RNNE Team and Family Launcher
Goal-oriented and intentional. Intervention.Authentic Team.
"...rooted in a love ethic."
“The greatest movement for social justice our country has ever known is the civil rights movement and it was totally rotted in a love ethic.” – bell hooks
The work that you each engage in everyday is a modern day civil rights battle cry to those who find it easier to place negative labels and criticisms on our students, their families and the communities we partner alongside. Most importantly, with our team, the choices we make and the actions we take are all rooted in a love ethic. Our love ethic is evident in your level of engagement in PD and continuing to sharpen your iron as an educator, in the ways that you publicly and privately shout each other out as a support system, how you reach out to families and build lasting relationships based on trust and love as well as in how you pour relentlessly over your lesson planning and execution to ensure that you are providing high quality instruction to your Rocketeers each day.
Know that your work, your impact and your influence do not go unnoticed and are the pillars of the civil rights fight for educational and social equality we are building here at RNNE.
Love you all always,
Christa
Academic Focus Areas
-Coaches will observing and providing feedback on the following instructional areas throughout this week:
From before the Winter Break
Sticky Key Points
1. All key points written on an anchor chart – what, why and how
2. [Humanities] Stick Key Points chants on a chart and taught to students
From Data Day Sessions
Enduring Skills
1. Have teacher exemplars written for each question in your lesson plan.
2. Tag your question + exemplars tagged with the key point it aligns to.
3. Review key points in each part of your lesson cycle/block. Be explicit in your model of the key points, and push student thinking throughout the times when they are sharing out whole group and/or practicing on their own.
Types of Talk
Goal: 2 minutes of student talk per 5 minutes
Culture Focus Area
Do It Again/Sweat the Details = 100%
Instill in students their ability to be excellent for themselves and for the future that they want. Do not lower expectations for them or accept anything less than excellent from them. To students, the messages that we convey to them through our words, tone and actions communicate to them the belief and confidence that we have in them to be great.
1.
Have and hold high expectations of 100% for all students.
2. When the expectation is not met fully, immediately have the class/group re-do the expectation so that they understand the value that you place in their education and the urgency in meeting expectations.
3. Use a positive and encouraging tone when having students re-do; use the sentence stems from our Do It Again session on Monday (“That was okay, but I know that you can do it even better…”, “[name of cohort], I know that you show me how to walk in HALLS in even better than that” and one that Ms. Barr shouted Ms. Weber out for – “Try it again. There is nothing wrong with doing it again, it just needs to be better.”
*Be prepared for Coaches to provide “in the moment” coaching to you if/when they recognize a moment in your class where students need to Do It Again – this helps to build your eye and development towards recognizing these moments on your own.
Thursday PD
One of the focus areas that I named this past Monday for our staff was to focus on self-reflection and a tighter feedback loop of teacher development.
Beginning on Thursday and continuing with every Thursday, there will be engaging in two protocols as a staff to sharpen our iron so that we can continue to see academic progress in our classrooms. The following protocols are two of the ones that I engaged in as a teacher every week at my KIPP school in Chicago and truly helped to accelerate my growth and development as a teacher while also continuing to build a culture of team and consistent language throughout the building.
1. Protocol #1: Video Analysis – you and a partner will engage in video analysis by watching a clip of each other’s classroom/lesson execution and providing peer feedback based on our school-wide/content based focus areas. Coaches will take care of video recording and sharing your clips with you before the analysis.
2. Protocol #2: Student Work Analysis – you and your grade level/content team will engage in a student work analysis to determine areas of focus for groups of students in order to help move them towards mastery. Bring your latest exit ticket/independent work from all of your cohorts – bring 2 HIGH, 2 MEDIUM and 2 LOW from each cohort.
Report Cards
Parent/Teacher Conferences Days are scheduled for February 4th-5th.
Report Cards will be ready to print on 1/27/16.
100% of Report Card Conferences are expected to be completed by EOD February 19, 2016. Your grade level coach will be checking the status of your conference completion.
If you would like for your coach to join a conference with you, reach out to them as soon as possible so that they can block of time to join.
All report cards must be returned (signed copies only) to Mrs. Rogers no later than 4:30pm on February 19, 2016. It is imperative that we have all signed report cards by this date as they are legal documents that must be filed in each student’s cum file. When we are audited by the district, they check for updated signed report cards.
Each grade level is responsible for printing their report cards.
Dress Code
Purple jackets and sweaters inside of the building,
Build in time for students to get their outerwear coats, hats and gloves when leaving for lunch/recess.
Build in time for students to put their outerwear coats, hats and gloves when coming back from lunch/recess. Be sure to check for 100% dress code compliance after the lunch/recess period with your cohort.
*If the temperature is 35 degrees or below, recess will be held inside.
Teacher Evaluations
mportant Update on Teacher Performance Evaluations (Math/Science and Humanities Teachers)
Over the summer at PD, we shared an overview of the updated teacher performance evaluation for 2015-16 with all teachers.
(1) A full 1-5 rating scale with data cut-offs for all student achievement and parent metrics is now available. (In the summer we provided the metrics and level 4 rating but not the full 1-5 scale). Rating scale may be found in this powerpoint.
(2) A complete Teaching Performance Rubric that details what a 1-5 rating looks like, in alignment with our updated instructional model is available. The categories are the same as in previous years and what was shared in the summer but there is now a full rubric. You may view the full rubric here.
Dismissal
Upcoming Events
This week, several members of the network team will be on campus:
Preston Smith
Lynn Liao
Jaclyn O’Brien
Alex Murillo
Low on School Leader Support on Monday, 1/11:
Caity will be out of town, Almeta will be out, Christa will be teaching four reading groups in 3/4th grades and Danny will be teaching 4th grade math.
AP Interviews/Low on School Leader Support on Tuesday, 1/12:
Christa will be out all day at AP Interviews being held at RUA, Caity will be teaching four reading groups in 3/4th grades and Danny will be teaching 4th grade math.
Wednesday –
Teacher Interview 8am-12pm; one candidate
School Walkthrough with Jaclyn O'Brien
Thursday -
PD begins at 2:30pm
Friday -
School Walkthrough with Jaclyn O'Brien