Hawk Herald
News and Notes for Teachers- April 8
Dear Staff
There are still students asking how to find out their GPA and how to get into StudentVue to see their grades. It's great to see they are taking ownership of their education. This is an important part of advisory. Let students know how to advocate and inform themselves about their own education. Thanks to all of you who are making that time valuable for students.
Mary
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
― Rumi
You can also find the newsletter on the staff site: Staff Site
Spring Pictures-Monday
All 8th graders and those 7th graders that want to. The schedule will be sent out on Monday.
PLCs- Wednesday
End of Quarter 3
Friday grade prep
Game Day
Dual Language Meeting
Passes required
Meetings and Events
Monday-8 No meeting week (except for IEP meetings and teacher generated meetings)
- Advisory Calendar
- Pictures in the library
- DL meeting 3:30 rm 211
Tuesday-9 Principals' meeting-Mary out all day
- Team Meeting 8:00
Wednesday-10
- PLCs
Thursday-11 Fire Truck visit on the side of the building for Head Start
- Team Meeting 8:00
- Game Day 2:20 ( Jenae will send out more info)
- Game Day Schedule
Friday-12
- No school/ Grade Prep day (Make sure you can be reached if needed)
Link to Form to submit
Self-Assessment Survey(SAS)
Below you will find the link to the your school’s Self-Assessment Survey (SAS). It is an anonymous survey. It should take you about 10 minutes to complete. The results of this survey will give us an idea of what supports you (licensed and classified) feel are in place and which are a priority for our school.
The survey will be open from today until April 20th. We will use the results to help with behavioral supports planning for next year.
https://www.pbisassessment.org/Anon/w1i30EWI3G0
Thanks!
Jenn Johnson and the Universal Supports Team
Language Central
Here are some links from last weeks Academic Seminar:
A place to understand, create and support language for access to learning.
Link: Language Objective Generator
Sample:
Hawk's Nest
A Massachusetts School Helps Its High-Risk Students Manage Stress
In this Kappan article, Ellen Spiegel, director of BRIDGE Alternative Middle School in Massachusetts, shares precepts and strategies her school has developed to work with their population of high-risk students:
• Create a calm environment. “Stress reduction can be taught, learned, and practiced successfully in the classroom,” says Spiegel. Some BRIDGE procedures:
- Drop Everything and Relax (DEAR) – Every morning, the entire school engages in this relaxation and stress reduction process, and DEAR is used at other points each week.
- Positivity points – Students are acknowledged for showing kindness, support, and gratitude toward one other.
- Stress balls – These inexpensive squeeze objects give students a simple way to release tension during classes and calm down when they feel stressed or angry.
- Therapy dogs – A licensed therapy dog “makes a great contribution to the school’s emotional climate,” says Spiegel, “often helping staff connect with students who are frustrated, depressed, and/or angry, especially when they seem unwilling to talk.” Students sometimes spend time with the dog before filling out an incident report.
- Classical music – This plays in the hallways and during individual work time and serves to create a calm environment.
- Soothing visuals – Pastel colors, soft light, and photographs of beaches, mountainsides, and waterfalls in counseling offices and other spaces ease stress and help de-escalate conflict.
Not every student finds these strategies helpful,” says Spiegel, “but some of them do seem to respond to one or another kind of visual environment, so we make a range of them available.”
• Ensure that students feel physically and emotionally safe. “Growing up in a chaotic and unstable environment creates toxic stress,” says Spiegel, “which can affect a child’s ability to regulate emotions or respond appropriately to disappointments and provocations.” These steps are designed to address students’ needs:
- Human dignity policy – This is the school’s explicit set of values, behavioral norms, and beliefs about how students and staff should communicate with and treat each other. It makes clear that students should not say rude, mean, or disrespectful things – and why – and helps prevent conflicts and explosive behavior.
- Crisis skills – Students know that staff are trained to stay calm, de-escalate kids in crisis, and deal effectively with negative outbursts.
- Take-five space – Each classroom has a semi-private area for students who need to calm themselves down. The school’s goal is to get students to the point where they can independently regulate and redirect angry emotions.
- Drawing or journaling – When students appear sad or depressed, they are encouraged to write or color about it, and this calms them and gives staff a starting point for counseling.
- Independent work spaces – When students can’t function safely within classrooms, they go to designated alternative spaces to calm down and talk.
Having students feel the school is a safe space is the first step to dealing with deeper problems.
• Give students a way to communicate their feelings. These are a few of the ways BRIDGE helps students get their pent-up emotions out in the open:
- Check-ins – These scheduled daily or weekly meetings are an opportunity to talk about issues and build trust with staff members.
- Signal charts – When they enter their homeroom each day, students choose a slip of paper showing whether they are happy, cool, sad, or angry/frustrated and attach it to a chart by their name, perhaps jotting some specifics. This gives staff a heads-up about issues students may be dealing with.
- Mood cards – As students take their seats in regular classes, they display a green card for I’m cool, a yellow card for I’m unsure, and a red card for I’m frustrated. Again, this gives teachers advance notice of possible problems.
- Mood checks – Alternatively, a teacher might pass a ball around asking each student to rate his or her mood on a 1-5 scale, with others listening without interrupting. This reinforces the school’s effort to get students to pay attention to one another’s feelings and treat each other with respect, sympathy, and compassion.
- Circles – Each day ends with a student-led discussion called a Wrap-Up, giving students and staff a chance to reflect on the day and raise questions or concerns.
- Restorative justice – This quasi-judicial process gives students who’ve been harmed a way to make things right. Everyone involved in a negative incident – victims, witnesses, and offenders – has a chance to speak, with the goal of understanding what happened, why it happened, and agreeing on a way to repair any physical and/or emotional damage.
“Recognizing what children go through is not enough,” Spiegel concludes; “educators must be determined to create and implement the many kinds of strategies that meet their needs. The nation’s public schools can help all students succeed, whether those students are dealing with minor stressors or major traumas, but doing so will require a great and lasting commitment"South Meadows Middle School
Email: mendezm@hsd.k12.or.us
Website: http://schools.hsd.k12.or.us/southmeadows
Location: 4690 Southeast Davis Road, Hillsboro, OR, United States
Phone: 503-844-1220
Facebook: facebook.com/SouthMeadowsMiddleSchool