Friday, August 25, 2017

Dear Faculty,

First full week of the school year in the bag AND snapshot conferences complete! We thank all of you for the time you set aside for hosting all of these and have already received feedback from many of you on the value you found in listening to parents. Hopefully we’ll see many of you at the Board/Social tonight to celebrate a great week together.

Thank you’s (anyone to thank?  Let Lori or Keryn know and we’ll include it here :) )

• Grade 2 for the inception of the Snapshot conference idea - so much great feedback already from parents and faculty!  Thank you.

• Sobha, Marcus and Ross for covering for some of our new teachers to attend our ES parent coffee
• Linda, Ron and Melissa for a wonderful ES coffee presentation to parents on transitions
• All homeroom and EAL teachers for hosting snapshot conferences - parents have already expressed SUCH appreciation.  Thank you!
• Everyone who signed up for an ES or school wide committee or team this year
• All the teachers and teacher assistants offering an ASA this year
• Hilary, Jet, Rachael, Alex, Teena for helping with the ASA handovers in the ES Cafeteria this week

Back to School Afternoon - Tuesday 29th
Schedule
4:00 -  4:30pm : Session 1 in the homeroom

4:35 - 5:10pm: Specialists in the ES Cafeteria

5:15 - 5:45      : Session 2 in the homeroom

**Please ensure parents know venues for homeroom sessions via Edmodo

** Snacks will be served from 3:30-4pm in the faculty lounge.

**Duties for this evening can be found here  

There will be duty supervision from 3:30pm until 5:45pm on all regular recess play areas, with Early Years 3 and 4 in the CIC. We will communicate alternate venues in the event of rain; most likely CIC, FAC Cafeteria and/or Atrium.

Elementary Community Member Introductions

We will be introducing a different Elementary faculty member each week so that our whole community knows who is who in our section, and the fabulous work they are doing with your children and their teachers. Our first ES community introduction is below.

Introducing Rachael Moser - one of our Elementary Instructional Coaches

Did you know that Rachael Moser not only taught pre-school and kindergarten in Ohio, children's theater in New York, fifth grade and was a math coach in North Carolina before becoming a full-time instructional coach in 2012. She has also acted in film, and voiced Fifi on an English version of Hello Kitty cartoon series. Rachael’s first passport stamp was when she arrived here in Chennai, India, and if she could trade lives with anyone, it would be Sally Ride, who on June 18th, 1983 became the first woman in space! However, Rachael being the wonderful caring individual she is, also states, “I wouldn't want to trade, as that would take the experience away from her”, so she would just want to ‘relive’ Sally’s experience!  

Rachael - we thank you for all the amazing work you do with curricular instruction, assessment, and inquiry learning across our whole Elementary section.  

Yearbook Photos next week - please make sure you have informed your class parents via Edmodo -  Schedule

Items for mud kitchen and real kitchen

We are still looking for additional wooden utensils, metal bowls, pots and pans for our both our mud kitchen and our real kitchen. Please bring any items you feel would be of use to the real kitchen and we can sort where they go. Thank you in advance!

Knowing what is Expected

As Andrew mentioned in the recent All Faculty meeting, as a school, we are continuing to use data from the Gallup Q12 survey to engage in improvement across 12 areas. For those of you here last year, our Elementary section was in the 3rd percentile for question one (I know what is expected of me at work).

We debriefed this in a meeting last spring and recognised a number of things.

First, this is not always straightforward and clear cut. Second, often there are times where expectations come from not only our section, but from either Dan’s office or school wide priorities.  Lori and I have thought about this a lot and worked hard with the  orientation schedule to include both team meeting time and specific meeting times with coaches facilitating.  

As you know, this will continue throughout the year with the hope that this continues to add the consistency, rigor as well as bring about greater clarity to overall expectations. If you  have any other ideas of how we can continue to build on all of us understanding and working towards what is expected, please let me know!

Knowing what is expected will be an ongoing goal within our ES section this year.

Leadership opportunities and expectations
All teachers at AISC are expected to contribute to the wider life of our school.  This can be, but is not limited to:

• Grade team leadership
• Curriculum Area leadership
• Elementary section team leadership
• Vertical curriculum area team leadership
• iLab or CNet team leadership
• ASA leadership
• Coaching leadership

Thank you to all those who have already signed up, offered or been selected for a leadership role in one or more of these areas.

If you have not, please think about what it is you are going to offer and commit to for this academic year. You can talk about this at your upcoming PG&E meeting with your supervisor in September.

PGE (professional growth and evaluation)

We will begin scheduling these meetings in the next week or so. All new faculty will be on the New Teacher (NT) pathway.  Returning teachers either Professional Growth pathway or SAP-S/X; in many cases, teachers have the choice of remaining on Self Assessment or returning to Professional Growth. Click here to see your PG&E supervisor and the pathway we believe you are on. The documents to complete are being updated and will be shared as soon as they are ready.  

• PGP Paperwork due by September 15th
• NT and SAP Paperwork by Sept 30th
• SAP-X Quad Blogging Meeting October 15

Report Card Committee

This committee has been working hard to revise the report card for this year.  We have confirmed most of our standards, and you will find them to be much broader and more conceptual than previous years. As with any school with an inquiry pedagogy, understandings can be anchored to many different knowledge or content areas and so regardless of where the children go with their investigations, these conceptual standards can be used to assess them.

We are also drafting new level/indicators to replace beginning, developing, applying and extending.

First Early Release Faculty Meeting

Next Wednesday’s meeting is an Early Release. Dan and his team will be rolling out the different strands of professional learning. You will be invited to sign up to join one of these strands, and if you are not sure what to select, please come talk to Lori or I.  Sign ups will be open for the next few weeks as the first strand ‘class’ is not until November.

MAP Testing

Homeroom and EAL teachers - When you’re ready to start thinking about MAP testing, here are some handy documents you’ll want to review prior to testing (which begins the week of Sept. 4th):

• The draft schedule which is still open to changes to best meet the needs of your students. See Lori. She loves working with schedules :-)
• Teacher log-in page Make sure you have (or reset) your password prior to your first day of testing.
• The Step By Step Guide: Follow these steps like you were cooking your best meal for Gordon Ramsay. This is not a time to get creative or muddle through. Do what it says. Exactly. If you need a refresher on proctoring, touch base with Lori for a review session.
• Student instruction page to be read prior to testing (You may want to print this page for easy reference.)

If you’d prefer to procrastinate, the above information will be repeated next week.

Class Photos

Class group photos will be taken this year by Shannon.  

EY - Grade 1 will be inside some of the new classroom spaces (one location per grade level)

Grades 2-5 will be outdoors in the courtyard.  

EY - Grade 1 photos will be in early September and Grade 2-5 in October.  

Hazel &  Shannon have coordinated times here; If there is a special event eg. writing celebration or field trip scheduled during your time we are unaware of, please communicate directly with Hazel.

Best of luck with Back To School presentations on Tuesday!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Warmly,

Keryn & Lori