State of Manning
July 2019
The Purpose
Staffing
New positions filled at Manning this summer
Alison LeBeda - Music Teacher
Manning and Miller are excited to introduce Ms. Alison LeBeda as our full-time elementary music teacher. Ms. LeBeda,along with four other candidates, were interviewed by a panel of administrators, parents and teachers. Ms. LeBeda was unanimously selected to fulfill this role at both elementary schools. We are excited by her passion for music education, commitment to help students become engaged with the curriculum, and enthusiasm to build a strong elementary music program.*Music will be taught quarters 1 and 3 at Manning for the 2019-2020 school year. Students will have music twice per week each quarter. (Art will be taught quarters 2 and 4).
Yasmin Sitabkhan - Speech and Language Pathologist
Mrs. Sitabkhan joins the Student Service team and Manning family as she leaves U-46 in Elgin. She is not entirely new to us, as she completed her internship with Mrs. Burnside in 2012. Her references were excellent, stating, "Her commitment to providing educational excellence for all students is evident in her therapy, communication with families, and collaboration with staff...She not only focuses on improving students’ speech language skills, but also on building students' emotional needs."
Alyssa Reynolds - Social Worker (now full-time at Manning)
Ms. Reynolds will be making Manning her home this school year. In previous years, depending on the day and situations of students, Ms. Reynolds had to balance her work between the two elementary buildings and South School. Having her housed in one building provides Ms. Reynolds the opportunity to expand her work and expertise of social and emotional learning with all students.
Rachel Finnes - 5th Grade Band Teacher
Ms. Finnes will be continuing her work with the 5th grade band this school year. Ms. Finnes joined the staff in the Spring of last school year and did an excellent job working with our students. We are excited with her plans for the new school year.
Reminders of staff shifts and or new assistant principal
Kyle Sellers - moving from 1st grade into Student Services as a Resource Teacher
Angela McConnell - moving from 2nd grade to 1st grade
Safety Protocols
- Arrival and dismissal procedures
- Safety Patrol assignments
- Summary of the drills that elementary students take part in
School Improvement Planning Committees
Over the course of two days, ten parents and seven teachers worked to talk through our vision and plans for Manning. On the first day, parents and teachers met together for 3 hours to discuss our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). Teachers and parents worked independently as groups and then came together to share their ideas.
This discussion prompted two work days for the teachers and myself to focus ourselves and create realistic SMART goals with action plans that span 1-5 years. Our three focuses will be:
School Culture
Social Emotional Learning
Curriculum and Instruction
After these work days, I met with the parent group to share our work and discuss ways in which a school improvement committee of parents can help to support the focuses listed above while incorporating the opportunities that parents felt are valuable. The focus areas of the parent group will be:
Parent Communication/Education
Connections to Resources in the Community
Moving forward, both groups will meet regularly to plan and make sure we are accountable to the action plans we are putting in place.
What I Need (WIN) Implementation Year 2
In addition, we plan to provide parents with a glance at what these opportunities look like by. More info to come with this endeavor (hint: YouTube for Manning is coming!)
New Lunch Times for Grade Levels
1/4 - 11:15 - 11:55
K/2 - 11:55 - 12:35
3/5 - 12:35 - 1:15
*Lunch is the first 20 minutes and recess is the second 20 minutes of this time
Standards Based Grading Pilot - What to Expect in Year 2
Three of our main areas for continuous improvement with this pilot are to streamline the standards that are reported to parents each quarter, provide criteria scales for essential standards so that parents and students what each level of grading looks like, and build a dual language component that is specific to the programming.
Below is an example of what a scale for a standard looks like:
Benchmark testing - moving from MAP to iReady
This school year, we will be piloting iReady benchmarking in lieu of MAP for both ELA and Math. There is a correlation chart so that we can still make comparisons to MAP if need be.
PTO - Making spaces and learning environments come to life
Our computer lab has become outdated since we now have 1:1 devices for 2nd through 5th grade students and an increase in iPads for kindergarten and 1st grade students. We are looking to evolve this space into a creative environment for exploring different topics. Mrs. Johnson, our librarian, will be initiating this exploration as a part of student's library time each week. We look forward to seeing how this space evolves for classroom teachers as well.
Sensory Walks
Our basement will feature two sensory walks where students are challenged to walk through obstacle courses. Here is a quick visual link to see what they look like. The article talks briefly about the benefit for all students.
Picnic Tables
This fall, classrooms will have opportunity for outside learning spaces. The PTO sponsored the purchase of three picnic tables that will go on the north playground area.