Wildcat Weekly
January 13, 2020
Our Promise
Every student in Dallas School District is known by name, strength, and need, and graduates ready for career, college, and community.
I relate this to our work life I guess a little bit. I suppose over time hearing the same thing, talking about the same thing might get old for some. Hearing about how important it is to adapt our teaching and culture to something that is meaningful for our students over and over and then having to go into a classroom and deal with everything else that comes our way, might leave little energy to even think about what different can look like. I was talking to colleague about how things were going this year. I told them honestly I couldn’t tell. I think much like Sunday Night Dinners every week, hearing the same voice and ideas might get a little old, might turn to white noise. Not sure.
I drove by the school this weekend, I saw on our reader board the advertisement for Exhibition Night. I got excited about about this culminating activity for students and their opportunity to show the community their work! Perhaps having our kids take an active roll in their learning and sharing this might seem overwhelming. I loved the honest question from one of our teachers, “what if what my kids are doing doesn’t offer these kinds of opportunities?” Honest question and we can work on looking at things differently. It was great to have an honest conversation around the values that go beyond drill and practice of content. Learning from project based experiences is messy but offer benefits for kids that worksheets and the rigor mortis of unit to unit, test to test do not provide.
I was glad to visit a few classrooms who were doing some form of presentation this week. One class I came in at the very end having missed their presentations. Though I did not get to see their presentations I could see that the kids were jazzed up, invited guests were jazzed up and I could see their teacher felt success on so many levels. I know the work that went into getting this set up and I know not everything up to that point was smooth sailing, but I know those kids will never forget the feeling of success. I can only imagine what these kids will do next!
This is why I believe in doing education differently. Getting to this point where students find meaning and motivation is hard work, but through this they will find confidence in themselves influencing their next endeavor. So if for some reason we are hearing Charlie Brown’s teacher when we talk project based this, or exhibition that remember it’s not about us, it’s about the opportunity we have to build some really great humans. Being a teacher gives us all the power to change lives!
Glad you’re here!
Exhibition Resources
Staff Character Dare
We are Character Strong!
Extended Advisory: Advisory Grade 6 (Year One Track)
1/16/20 - L15 - Relationship Skills #2
Objectives:
- Students will reflect on their own character and identify ways they could improve it.
- To continue to reinforce the learning of each other’s names.
- To build community through fun, low-stakes competition.
Coming Up On Our Calendar
1/14 - Tuesday - Early Release Schedule
1/16 - Thursday - Extended Advisory - Morning Assembly Schedule - Mini-Rube Celebration at 8:45
1/17 - Friday - Wildcat Pride Activity/No Tardy Party - Afternoon Assembly Schedule
Looking ahead - Exhibition Night Next Tuesday 1/21, 6 - 8 PM
Coming Up In PLC
January
1/14 - Character Strong/Exhibition Night Planning
1/21 - Exhibition Night Planning
1/28 - Board Work Session @2:45
Seesaw Challenge Continues
Wakelet Tool!
Remember to use our hashtag #lacreolerocks when sharing!