Conrad/Thomas Jefferson Tribune
WEEK OF DECEMBER 2-6, 2019
SCHOOL LEADERSHIP/NORTHWEST GOALS & CORE VALUES
A MESSAGE FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Illustrious Leaders,
"Thanksgiving is a day to count the blessings in your life, it is the time to celebrate and be joyous, it is a day of pride. It is a day to acknowledge the presence of the people who form your world, to realize how precious their worth is, which is more precious than diamonds and pearls.
I want to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving. Remember how truly blessed I feel to be a part of such an AMAZING group of educators who strive for EXCELLENCE daily! Thank you for all you have accomplished for our scholars each and every day! May you live in a world where the reasons to be thankful will never end!"
In the spirit of the season, I am thankful for all of my leadership experiences. They teach me to stay true to my core and to lead with what keeps me centered--our SCHOLARS. We will have the opportunity to spend a week "at home" with family and loved ones. My wish for each of us is to get the must deserved downtime that we need and come back rejuvenated and ready to finish the first semester STRONG!
Thank you for your continued leadership and for not settling for anything less than GREAT for our scholars!
I look forward to seeing the evidence of your leadership in your classrooms when we return from Thanksgiving break!
Take time to rest and rejuvenate and be ready to tackle the last 3 weeks before the holidays! Happy Thanksgiving!
As always...."WE ARE IN IT TO WIN IT...GO FOR THE GOLD!!
Here is to a productive week of teaching, learning, growing and leading!
Ms. Torres
Emmett Conrad/Thomas Jefferson Executive Director
DALLAS ISD INSTRUCTIONAL SUPPORT RESOURCES
PRINCIPALS OF LEARNING FOCUS
WEEKLY UPDATES
MONDAY, DECEMBER 2
Cigarroa Campus visit w/ILCs-Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
Stephen Foster Campus visit w/ ILCs-Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3
- McShan Campus visit w/ ED & ILCs-Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
- K. B. Polk Campus visit w/ED and ILCs-Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
- District Principal Meeting @ 9400-2nd-floor Mezzanine for room assignments-7:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
- Highland Meadows visit w/ED and ILCs-Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
- Jill Stone Campus visit w/ED and ILCs-Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
- Conrad/TJ Staff Development @ Stephen Foster- 3:30-4:30 p.m. -2A and Domain 3 (3rd-5th grade teachers)
- Joe May Campus visit w/ED and ILCs-Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
- Jack Lowe visit w/ED & Math ILC-Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
- K. B. Polk Campus visit w/ Reading ILC--Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
- Burnet visit w/ED & Math ILC--Evidence of 2A 'Action plan" implementation
- Deputy Chief & ED Meeting @ 8:30 a.m.
- ED & ILC Planning @ 3:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
UNITED WAY DISTRICT CHALLENGE
The Dallas Independent School District needs your support ensuring the success of the 2019-2020 United Way Employee Giving Campaign. Each year, United Way generously funds district initiatives from pre-school preparation to college readiness and provides a variety of assistance to our students and families outside of the school setting. Maintaining this important source of support requires your help! That’s why we are asking that all Dallas ISD employees donate to the 2019 – 2020 campaign goal of $190,000.
A strong push for our cluster to show up with donations prior to November 5. It is our intention to have at-least $50K raised by then.
- There are three ways to give: Oracle, Give 360 or Cash/Check. Attached are instructions on how to give through Oracle and Give360. (SEE THE LINK BELOW!)
The suggested giving levels for administrators are listed below.
Suggested Giving Levels for Leaders:
Executive Level: $750.00
Mid-Level Management: $300.00
Administrative Level: $25-$100
The School Leadership goal for 2019 – 2020 including org numbers 862+865+923 is $6,000.
IF OUR CLUSTER IS THE WINNING CLUSTER FOR UNITED WAY DONATIONS, THERE WILL BE A PRIZE FOR THE CLUSTER AND THE PRINCIPAL WITH THE HIGHEST DONATIONS GIVEN. MAY THE BEST CAMPUS WIN!
INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO RESOURCES
THE LEADER IN ME
Thinking Maps ~ December ~ The Multi-Flow Map
The Multi-Flow Map Used for Student Behavior Reflections
CONRAD & JEFFERSON ES CLUSTER'S SHINING STARS
Kudos to K.B. Polk ES Robotics Team
1st Place Design & 2nd Place Performance
Say Gobble, Gobble with a Selfie
Instructional Rounds at Jill Stone
BAS Training at Joe May
KMPG Distributes Coats to Cigarroa ES
K.B. Polk Girls Are on the Run
From SEL to Small Group Support @ McShan
Walnut Hill Hawks Making Middle School Choice Decisions
THE CORE 4
Dallas ISD is 20,000 staff members strong, and each one is vital to the work being accomplished in the district. Through the district’s commitment to exemplary customer service, each member is focused on serving 157,000 students and their families by delivering professional, high-quality service in everything we do.
At the heart of great customer service for each district employee are the four tenets of customer service--the Core 4: focused, fast, flexible, and friendly. These principles, also, are key to forging a positive culture within the organization as they are applied, internally, colleague to colleague, as well as to students, families, taxpayers, and the entire community.
It is a strong commitment that goes beyond the conversation about what exemplary customer service looks like becoming the norm for the way we operate in the district every day.
FUTURE IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
CLUSTER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DATES
K-2 BAS Training III
4th Six Weeks at a Glance
2020 LEADER IN ME SYMPOSIUM
BENCHMARK ASSESSMENT SYSTEM (K-2)
SWAG NIGHTS (K-5) & Specials Teachers
SWAG SPECIALIST TEAM LEADS
COMMON ASSESSMENT TIMELINE
Reading ILC Corner
The sound of chatter filled the room as teachers, educators, and researchers made their way into the theater on the second day of ILA 2019. With coffee in hand, the crowd eagerly awaited the beginning of the newly added panel, What Research Really Says About Teaching Reading—and Why That Still Matters.
Click the link above to read the full article.
Math ILC Corner
Grade 3-5 Math Focus
Properties of Multiplication to Generate Strategies
Expiration Rules in Division
Science ILC Corner
FALL 2019 TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES
Oracle Finance Systems and Payroll classes are also available. ATS is now offering a new Open Lab for iExpense. The attached schedule of classes is on our website at: https://www.dallasisd.org/ATS.
See the WAIP 7/18/2019 for more information
IMPORTANT LINKS & INFORMATION TO READ
District 1 Community Meeting - December 5th
100% Scholar Participation in Clubs or Extracurricular Activities in Pre-K-5th Grades
DECEMBER
16-Accountability Training-Domain 3-Region 10 (Staci Barker) Time & Location TBD
17-Principal Winter Solstice
JANUARY, 2020
9-Network Day
FEBRUARY
21-State of the District Address @ Omni Hotel-@10:00
27-Network Day
MARCH
28-United 2 Learn-Community day
APRIL
16-Network Day
JUNE
4-Network Day
10-Principal Luncheon
Marshall Memo #812
Addressing Teacher Stress and Burnout
In this Phi Delta Kappan article, Christopher Jay McCarthy (University of Texas/ Austin) says the conventional explanation for teacher burnout has been dissatisfaction with school administrators and colleagues, lack of autonomy, insufficient resources, and stressful interactions with adults and students. But these can’t be the whole truth since only about 25 percent of teachers report dissatisfaction with working conditions. A more sophisticated explanation is that job dissatisfaction is a mismatch between the pressures teachers feel and the resources available to meet those demands. “This may, in part, explain why some teachers are more vulnerable to stress in their classroom,” says McCarthy, “even compared to neighboring teachers working in the same school with the same types of students… Teachers who chronically find themselves on the losing end of the demand/resource equation are the most vulnerable to stress and most at risk for lowered job satisfaction, greater burnout, and lowered occupational commitment.”
Over the last decade, McCarthy has worked with colleagues to develop the Classroom Appraisal of Demands and Resources tool. Teachers rate 35 factors that place demands on teachers, including student behavior, time pressures, testing, shortages of instructional supplies, and administrators’ behaviors, on a 1-to-5 scale (not at all demanding to extremely demanding), then 30 resources that might help deal with those demands (from very unhelpful to very helpful), including instructional resources, administrators, school counselors and psychologists, teaching aides, parent volunteers, and mentors. Drawing on data from nearly 1,000 teachers who have taken the assessment, the researchers created three groups:
- Resourced teachers – resources exceed classroom demands;
- Balanced teachers – resources are equal to demands;
- Demanded teachers – demands exceed resources.
“When teachers judge that the demands of their job outweigh their resources,” says McCarthy, “they experience stress. But that’s only part of the story – equally important is how they cope with the stress.”
For that third category of teachers (20-25 percent of the workforce), there are two approaches: problem-focused coping (e.g., using an effective classroom management technique or asking an administrator to intervene with a student’s parent) and emotion-focused coping (taking a few deep breaths before calling an upset parent or attending a yoga class to recharge after a long day of staff meetings). These are helpful, but what can school leaders do to prevent stressful conditions from taking their toll?
• Identify teachers who are most vulnerable. This could be done by regular check-in meetings and/or surveys of the entire staff (e.g., the Classroom Appraisal of Demands and Resources, the Perceived Stress measure, or the Maslach Burnout Inventory).
• Deal proactively with stress-producing factors. This might include reducing the demand level for all teachers; scheduling and facilitating teacher teamwork; tailoring class assignments, the number of preps, and the percent of challenging students to teachers’ capabilities (e.g., not assigning new teachers, however eager, to the most difficult classes); assigning mentors; scheduling release time for professional learning; providing schoolwide support for meditation and mindfulness; and increasing teacher autonomy. “Allowing teachers to manage day-to-day functioning of their classrooms and perhaps even participate in decision making for their school not only reduces stress,” says McCarthy; “it also comes at little financial cost. Moreover, under such conditions, teachers can come to see administrators as allies rather than bosses.”
EMMETT J. CONRAD/THOMAS JEFFERSON SCHOOL LEADERSHIP
- Jack Lowe Elementary: Principal, Sandra Barrios
- Jill Stone : Principals, Rosalinda Pratt & Selena Deboskie
- Highland Meadows: Principal, JoAnna Bahena
- David G. Burnet Elementary: Principal, Sonia Loskot
- Leonides Cigarroa Elementary : Principal, Douglas Burak
- Stephen C. Foster Elementary: Principal, Irma De La Guardia
- Joe May Elementary: Principal, Rosseven Nava
- K.B. Polk Elementary: Principal, Kourtnei Billups
- Julian T. Saldivar: Principal, Edgar Jaramillo
- Walnut Hill Elementary: Principal, Phillip Potter
- McShan Elementary: Principal, Joseph Medaris