Thursday, September29, 2011

Please welcome our three new staff members, hired to support our bulging first and fifth grade classes.  Dana Creekmore will be working every morning till lunch.  The Creekmore family relocated to Middleton from Kansas this past summer and have two children attending school at the Heights.  Britney Barton is a 2011 C of I graduate, holding a secondary teaching certificates and patiently waiting to enter the profession.  Megan VanKomen is currently attending the ACE program at NNU, studying elementary education.  Next year she will do her student teaching in preparation for her certificate.  Please go out of your way to welcome these women and help them learn all those unstated school norms.  It is always difficult to join a staff after the year has started, but more difficult when you work part time. 

October conferences are scheduled for Thursday night October 27th and Friday morning, October 28th.  To offer conferences to every family, we will reduce the time slots to ten-minutes each.  Thursday conferences will be 3:45-7pm and Friday from 8-12:30pm.  Friday afternoon is noncontractual.  Begin to plan for reduced time by brainstorming efficiency strategies.  Classified staff work the same days  as teachers, so are also scheduled for these conference sessions.

MTI course to be offered at Heights!  If you haven't taken the required MTI course, this might be your best opportunity.  We have ten reserved spots if you let me know soon.  The dates are Mondays: (4:30 - 9:00) Jan 30, Feb. 6, 13, 20, 27; Mar. 5 and Saturdays; (8:30 - 5:30) Feb. 11 and 25.  Let me know if you want one of the special spots.

Please make sure that you stagger your entry to the lunchroom according to your assigned time.  Fourth and second grade should come through the line first, since their skills and coordination are slightly better, allowing the line to move smoothly.  First grade students should arrive no earlier than 11:45am.  If they have music or PE just prior, they can use the extra minutes to wash their hands at the bathrooms.  Hand wipes should be saved by second lunch students coming from the playground.

We took a team of teachers to Tier 1 PBIS training on Wednesday.  The information and team time was valuable to this committee in gaining understanding of the process and purpose of the PBIS system.  Team members developed a good plan for taking our efforts to the next level.  There is still plenty of discussions and decisions to be made as an entire staff.  Plan to meet during collaboration on October 26th as a full staff.

Today we will put a spreadsheet class list in your mailbox.  Please mark all students, according to your records, as to whether they should receive their responsibility character patch.  The criteria is described in our PBIS document (linked to the PBIS blog page).  The office will mark students who received office referrals or bus citations.  Please return these sheets to Yvonne's box as soon as possible.  In the coming months we may have you simply mark the spreadsheet on the t:drive.

Next week your grade level representative will work on the MTI Regional Unit Studies on Thursday and Friday.  Those sessions have been moved to Middleton.  I am working with Catherine Beals to have her come back as our math coach to work with teacher teams in half day segments, allowing you time to continue the work from these regional unit studies and your mapping from June.  Catherine is not available until early November for this project.