Weekly Memo Week 15, November 14-18, 2016

Thank you all for your good work with our students last week, even while you were working on making sense of the election results and people’s reaction to them.  Thank you 5th grade teachers for enabling the  5th graders to participate in the Veterans Day Parade and honor those who have served our country.  

COMMUNITY

Veteran’s Day Success in 5th grade

5th Grade students and teachers marched in the Veteran’ Parade Friday morning. Urged to hold this experience as a privilege and an opportunity, students were reminded not to be distracted or engage in political talk but to stay focused on their purpose of joining the day to thank men and women who have given themselves to this country. They were challenged to make eye contact and converse with 2 veterans.  

Library Open 7:30 - 7:50 Each Day

According to the duty schedule Lara and Heidi are in the library each morning ready to supervise students. Please remind your students of this option.  I think many students do not know it is a choice.

Post-Election:  Story Resources to Move Forward

Several faculty have found these free resources from the online story streaming service Sparkle Stories useful as they guide children and families of all opinions in how to care for one another post-election:

• Healing the National Rift is a blog post that provides a free story attempting to address the question, “How do we reach out to the ‘other side’ and make an authentic attempt to heal?”
• This link gives suggestions for how to stabilize children’s worlds when the adults around them may feel emotional or experience change. The gentle and helpful tips are followed by four stories families can listen to with their children, or classrooms together during reflective times.

Kiah Job Share

Kiah and David have been discussing ways to help her achieve a better work life balance.  We are launching the search for a job share partner for Kiah this week.   The job share will allow Kiah to work Monday through Wednesday and the job share partner to work Wednesday through Friday. Please let David know if you have any candidates to recommend.

Say Hey - Partners in Diversity

OES is hosting a Partners in Diversity event on Thursday, November 17th from 5:30-8:00 p.m. and expecting 500 people on campus.  All employees are welcome.

Say Hey! is a large diversity networking event with an average attendance of 500+ professionals (predominantly of color). There will be light hors d'oeuvres and alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. The beginning and end of Say Hey! are exclusively for networking, with a brief program in the middle at 6:15 p.m.

Grandparents and Special Friend’s Day: November 22nd

• 8:00 – 8:40 a.m. Classes start day and prepare to greet guests. Grandparents are in the gym for a presentation.
• 8:45 – 9:45 a.m. Visit Classrooms
• Students do not go to specialist classes during this hour. They remain in their homeroom to make it easier for grandparents and special friends to find them.
• Classroom teachers, please let specialists know if you would like them to come to your class, try to reschedule, or simply cancel the class.
• 9:45 – 10:05 a.m. Recess - Some guests may want to join us on the playground while other may be starting to make their way to the chapel.
• 10:15 – 10:45 a.m. Chapel – Students Grades 1–5  All guests welcome. Festival seating.
• 10:45 a.m. Say Goodbye

LS Holiday Party

November is here and this means a series of holiday celebrations are just around the corner.  The LS Employees Holiday Gathering is on December 12th. Holiday Potluck has become our popular annual tradition.  Home cooked or store bought food dishes are both welcome. If you love to cook, this is your chance to share your home cooked meals, salads and desserts with your colleagues.

Find your food or activity assignment here: POTLUCK 2016.  If you wish to trade your food assignment with another, please let me know and I am more than happy to trade or move your food assignment; this list is not set in stone.

More information:

·         LS Employees Holiday Gathering

·         Venue: LS Library

·         Time: 3:30 pm

Let us have some fun  on Monday, December 12th!

Chapel

Let’s continue our efforts to arrive by 8:05 for an 8:10 start.  We will continue to start Chapel at 8:10 and end at 8:40.  

PNCA Playground Exhibit

An opportunity you all might be interested in; a visit to the Pacific Northwest College of Art exhibition, Extraordinary Playscapes, running Oct. 6-Dec. 17th at the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design at PNCA.  Kirstin attended last week, so see her for more details and photos if you need some inspiration to attend!

PROGRAM

4th Grade ERB’s

All 4th graders are taking standardized tests each morning this week.  Please be aware and have your students transition quietly through our building.

Augmented Reality Sandbox

Sign up if you want to play in the sandbox.  Note times when Tech and Library classes are happening.

Author Visit: Note from Lara Ingham

We are happily anticipating the February 23rd Patricia Polacco visit and would love for you to be part of the planning process.  If you use her books in your work and would like to share with the faculty your favorites and how you have used them in the classroom, please consider joining us Monday November 21 3:15-3:45 in the library to help plan for a sharing at the December 8th faculty meeting,  If you can't meet at this time, please email us with your suggestions so we can incorporate them into our discussion and process.

Look here for a list of her books in our library.  If you click on the book, you can find more information including grade and interest level as well as an annotation.  Additionally if you sign into your Destiny account (which I strongly encourage you to do since you can manage your own resource lists, etc.  It's a great resource) you also can switch to the website tab.  There you will find 5 great websites with author info which could be used with your students as well.  

Remember that your user name for Destiny is your last name first initial and your password should be the one you use for your Google Account.  I am always happy to show you how to access this terrific resource.

Immigration Books

Check out this list and the accompanying display in the library for excellent books to share with students to broaden their ideas of immigration.  With it so much in the news and also in direct connection with recent and upcoming Community Conversations, Lara thought it might be useful to have stories which to help humanize the experience.  You can find the books right at the entrance next to the display of books about the United States Election process.

FLG/PGD Goal Support Monday 3:15-4:00, Flex Classroom

This invitation is open to all but may be particularly useful to faculty in Year 1 of their PGD cycle, or Year 2 participants who are revising their goals.  Come join us to share professional goals, get input into goal writing or implementation, and to set up meetings to discuss year one inventories.

Assistant Teacher Meeting Nov. 16th

The next Assistant Teacher Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 16th (D day) from 12:30-1:15 in the Performance Commons. Topics will include a conference days debrief and brain-based strategies for children in distress. You can access the dates for future meetings here, and we invite Assistant Teachers to add meeting ideas or questions to this agenda planning sheet.

The Confluence

Chris and Kirstin have updated The Confluence.  In the latest posts they tour grade level gatherings and focus on how Lower School gatherings connect us to our OES Identity Statement, and give parenting resources for families to address social-emotional topics with their children that may have come up at conferences. Feel free to link posts in your own blogs if you find content useful for your individual communities.

Tech Update:

AppleTV troubleshooting/testing: Ruben from IT would like to be the first person on the scene to help you when you have a dropped connection from the AppleTV. This will help make the troubleshooting consistent and he can record where/when/conditions that the incidents occur. This should help clear up confusion as to the cause of the connection loss and speed up resolution. We've already made a number of changes that should improve the reliability of the connection to AppleTV so we are recommending at this time the following path...

• Use the LS Tech Checklist over the weekend and Monday morning before start of school.
• Have experienced significant disconnect problems before or during conferences? please send an email to oeshelp@oes.edu with ATV in the subject and include the "Device" or Devices used, and roughly when they occurred. Continue to use wired connections to the projector. After Ruben works with you we'll then ask you to start using it again as you feel comfortable, with wired connection as a backup.
• Haven't used AppleTV to connect? please start using it again. Report as soon as possible your drop to oeshelp@oes.edu with the information above. Have your wired connection ready as a backup.
• Have been connecting with no problems with multiple devices (ipads, macbook etc.) continue to do so and report to oeshelp@oes.edu as necessary, again with ATV as the subject line.

*** Jeffrey will be scheduling room observations over the next few weeks.. for more on "why the heck would he do such a thing" check out the OES LS Technology Google+ Community.

Calendar change: OT Presentation

Originally scheduled for November 15th, we are postponing our discussion with Jenny Alveraz, an Occupational Therapist from Advance Pediatric Therapies until the end of February.

Playground Design

The playground design team meets again on Thursday morning to continue work. The 4-5th graders created a series of informative graphs (through this website) you may enjoy sharing with your class as they reflect on the playground design experience. Click here for a link to some slides that outline the playground design team’s experience.

SST on Thursdays

SST meetings are available on Thursdays from 3:15-4:00 for anyone who would like a whole team approach to supporting a student or students. Please contact your Assistant Head to request a Thursday afternoon SST. Also let us know who you’d like to request to attend.

PGD Site - John Holloran has launched the OES PGD website, which will come to include recommended PGD opportunities and writeups of PGD experiences.

Faculty Meetings  - Faculty Meeting Schedule, Faculty Meeting Agenda

11/14 3:15-4:00    Professional Development Support, Flex Classroom

11/16 12:30-1:15 Assistant Teacher Meeting, Performance Commons

11/17 7:35-8:35 LS Faculty Meeting, Library  

7:35	Compliments
7:45	Playground Update	CT
7:55	Lamb Endowment	EM
8:05	Service Learning	KH
8:15	Patricia Polacco	LI
8:20	PGD Share - VTS, Mindfulness, STEAM	MSR, KM&, JKN, JS, DL

OPERATIONS

Recess Duty Responsibility

A note to all on recess duty: The kids are working hard to return their balls to the bins, and they need our help making sure the bins are put away on the shelves in the shed at the end of every recess.  Please make sure one duty person takes care of this responsibility at the end of every recess so the balls will be there when the children return. When they are left out, students from other divisions use them and don’t know the protocols for how to care for them. The new shed location near the bike racks should help us all remember to keep everything put away at the end of every recess. Thank you!

Request from Shirley

Note to everyone on Dining Commons lunch duty--Shirley has requested that all glasses be filled to or below the line of indentations on the cups.  Children can always ask for more milk or water, but right now Shirley and Kevin are spending more time than usual emptying cups. Thank you!

Loop Road Walkie Talkies

Rod delivered us four walkie talkies for the Loop Road pick up duty.

Channel 3 can be used to communicate with Lyn on the front walkway or Shelley in the bus area.

Loop Road pickup: Use Channel 4 to communicate between the curb and the waiting area. We only have one channel available, so you’ll need to preface it with the child’s grade level (for example, Kindergarten, Student Name).

We will eventually switch to digital walkie talkies and will have more channels available, but this is what we have for now.

Extension Location Change on Thursday, November 17th, 4:35-6:00 p.m.

OES is hosting a Partners in Diversity event on Thursday, November 17th from 5:30-8:00 p.m. and expecting 500 people on campus.  Extension will be moving our program down to SPARC after the first round of activity dismissals at 4:30 p.m.  Parents will pick students up by 4:30 in regular locations.  Extension will leave for SPARC at 4:35 and will be in transit between 4:35-4:45.  We wanted you to have this information in case you receive parent questions.

 

File Cabinets

We have 7 new file cabinets in the storage room, nice two drawer, wheeled cabinets.  Pick one up if you ordered one way back in August.

Plants

We have observed wilted plants and a dead plant in the common areas. Please care for the plants you bought – they are beautiful when proper care is applied including the basic care of watering them as needed.

ADP Tutorial

For help on any ADP related matters: login or registration, password retrieval, or time card approval process, please view this beautiful presentation that Ed Cecere put together.  This is a helpful guide and should answer your ADP related questions.   If you still have problems after using Ed’s helpful guide, please let Veena: iyengarve@oes.edu know.  There is a plan to put the ADP resource link in the LS Employee Resource page for future reference. Stay tune.

Food Handlers’ Cards

Do you serve food to PreK or Extension students at lunch or for snacks?  If so, you need a food handler’s card. They can be obtained online, and fees can be submitted to OES for reimbursement. You can find more information here. Please send Kirstin a copy of your card for our certification records before 11/15.

Library Usage for Classroom Events

When considering using the library as a potential location for your classroom events:

• Notify Lara at least 2 weeks prior to the event and discuss what your expectations are regarding the space to see if it is feasible. Assuming there are no scheduling conflicts, the space can be arranged for small group events.
• Set-up request in general – the Custodial crew needs notice 2 weeks in advance so they can plan their work schedule.  

Substitute Procedures 2016-2017

• Email requests to lssub@oes.edu
• Google Doc of this information here if you’d like to add a copy to your Drive.

Food from Home

Students bring food from home only after we have done the following:

• Worked in partnership with the parents and Bon Appetite to test in-school options
• Had a parent meeting including a Bon Appetite representative and the OES Nurse
• Received doctor’s statement about the medical issue and proposed interventions

Please contact Elaine if you have further questions about how to support a child with dietary needs.

Maintenance Requests

Rod would like us all to return to the usual maintrequest@oes.edu protocol for maintenance requests.  The Maintenance Log will become a view only document.

Your Announcements

Send any announcements you have for faculty to Kirstin, Chris or David by Thursday each week and we will include them in the Weekly Memo.  This should help reduce the number of emails we are receiving, and maximize our time to collaborate during meetings.

Archive

Utilize the archive for previous Weekly Memo.