HOWL
September 24, 2020
Celebrating a Culture of Joy
- What is important? "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, people will never forget how you made them feel." -Maya Angelou. How you make them feel is what is important.
- The Walk Up Song competition is on . . . Don't Stop It Now. . . and it continues this week. We are celebrating Janet Schuster for matching Bone by George Throrogood with one of our colleagues. She won a $100 Target gift card. At the staff meeting last night, we celebrated Don't Stop Me Now by Queen. Thank you to everyone for singing along and doing a chair dance. You can join the Walk Up song game this week by texting your name and your best guess for who has Don't Stop Me Now as his or her walk up song to 920-323-0925.
- The team that won the Every Student Every Day Every Class game at the staff meeting last night created an analogy "They are interconnected and merge together to form one system". Here are some other analogies our team created for the school goal.
- As we think about the challenges of blended learning, it is a good time to reflect on four tools for building a culture of joy : Gratitude, Community, Sense of Wonder, and Play. Please take five minutes tomorrow to reflect with your content team on how you might include Play into your classroom routines. You will not regret the time you spend in joy. You are making a difference in the lives of our students.
The Wolf Family
SWIRL
One team created this poster. The members of the team carry the poster from room to room with the learning target and success criteria for the day on the back. This team challenges you to do the same with your team and success criteria. You can print the poster and your daily success criteria for next week tomorrow. Can you name the team? Send Lance an email with your guess and a person with the correct answer wins a prize.
Character Education
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pcKbf_vpHg
Challenging Behaviors
QUESTION: Why are challenging kids challenging?
ANSWER: Because they’re lacking the skills not to be challenging. If they had the skills, they wouldn’t be challenging. That’s because –and this is perhaps the key theme of the model – Kids do well if they can. And because (here’s another key theme) Doing well is preferable to not doing well. This, of course, is a dramatic departure from the view of challenging kids as attention-seeking, manipulative, coercive, limit-testing, and poorly motivated. It’s a completely different set of lenses, supported by research in the neurosciences over the past 30-40 years, and it has dramatic implications for how caregivers go about helping such kids.
QUESTION: When are challenging kids challenging?
ANSWER: When the demands or expectations being placed upon them exceed the skills that they have to respond adaptively. Of course, that’s when we all respond maladaptively: when we’re lacking the skills to respond adaptively. Thus, an important goal for helpers is to identify the skills a challenging kid is lacking. An even more important goal is to identify the specific expectations a kid is having difficulty meeting, referred to as unsolved problems… and to help kids solve those problems. Because unsolved problems tend to be highly predictable, the problem-solving should be proactive most of the time. Identifying lagging skills and unsolved problems is accomplished through use of an instrument called the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems (ALSUP). You can find the ALSUP in The Paperwork section of the website of Lives in the Balance, the nonprofit Dr. Greene founded to help disseminate his approach (livesinthebalance.org).
This Q & A section was pulled from the Lives in the Balance website.
Are you interested in learning more about these ideas? Reach out to Courtney, anytime!
Student Engagement
The 5 positive connections with our students and families is going amazing. The feedback that we in the office are hearing from parents is GREAT!! Keep it going!
- My son's teacher called and talked with both him and I!! It was great
- This is the first time my daughter's teacher called to just say hi and let me know who they are.
- The house email/ newsletter I am getting each week is so helpful for me to know what is going on
After some feedback from teachers we have adjusted the report out day for the Wolves Den to be the Friday before it is sent out. The dates have been adjusted on the Report out for Wolves Den!!
We have been given the green light to start after school virtual clubs. YEAH!! The What, why, how, and things is in the link below... Extra Money!!!!
Staff Learning Plan - PPG groups
Reminders & Communication
- Washington has 2 AEDs- one is located in the gym the other in the pool area. A short video on how to use them is included.
- Health Room Referral Guidelines
- Elective class lessons are offered 2-3 times per week.
- An update to the meet schedule has been shared that clarifies the "Small Group Meets" are not required. This applies with core and elective schedules.
- Please be at your next class early so the teacher waiting for you can leave on time.
- A video to show how to enter your SLO in less than 15 minutes is shared.
- Picture Retake is October 5th from 1-4pm- a sign up will be shared soon with families
- Our first safety drill will be a HOLD. It will happen next week the 29th, 30th and October 1st at approximately 8:15 - 8:20. Please take time to review the HOLD drill plan with your students during advisory next week. A script for students is included in the HOLD plan on page 3.
- We want to highlight our amazing students and our fabulous staff, so if you are taking pictures please upload them into the drive Gavin shared with us.
- Hot Spots are available for families who do not have WiFi- Hot Spot Information
- Support with ALL technology must have a Web Help Ticket. Thank you for using the help system. #ticketsplease.
- Please post and share the STUDENT Web Help Ticket for their Chromebooks
- PAST REMINDERS & COMMUNICATIONS
Survey Time
Staff Meeting Recap
- SWIRL Strategy . . . think aloud with content Vocabulary . . . Thanks Vickie
- Creating a contact list for your email- thanks Marly
- Ditto... Ditto.... Ditto- Thanks Mark
- Thank you Derek for giving us ideas on incorporating PACK
- Feedback Friday!!! Time for feedback= no new content. Please know that elective teachers may choose not to do this. This will start for our core teachers on Friday 9/25
- A recording of the staff meeting on September 23
- September 30 staff meeting agenda
- Past Staff Meeting Agendas