Happy Summer!
Faculty and Staff Letter | 16 July 2018
Happy Birthday, St. Clare! Happy Feast Day, Our Lady of Mt. Carmel!
Dear Fellow Workers in the Vineyard,
I hope that your summer has been renewing, refreshing and a time spent doing things you love with those you love.
I am both humbled and grateful to have had the chance to speak with most you these past few weeks. The school office staff has been busy getting ready for the return of the students and for your return to your classrooms. We are welcoming new staff and restructuring some of our programs.
I wanted to give some pertinent information to plan for your return so that you feel connected and so that we can all begin the 2018-19 School Year with our students’ success at the forefront. I apologize in advance for this comprehensive communication. Here’s what you will find below, so feel free to scroll and read in any order you wish:
CLASSROOMS AND SITE PREPARATIONS
ENROLLMENT
IMPORTANT DATES
PROCESSES AND PROCEDURES
PROGRAMS
STAFFING
I look forward to walking alongside you on this journey. May God bless you always. See you soon as we begin our exciting work this year in our Year of Service.
Blessings of peace,
Cecile Mantecón
STAFFING
Let’s keep Taylor Simone and Nicole Vanderloo in our prayers as they begin their year of student teaching in the public school system. We will miss them but hope they will be able to return to our community to visit. We have posted two part-time positions for paraprofessional educators in EdJoin and the DSJ site and we are working on posting them with SCU as well.
Some roles changing in the next school year include the following: Analiza Filion will serve as full-time Vice Principal of Academics and Dolores Procaccio will serve as full-time Resource Teacher.
Help me welcome our new teachers, Christopher Goetz and Anthony Bigler.
Christopher Goetz is our middle school language arts and 8th grade homeroom teacher. He comes to us with middle school and high school language arts experience. He is new to the Diocese of San Jose and Catholic Schools. Analiza will mentor Christopher, teach 8th grade religion and guide him in the High School Admissions process as well as the graduation responsibilities.
Anthony Bigler is our middle school math teacher and 6th grade homeroom teacher. He is passionate about developing middle schoolers’ love for math and is looking forward to working with our team of dedicated professionals.
We are currently in the process of interviewing for the 5th grade position. We will not be continuing our contract with IES for the Spanish program. Instead, we are looking to hire a part-time Spanish teacher for K-5 and a possible after-school middle school Spanish program. We have also posted the part-time art teacher position. We will continue to contract with Rhythm and Moves for P.E. as well as Mad Science for after-school science.
PROGRAMS
We will designate Room 6 in the Middle School wing as the K-5 science and MakerSpace room and will begin sourcing NGSS science kits to facilitate more hands-on learning.
Catherine Kogura has been selected as our Drexel partner. As Director of Curriculum and Instruction, she will work with me and Analiza to provide you with instructional support to continue to effectively implement the station-rotation blended learning model of instruction. Together, we will look at a variety of data (formal and informal) to give you the tools you need to deliver instruction and support that is differentiated, individualized and to design assessment that effectively measures student success.
Because we believe that all students can learn, we are developing a Resource program that will identify, document and support your efforts in the classroom, especially in grades K-4. Together as a staff, we will engage in conversation to develop a program that will help students realize academic and social-emotional success.
We will continue our contract with the Bill Wilson Center (counseling) as well as SCU for America Reads. We will seek other partnerships with SCU and surrounding community groups.
PROCESSES AND PROCEDURES
Planbook.com
Many of you have asked for a move towards paperless processes. Starting this year, we will roll out the use of planbook.com. If you are a subject area or homeroom teacher or administrator, you should have received a notification from planbook.com regarding setting up your account. Your username is your DSJ password and the email contains the instructions to your temporary password, tutorials and details to get started.
Please feel free to start exploring so that we can build a group of super users. The expectation is that you will let me know when you think you’ll use planbook.com in earnest. We will hold some “learning” sessions at the start of the school year. You can do as little as attaching your existing plans to using the full program to create your plans. You may still turn in your lesson plans in the format you’ve used in the past and you may attach these to planbook.com or upload them to a designated Google Drive folder (more on this later). Full implementation and use of planbook.com will begin for all teaching staff starting school year 2019-2020.
Google Drive and Google Apps for Education
Because we are a Drexel School, we have full use of GAFE. This constitutes setting up your @drexelschools.org account. The email portion of this is disabled, so we using it primarily to share files and calendars. In the next year, you will see an increase in the use of these apps to share Faculty folders, calendars, etc. You will be asked to upload your Curriculum Maps to the Curriculum Folder once you have set your access to Drive. More on this later.
Start exploring on your own, if you wish. More formal training and coaching on these will be available at the start of the school year.
Calendars
As part of GAFE, we are utilizing Google Calendars to share events, meetings and other important dates. There will be a calendar that will be made public to ALL PARENTS and interested parties and a calendar made available only to FACULTY AND STAFF. I am also sharing the DSJ (formerly) Dept. of Education/Dept. of Catholic Schools Calendar URL. I highly recommend that you add this onto your existing Calendar system. You will find important dates like subject area meetings and PD. Please find the links below:
St. Clare School Calendar ***Public***
Dates important for the whole school (parents, teachers, students)
St. Clare School Faculty & Staff Calendar
Dates important only to school faculty and staff (teachers, support staff, administrators)
DSJ Dept. of Ed/Dept. of Catholic Schools Calendar
This calendar has professional development dates and other DSJ dates that might be relevant to teachers and administrators.
Please see Cherell or me if you need help accessing these calendars. We will be available to support you with this through the start of the school year.
ENROLLMENT
We are happy to report that our enrollment is on the upswing and we hope to continue it that way. Our middle school is almost fully enrolled and many of our classes are close to at least 80% of capacity. Our TK is fully enrolled and kinder is also close to capacity. I will update you on exact enrollment numbers at our first business meeting. You will receive your rosters once we have finalized it in August.
CLASSROOM AND SITE PREPARATIONS
Windows are being replaced and campus work days have been scheduled. You should be able to have full access of your classrooms starting August 6. Middle school teachers may be able to come in before then. Please check with the school office to be sure your room is accessible if you wish to come in before August 6. (Cool Kids Summer Program ends August 3.
Your textbooks and classroom supplies are being ordered. If you think of anything special that needs to be ordered for you, please contact the school office.
PROFESSIONAL GROWTH
Although not an immediate priority, I recommend that you keep up with your professional growth by reading blogs and articles, listening to podcasts and watching TEDTalks that pertain to our professional.
If you have a Twitter account and you haven’t already done so, start following influencers in our field (let me know if you need suggestions). Subscribe or follow Mind/Shift (PBS), TEDTalks, ASCD (subscribe to ASCD briefs), edutopia, Teaching Tolerance (Southern Poverty Law Center), NCEA, Common Sense Media and understood.org.
In order for us to be at the top of our game, we need to model for our students a culture of lifelong learning and continuous improvement. I hope you will join me in this endeavor.
I’m happy to share resources with you and hope that you won’t mind an occasional “forward” of interesting and thought-provoking articles.
IMPORTANT DATES
Date
Event | Location
Expectations
July 31-Aug. 2
New Hire Ethics Camp | SCU
New hires (email confirmation with details to come)
Aug. 3
New Hire Orientation | Chancery
New hires (email confirmation with details to come)
Aug. 9-10 & Aug. 14
Drexel Professional Learning Basics Camp | SCU
New hires (email confirmation with details to come)
Aug. 13
Convocation Day for Catholic Schools | SCU Mission | 7:45-10:30 A.M.
All faculty and staff (teachers, paraprofessionals, support staff, CKZ)
Meet in the Mission Church between 7:45-8 A.M.
Email to come with details
Community Lunch | St. Clare School | 11:30 A.M-12:15 P.M.
All faculty and staff (as above)
Business Meeting | St. Clare School | 12:30-3:30 P.M.
All faculty and staff (as above)
Some may be dismissed earlier
Agenda to come to determine dismissal
Aug. 14
Campus Safety Training: CPR/First Aid/AED, drills | St. Clare Location TBD | 1 - 4 P.M.
All faculty and staff (as above) who need to renew certification
Invitation and details to come via email
Aug. 14, 15
Open Tech: seek help from Teresea, Cecile and other super users to set up planbook, Google Drive or GAFE, calendars, PowerSchool, ParentSquare | All morning Aug. 14 and all day Aug. 15
Open to all users
Come find us!
Aug. 14
New Family Orientation and Ice Cream Social | St. Clare | 5:30-6:30 P.M.
TK and K teachers (mandatory), office staff and administration; all other teachers are welcome, especially if you have new families
Aug. 15
Solemnity of the Assumption Mass | St. Clare Church | 8 A.M.
All are invited to celebrate mass as a staff (Holy Day of Obligation)
Classroom Prep: get ready for our students! | 8:45 A.M. onwards
Aug. 16
First Day of School! | 12:30 dismissal