The Dream Team
Weekly Memo 12
INSPECT WHAT YOU EXPECT! ALWAYS HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS!
Uplift Hampton Middle School Strategic Priorities
School Learning Climate
Professional Capacity
Parent, School, and Community Ties
Table of Contents
- Good Things
- A Message from the Director
- Dean Memo
- Admin Corner
- Video of the Week
- Week at a Glance
- Action Items
- Month at a Glance
- Updated Duty Schedule
Good Things!
- Shout out to you all for your hard work!
- Shout out to Ms. King for 75% of scholars meeting expectations on the 1st CA!
- Shout out to our HERO Power users!
A Message From the Director
Hello Dream Team,
This week I leave you with an article entitled:
Want to Empower Students? Expect More of Them.
My hope is that you gain hope, motivation, determination, and improve your mindset around setting expectations.
What happens when educators and parents set high expectations for students?
Annie Sullivan was hired to tutor a young Helen Keller, an unruly deaf and blind child. Sullivan raised the expectation for how Helen would behave. In "The Miracle Worker," this leads to a heart-wrenching physical battle. They later reached a breakthrough moment as the teacher spelled a word into the child’s palm. As Helen wrote in her autobiography years later,
“I knew then that ‘w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.”
Keller graduated with honors from Radcliffe College and became a renowned writer and public speaker because a teacher pushed her to recast her challenges from an excuse for poor table manners into “barriers that could be swept away.”
Maya Angelou faced her own barriers as a child. As a result of traumatic incidents, Angelou refused to speak from ages seven to 12. She found solace in poetry, and memorized the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Langston Hughes, Shakespeare and others.
Angelou describes how a teacher, Mrs. Flowers, convinced her to speak:
“She said, ‘You don’t love poetry.’ And it was the cruelest thing I think she could have done. Because she seemed to be taking my only friend. She said, ‘You can’t love poetry. In order to love poetry, you must speak it. You must feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips.’ … She was trying to shock me. And one day I went under the house … and I tried poetry. And I had a voice. I had a voice.”
Decades later, that voice was used to read a poem at President Clinton's inauguration.
A similar encounter with a teacher helped create one of the great voices of the past half-century. When James Earl Jones went to high school, he was functionally mute, as a result of a severe stutter he developed at the age of five.
In a 2010 interview with The Daily Mail, Jones called a high school English teacher, Donald Crouch, "'the father of my voice." Crouch challenged Jones to prove that he did not plagiarize a poem by reading it out loud from memory in class. "Which I did. As they were my own words, I got through it," Jones said. Crouch continued to encourage Jones to read out loud every day, and get involved in debates.
For Helen Keller, Maya Angelou and James Earl Jones, Anne Sullivan and Mrs. Flowers and Donald Crouch all were the “one person” that Aimee Mullins says every child needs.
Mullins is an athlete, model, actress, and motivational speaker, who had her legs amputated below the knee shortly after birth. In a TED Talk titled "The Opportunity of Adversity," Mullins spoke the hideous synonyms she found in a thesaurus for the word “disabled.” What upset her, she said, weren’t the words themselves, but rather “the values behind the words and how we construct those values.”
For a child to overcome the low expectations set by labels or value constructs, Mullins said, “all you really need is one person to show you the epiphany of your own power and you’re off. If you can hand somebody the key to her own power, the human spirit is so receptive, if you…open a door for people at a crucial moment, you are educating them in the best sense. You are teaching them to open doors for themselves."
If empowering students to reach their true potential is the root of education, how do educators achieve it?
Angela Maiers, an educator and author, focuses on the power of words. In "12 Ways to Let People Know They Matter" She writes that if we choose our words wisely, we can help students "stretch their thinking, envision success, and open the door to their true potential."
Steven R. Schrader, a language teacher in Japan, defines empowerment as “helping learners become aware that they can have an impact on their environment, and can exert some control over their circumstances.” Schrader writes that, when we use language to remind young people, especially those marginalized by society, of their potential, we give control over their circumstances back to them.
Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman has spoken about the powerful effect when students do envision success, exert control over their circumstances, and see the epiphany of their own power.
In a July 2009 interview, she argued that the present state of minority education in the U.S. may be worse than in the days of segregation, asserting that back then,
“We had teachers who had very high expectations....We were going to learn our tables, we were going to learn how to read. And we had this community buffer, because while the external world told us we weren’t important and couldn’t succeed, our parents said it wasn’t so … our teachers said it wasn’t so, our preacher said it wasn’t so, and so we knew it wasn’t so. … And we always were taught that we could change the world, and we had these role models everywhere. That’s missing today for so many of our children.”
Do you have high expectations for your students?
Are you the "one person" students need to learn to open doors for themselves?
Holding scholars to high expectations is paramount to success! What will you do differently?
The Dream Team Will Fight!
Sincerely,
Andrea
Admin Center
MYP Dean
Complete:
Cross curricular lesson executed prior to October 5th
Performance Task must be completed by October 5th
Vertical Planning Meeting with HS 10/6/17
INSTRUCTIONAL & CULTURAL FOCUS AREAS
a. Instructional Focus: High Expectations
b. Cultural Focus: G.R.I.T.
Week at a Glance
Monday, October 2nd: A Day
Professional Dress
Morning Meeting at 7:20am in the library
Execute Advisory Curriculum
Thomas Out PTO
Math CA 1
Tuesday, October 3rd: B Day
Business Casual
Execute Advisory Curriculum
Reading CA 1
Wednesday, October 4th: A Day
Business Casual
Execute Advisory Curriculum
Meet in the library at 3:00pm
Vertical Team Meeting
CA 1 Make-up Testing
Thursday, October 5th: B Day
Business Casual
Morning Meeting at 7:20am in the library
Execute Advisory Curriculum
End of Quarter 1
Friday, October 6th: Collaboration Day- Black Out Day
Casual
Monday, October 9th: No School
Tuesday, October 10th: Black Out Day
Action Items
1. Add your information to the Google Drive Information:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rN0zFszxe9pAy_njQruJlBwH_rcsK9_C8E0ZbfebZ6I/edit?usp=sharing
2. ELAR Team Register for the ESL Class
We’re excited to offer the ESL Supplemental Certification Prep Courses again for the 2017-2018 school year. Our Uplift Williams Campus ESL Coordinator, Terrie Kelly, is taking on this charge and picking up on the great work previously done by Bonnie Jones.
We have 5 sessions planned between now and the end of October and they will be from 8:30 to 3:30 (with a 30 minute lunch break) on Saturdays. We will be confirming the additional sites in the next few days and you should have an updated list next week.
• October 7th – site TBD
• October 21st – site TBD
Please have participants register for the courses using the following link: https://goo.gl/forms/T615Lu5YadEG9tnw1
UPDATED DUTY SCHEDULE
Put this on your radar!
2-Oct Monday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A
3-Oct Tuesday B
4-Oct Wednesday
Working Wednesday- Grading Day/Vertical Meeting A
Cross curricular MYP lesson executed
5-Oct Thursday Morning Meeting at 7:20/End of Q1 (Black Out Day) B Minimum total of 27 grades
6-Oct Friday CA 1 Collaboration Day (Black Out Day) No School for scholars Data Analysis Due by 5pm
7-Oct Saturday
8-Oct Sunday
9-Oct Monday No School
10-Oct Tuesday Morning Meeting at 7:20 (Black Out Day) A
11-Oct Wednesday/Wellness Wednesday B
12-Oct Thursday A
13-Oct Friday Morning Meeting at 7:20/Grades Close at 10am for Q1 Report Cards B Minimum total of 3 grades
14-Oct Saturday Reading Enrichment
15-Oct Sunday
16-Oct Monday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A
17-Oct Tuesday B
18-Oct Wednesday Group Development at 3:05pm A
19-Oct Thursday B Science and Tech Night 5pm-7pm
20-Oct Friday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A Minimum total of 6 grades/Bi-Weekly Data Meeting Completed
21-Oct Saturday Math Enrichment
22-Oct Sunday
23-Oct Monday Morning Meeting at 7:20 B
24-Oct Tuesday A
25-Oct Wednesday Morning Meeting at 7:20/Team Potluck/ Parent Teacher Conferences 2:30-6:30pm B- Half Day Q1 Award Ceremony
26-Oct Thursday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A
27-Oct Friday Morning Meeting at 7:20 B Minimum total of 9 grades
28-Oct Saturday Reading Enrichment
29-Oct Sunday
30-Oct Monday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A
31-Oct Tuesday Morning Meeting at 7:20 B
1-Nov Wednesday Morning Meeting at 7:20/Group Development at 3:05pm A
2-Nov Thursday Morning Meeting at 7:20 B
3-Nov Friday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A Minimum total of 12 grades/Bi-Weekly Data Meeting Completed
4-Nov Saturday Math Enrichment
5-Nov Sunday
6-Nov Monday Morning Meeting at 7:20/Grades Close at 10am for progress reports B
7-Nov Tuesday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A
8-Nov Wednesday Morning Meeting at 7:20/Group Development at 3:05pm B **Mid-year Self-Evaluation Due by 5pm
9-Nov Thursday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A
10-Nov Friday Morning Meeting at 7:20/Progress Reports go home B Minimum total of 15 grades
11-Nov Saturday Reading Enrichment
12-Nov Sunday
13-Nov Monday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A
14-Nov Tuesday Morning Meeting at 7:20 B
15-Nov Wednesday Morning Meeting at 7:20/Staff Luncheon at 3:15pm A Performance Task 2 Executed
16-Nov Thursday Morning Meeting at 7:20 B
17-Nov Friday Morning Meeting at 7:20 (Black Out Day) A Minimum total of 18 grades/Bi-Weekly Data Meeting Completed/ Fly Away Trip
18-Nov Saturday
19-Nov Sunday
20-Nov Monday No School
21-Nov Tuesday
22-Nov Wednesday
23-Nov Thursday
24-Nov Friday
25-Nov Saturday
26-Nov Sunday
27-Nov Monday Morning Meeting at 7:20 (Black Out Day) B
28-Nov Tuesday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A
29-Nov Wednesday Morning Meeting at 7:20/Group Development at 3:05pm B CA 2 Prediction Protocol Due by 5pm
30-Nov Thursday Morning Meeting at 7:20 A PE Night 5pm-7pm