel working with them. Interacting with these students can bring up all kinds of emotions: sadness because of their pain, defensiveness if a student is criticizing or attacking me, protectiveness over the other students being disrupted, and even annoyance that my day didn’t go as I planned. All this is made more challenging by the fast pace of the day, and the fact that even on a good day it can be hard to find time to take care of my own needs. But I know that how I react to students, and my ability to manage my emotions, colors every interaction I have. Left unexamined, these strong emotions can lead to burnout.
How do we really feel about our most challenging students? Most of us will say “frustrated” as a first reaction. But after we dig a little bit under the layer of frustration, what’s the next emotion, the truer emotion? I asked a room of educators this question at the Educon conferenceearlier this year. I heard: Worried. Hopeless. Lost. Powerless. Stuck. Many of us feel a deep sense of responsibility and care for “our kids.” When we see a student struggling and believe that we can’t help, the powerlessness can feel overwhelming. If we don’t do the work to transform that emotion in a healthy way, it can instead become frustration and irritation, and begin to chip away at our empathy.
This frustration infuses all our interactions with and about that student, which in turn communicates a lack of care to the student and family, heightening what may have already felt like an insurmountable wall. We say we believe in every child, care for every child, support every child — but when we let our challenging emotions fester, we struggle to communicate that to others — or even believe it ourselves.
I’ve gotten stuck in this trap more than once. It was my student who jolted me out of this cycle when she said, “You don’t really care about kids, you’re just here for the money.” My instinct was to laugh, but I quickly realized that what my student was trying to tell me was that she didn’t feel like I cared about her. I was able to use that moment to let her know that I did indeed care, and we were able to have a great conversation about how teachers can feel frustrated sometimes and how we’re all human. That conversation ended up strengthening our relationship and my work with her.
My most challenging student is not inherently challenging as a human being — but I need to own that it’s challenging for me to work with them. Once I take responsibility for my own emotions, I am now in a position to transform them.
WHAT CAN I DO TO CHANGE THIS?
It’s not about not feeling hopeless, defeated and powerless in the face of challenging student behaviors. These are normal responses we can expect to have as humans in relationship with other humans who are struggling. Instead, we need to own the emotions and work to make meaning of them. This means taking the time to dig into questions like:
- Why am I feeling this way?
- Could this feeling give me insight into how my student is feeling?
- What does it mean about me that I feel so frustrated, lost or hopeless? Does it change my conception of myself as a teacher, as a person?
- What do my students’ challenges bring up for me? How does my own history influence my responses?
What is the venue for these questions? In an ideal world, teachers would make space for grappling with these questions as part of their scheduled job responsibilities. At my school, we take time formally and informally to delve into our own emotional response to the work, to gain perspective, to check our assumptions and stay grounded.
Informally, this looks like maintaining a school culture where the students’ strengths are at the center. We have an informal “no venting” policy, preferring instead to problem-solve. It’s common to find teachers in each other’s classrooms at the end of the day comparing notes and talking through a challenging situation: “Hey, was he upset in your class today, too? What did you do about it? Do you have any sense of what’s going on for him?” We encourage this peer consultation and make time for it.
Formally, we have several mandatory and optional group opportunities for staff to focus on wellness and making meaning of the work. Once a month we have wellness groups where staff choose a personal wellness goal for the year and use the group to stay on track and get ideas. We also do periodic case conferences, focusing on one particular student, where we walk through what behaviors are coming up, what we understand to be at the root of those behaviors, how we’re feeling working with that student, and what we should do going forward. We make the choice to invest our time as a school doing this rather than focusing staff meetings on other topics, and we see the benefit for students when teachers are on the same page about supporting them.
WHAT’S NEXT?
We will never lose the need for meaning-making, because working with humans will always be inherently complex and bring up emotions. However, there are some proactive things we can do to smooth the path for ourselves.
- Proactively plan for being a person with emotions. Expect that the work will be challenging and that sometimes you will feel awful, and accept that this is a normal part of a human-centered job. What are some ways you do this?
- Build in support systems. Find the people, groups or strategies that will proactively support you and will respond to you with kindness and understanding when the going gets rough. This might be nurturing your personal friendships or relationships, strengthening connections with co-workers, my supervisor or other folks at work, or going to my own counselor or therapist. If I’m worried about respecting my students’ confidentiality, I remind myself to turn my focus back to my own emotions: I don’t need to share my students’ names or stories in order to talk about how frustrated or hopeless I’m feeling, and work through those emotions.
- Develop understanding. We can better make meaning when we better understand the underlying issues at stake. Seek out information about trauma, chronic stress, the impacts of racism and discrimination, and other systems at play with your particular population. I incorporate these topics into my school’s ongoing professional development (which staff design and facilitate), and also use my own personal learning community online to find these resources.
- Forgive yourself: Above all, we need to be gentle with ourselves. This self-forgiveness serves to remind us that we also must be gentle with our students, offering a fresh start each day and providing opportunities to repair and rebuild our relationships after conflict
When I feel like I just don’t have time to slow down and do this emotional work, I remind myself that an investment in this work pays off tenfold in my ability to stay grounded, not to get so stressed out, and most importantly, to be a better help to my students who need it most.
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Renewing Your Teaching License This Year?
Get your answers in PLC and more!
Instructional Reflection
Minute To Win It EOG Camp
Minute to Reflect
Thanks for the reflections.
Before School Tutoring
Thank you
Lesson Plans
Reminder
Plans are due in Planbook.com each Monday before school begins.
Great American Cleanup
The annual Great American Cleanup is happening now! This is your opportunity to help cleanup Gastonia and our surrounding cities. As the weather warms up and school is coming to an end, we thought this would be a great opportunity for students to get outside and get involved. We provide the bags and gloves, so help us keep our communities clean and get involved. Please see below for more information.
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2017 ReLoad Non-negotiables
Non-Negotiables
Communication with parents
- Focused on working together to improve student achievement
- Clear, consistent and often
- Professional and goal driven
School Day
PLC meeting attendance and participation EVERY WEEK.
ReLoad Instructional Framework or one approved by Rice and post by door
Demonstrate evidence of daily planning and differentiation in instruction to be reviewed in planbook.com. This now a requirement to every teacher.
Bell to Bell teaching
Hall duty each day during each transition or assigned travel group.
Keep your students out of the halls
Kindness to ALL students - No yelling
- Move throughout your classroom interacting with all students
Positivity is mandatory- Do not come and steal our Joy from Southwest
Challenge all students through rigor and higher order thinking skills
Teach key vocabulary
Incorporate available technology into lesson to enhance student learning
Display exemplary student work that includes Teacher commentary
Adjust instruction and reassess based on student performance data
I will adjust add to or remove items as needed for student growth outcomes.
News on Roadrunner Sports
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Intramurals This Week
Athletic Duty Schedule
Duty Schedule for Soccer
NONE
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Summer 2017
Save the DATE(s)
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Southwest News
Monday -
- Lesson plans due in Planbook.com
- Update your Gradebook
- Rice @ Principal's Meeting 9am
- Baseball and Soccer @ Chavis
- Sweet Treat in your box
- SIT Meeting @ 3:30
Tuesday -
- 6pm Evening of Excellence - Staring own Sara White Teacher of the Year
Wednesday -
- Lunch provided by Vision Church in Media Center
- Rice @ Radar for PD (AM only)
- PBIS Zoo Trip
Thursday -
- Baseball and Soccer @ Belmont
Friday -
- Lunch provided by PTO in Media Center
- PLC for everyone on Friday in PLC room...just bring yourself!
Upcoming Events -
Tuesday, May 9th Gaston County Track Meet Bessemer City High School
Cheerleading workouts 15th and 16th and 17th
Tryouts May 18th
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Don't forget to schedule your Free Store Appointment each month @ Classroom Central . You never know what treats and surprise await you.
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Referrals
Does your student need assistance?
Use the links:
Counselor Intervention Request
Staff please don't forget to use the links above for student recommendations and Interventions. Students are missing out on valuable services provided by our school as a result.
Morning Announcements
Technology and Computer Issues?
Please email to Mr. Stahl
He will take care of you as soon as possible or refer your issues to our TSS (Technology Support Services) department.
Copiers, Laminator and Riso
Southwest Middle School
Email: lrrice@gaston.k12.nc.us
Website: http://www.gaston.k12.nc.us/Domain/49
Location: 1 Roadrunner Drive, Gastonia, NC, United States
Phone: (704)866-6290
Twitter: @MsPrincipalBoss