ML Staff Bulletin
Every student learning, growing, succeeding.
News and Updates
Supporting Year Evaluation
If in your Supporting Year (Cycle B or C), meeting for feedback on your SLO/PPG is not required. However, please reach out to Donna to schedule a meeting about your SLO/PPG if you are excited to talk through it, if you are looking for support, if you have questions, or if you are looking for a thinking partner on next steps. If we do not hear from you, look for electronic feedback on your SLO/PPG template.
Safety Walk Through Feedback
A safety walk through was completed on October 30th. The goal for each monthly walkthrough is to make sure everything is as it should be. Most safety elements at ML were in place. There are a few actions that need to be taken:
- Ensure all classroom doors are locked - even when open. In the event of a lockdown, you want to be able to simply close your door to secure the classroom.
- Please keep sliding glass doors locked when they are closed. In the event of a lockdown, you may forget or not be able to lock the doors in a timely manner.
- Staff need to wear ID badges at all times.
*Please contact Chad if you have any questions.
Volunteer for Pie in the Face Food Drive for the Muskego Food Pantry
If you volunteer, your name will go on a pie tin hung in the rotunda. Then, students will receive a pie slice to put on the pie tin with each donation they make. The teacher's pie tin with the most slices of pie wins the honor of getting a pie on the face on Monday, November 19th. Sign up using the link: Pie in the Face Food Drive.
Medical Alerts
Just a reminder that medical alerts can be called anytime a student or staff member is injured and support is needed. Anyone can call a medical alert by calling the main office or by getting on the paging system and calling one (Page 00). If you do call a medical alert, make sure to communicate the location where the team should deploy. When a medical alert is called, the emergency response team will immediately respond to the location and may ask the supervising teacher and students to clear to an alternate location. Any adult can and should also call 911 in the event of a possible life threatening situation. When it doubt, call 911. Some medical alerts require a hall clearing and some do not. This will be decided when the medical alert team arrives on scene. *If you do not have a sticker on your phone and/or on your ID badge with the paging instructions, please reach out to April Kraklow.
Fun Club Announcements
The Fun Club's Fun Fall Foods last Friday was a hit! So much of a hit, in fact, that we ran out of food early! (It must have been good!) To accommodate our large staff and make sure everyone gets to enjoy, without putting too much of a burden on a small group of people, we're going to change up the sign-up a bit and combine some teams.
See this document for the newly combined teams and the new schedule Fun Club Revised Monthly Food Festival 2018-19 . Talk with your NEW teams, choose your new date, let Amy know the date, & plan within your assigned month.
Coming soon
Chili Cook-off on Friday, November 30th. Start getting your recipes together and dusting off a shelf for the traveling cook-off champ trophy! More info will be on the way.
Save the date for the Holiday party, Saturday, December 15th. Info and sign-up coming soon.
Still in the works.... the Muskego Lakes year-long staff pub crawl. Stay tuned!
Appreciating Student Strengths, Interests, and Learning Styles
Recall that a team of our teachers constructed the student learner profile as a way to find, celebrate, & scale our students' strengths. By knowing each learner as a person and understanding his/her supports and challenges, we are better able to help them make connections and engage as learners.
If you have not yet provided time for students to use their learner profile in your class, consider some of these ideas from your colleagues:
- Ask them to add anything that might be relevant or meaningful to know about them (ie for a PE class, how much current physical activity do they get outside of school or for ACP lessons, what dreams do they have for their future?)
- Read about the strengths & interests of a student you're having trouble connecting with.
- Ask students to review their learner profiles & share their strengths with a partner in class.
- Have a class challenge where students share their learner profile with an adult in their lives. Provide talking points for the adult and have the adult sign off on the profile.
- Do a random sampling of your students in a class where behaviors may be recurring. Do many students prefer interactive learning and yet the learning is mostly visual and verbal?
- Challenge students to add to their profiles with any clubs they have joined and update them with any adults they have connections with.
Seek Opportunity for Learner Choice
Why Choice Matters
This is the practice of providing real, significant, and authentic choices for learners about their learning, the learning environment, and the strategies and approaches that they will use. The truth is that every time a learner has the opportunity to make a choice, he or she creates a unique learning path. Allowing for learner choice not only builds greater commitment to learning among students but also positions them to learn from the outcomes of their choices. As a result, learners become increasingly savvy about the choices they make and aware of the consequences that different choices may present.
Please reach out to Chad & Rachel so we can come check out High Leverage Practices in action in your classroom. We are here as learning leaders and thinking partners, interested in reflecting with you, celebrating success, and providing feedback around the high leverage practices. Please invite either one of us in during the month of November when you're trying out a high leverage practice you've never tried before or something you're looking to move toward expertise on.
Commit to Tier 1 Interventions
Why Focus on Tier 1
Dufour suggests that the biggest indicator between schools that close gaps for kids and schools don't is how each teacher answers this question: How do I respond when students don't learn? Teachers in our school who respond when students don't learn might:
- Do explicit reteaching with a student or groups of students while others are taking an assessment. They don't require students to waste time taking an assessment when the teacher knows the students are not yet ready.
- Requiring a student or groups of student to come in for homeroom for extra help.
- Provide additional practice for students.
- Create flipped lessons to reteach the skills/content in a different way.
- Offer customized pathways for students to learn.
- Require rather than offer retakes.
- Create anchor charts for students, making metacognition explicit for students (ie How to Summarize with steps listed).
- Set goals with students and celebrate their progress toward goals along the way.
- Consider multiple methods and modes for reteaching (sorting, online games, peer support, etc).
This tool is a powerful way for students to learn at their own pace and focus on what they need next. If you have questions about how to use iReady Online Learning, reach out to our Tech Mentors (Jenny Wied & Nancy Pasch) or our coaches.
Contribute to Highly Effective PLCs
Why PLCs?
Hattie's research in Visible Learning tells us that students progress through a year of schooling at an average effect size of about d=0.40 in terms of achievement. But when teachers come together to evaluate their collaborative impact, this more than doubles the effect that this has on student learning at an effect of d=1.57 – four times the average impact.We are grateful that we had the opportunity to start off the year meeting with you to relaunch PLCs at ML.
The most basic definition of a PLC is "collaborative teams working interdependently to advance student learning outcomes." PLCs are "networks for teachers to examine their impact on student learning and collectively adjust" in order to maximize results, according to Dufour in Whatever It Takes.
If you have not yet shared your PLC agenda with us, please make sure to share it with Rachel & Chad by the end of the day on Monday. That way, we can celebrate student progress on common formatives and provide feedback as we all learn together.
Employee Engagement Goal: Effective Use of Time at Principal Led Meetings
Thank you for your feedback on our last PD Day. The result showed that 95% of those attending felt it was an effective use of their time. This is an area of focus for us this year. If you felt the meeting was not an effective use of your time, please consider reaching out to Nancy Pasch or Katie Schroeder. They will anonymously share your feedback with us. Your feedback will help us improve our planning for future meetings.
PBIS Updates
Everything You Need to Know about Honor Levels
HERE is the document that is updated every Friday that lists the most current information about student honor levels. Please help students by relaying this information to them, so they will be more likely to complete a RESTORATION PLAN. Restoration Plans are due by November 9th. This deadline will be strictly enforced as plans need to be arranged for celebration day attendance.
Celebration Day on November 20th
More information will be coming for staff within the week regarding the schedule of events on for November 20th. Stay tuned!
Are you regularly using the PBIS Matrix?
From PBIS rounding with students and staff thus far, the PBIS team has noticed a need to teach the different components of the new school-wide PBIS matrix. There are Friday Homeroom Cool Tools coming up that will be taught to reinforce the pillars, but it is important that we get students acquainted with the language and expectations beforehand. Here are some helpful tips for rolling the matrix out, or reinforcing it when reteaching needs to occur:
Scavenger hunt to find an answer on a poster around the school
Ex. On a locker poster, a student could identify one of the expectations that aligns to one of the PRIDE pillars
Look at your lesson plan for the day...which expectation fits and could be taught in a 5 minute mini-lesson before beginning the activity? Example:
Respect: Care For Others might sound like, “Be aware that every is different: appreciate and accept those differences”
Before hosting a class discussion where there may be a difference in opinion, call students’ attention to this part of the matrix. What does this look like? What does this sound like? What does it feel like when this expectation is not being followed? What can we, as a class, commit to doing if the expectation is not being followed?
Important Dates Ahead
Thursday, November 1st: Happy Birthday April Kraklow & Juls Klumb
Sunday, November 4th: Celebration of Ashley Rhode 12-4pm at ML
Wednesday, November 7th: End of Quarter 1, Grading Window Opens, 8th Grade Plays at UW-Panthers Arena, Muskies United Meetings over lunches, Power Day for Learning Strategists
Tuesday, November 6th: Social Studies Review Team district meeting, Happy Birthday Beth Mantoan
Thursday, November 8th: ML Staff Meeting at 7:20am in the library
Friday, November 9th: Student Greeting in the Rotunda at 7:55am, Happy Birthday Andy Schaller
Monday, November 12th: PTO Meeting 6pm ML Library, Happy Birthday Heath Leiteritz
Tuesday, November 13th: ML Leadership Team Meeting all day, Happy Birthday Cheryl Schmidt
Wednesday, November 14th: 8th Grade Pre-Act
Friday, November 16th: Student Greeting in the Rotunda at 7:55am, Grading Window closes, Happy Birthday Kelly Ann Schmidt
Monday, November 19th: PBIS Tier II Team AM Half Day
Tuesday, November 20th: Quarter 1 Celebration Day
Wednesday, November 21st-23rd: Thanksgiving Break, Happy Birthday Liz Einwalter
Monday, November 26th: Muskego Lakes Country Club Peace Poster Presentation
Tuesday, November 27th: PL Cohort PM Half Day
Thursday, November 29th: Happy Birthday Lisa Reedy
Friday, November 30th: Student Greeting in the Rotunda at 7:55am