Weekly Memo Week 26, February 13-17, 2017

Thank you for all your help with Admissions Day on Thursday. What a pleasure to have some OES employee children in the mix. Best of luck with your report writing.  And, best of luck to Tina and her class as they put the finishing touches on their play and prepare to perform at the end of the week.

As a collaborative professional community Lower Faculty Employees will strive to:

• Do what is best for the students
• Assume we are all doing our best at the moment and our intentions are positive
• Be present, participate, contribute, include many voices

• Create a safe space that encourages sharing different opinions, ideas, perspectives
• Seek understanding, be curious about what others think
• Express gratitude, joy and encouragement
• Communicate with compassion, clarity and effectiveness
• Demonstrate respect

COMMUNITY

Timeliness Reminder

Remember our agreement that it is our responsibility to ensure students arrive at their next class or experience on time. That means each of has to stop our class with sufficient time to clean-up and transition students to their next class.

LS Religion Teacher, 2nd Semester. The Plan

Heather will continue to work with the 5th graders

Jenny Cleveland will teach 2nd - 4th religion, and help with special events such as Ash Wednesday, MHCSD, for the remainder of this year.

Jenny Cleveland will teach 2nd - 4th religion for the remainder of this year. See her note below:

I am very excited to connect with you and your students! I know that I have a lot to catch up on - beginning with finding my way around the Lower School and meeting some of you for the first time - and will be in touch in the next few days to get going. Cheers - Jenny (clevelandj@oes.edu)

Kathleen Hicks will teach yoga and mindfulness to PK through 1st grades during the religion class block.  She is also available for additional guest teach. She has to work out family logistics before she can start, maybe this week, certainly next

LS Chapel

3-1-17 Please note that this 3/1 chapel is on Wednesday to observe Ash Wednesday. There is no Tuesday chapel that week.

Tina’s Class Play

See Tina’s sign-up if you want to attend.

Employment Searches

Long Term PE sub (Jessica) - Second phase of decision-making on Monday

Long Term 3rd Grade sub (Tonya) -  Contract signing in process

Long Term 5th Grade sub (Alysa) -  Contract signing in process

2017-18 Hires

LS Chaplain - reviewing resumes

Admissions Visitors

Specialist Feedback Form

Specialists, you offer a unique perspective on our admissions visitors.  Please take the time to complete a Feedback Form for each visitor you teach.  Thanks.

Student Support Team

Check the SST tab or schedule a a time to meet with the team.

PROGRAM

Progress Reports

Progress Report forms are available in teacher.oes.edu.  

From the Library

Our visit with Ms. Patricia Polacco is less than two weeks away!  Here is the schedule as a refresher and here you can find the resource page from our earlier conversations.

8:20 Arrives on campus

9:00-10:00 1st and 2nd grades

10:15-11:15 Pre-K through Primary

11:15-12:15 Lunch with Ms. Polacco-please join us if, and when, you can in the Flex classroom.

Please RSVP if you would like to attend the catered lunch so we can have enough food on hand.  You are always welcome to bring lunch from the cafeteria.

12:30-1:30 3rd-5th grades

If you have any student created work connected to her books, please let me know. We have space at the entrance of the library to publicly display the work.

Additionally, please remind your students about behavior while listening to a presenter and storyteller.  I know she has high expectations around students listening as she presents.  She will take questions, but at the end of the presentation.  Knowing this ahead of time might help students remember to hold their comments and questions until she requests them.  

Virtual Learning

Thanks for all your efforts getting out your virtual learning plans in January! There were some great photos and audio circulating of kids engaged in their home learning experiences. Please take some time at your next team meeting to reflect on what went well, what you’d continue, and what adjustments you might make next time. Keeping an updated plan ready to go will help you easily meet the 9 am deadline for any inclement weather closures.

For your reference, here’s the screencast Chris made of how to save your Google Doc so people outside OES can view it. Please let Chris, Kirstin or the tech team know if you need any support with the technology end of your plan and distribution.

Faculty Meetings: Faculty Meeting Schedule, Faculty Meeting Agenda

• Monday 2/13 - LS Faculty Meeting, 3:15 LS Library
• Thursday, 2/16 - LS Report Proofing, no meeting

Reporting Timeline

Tuesday, Feb. 14, 8:00am: Reports due to colleagues for proofing

Monday, Feb. 20, 8:00am: PCR Locks. Reports posted reports to PCR.

Friday, Feb. 24: Reports go out to parents, ERBs sent via US mail.

Thursday-Friday, Mar. 2-3: LS Conferences

Report Proofing Plan

• Grade Level Classroom Teachers - proof each others
• Primary - Shelley proofs Chris O's
• Art - Chris proofs Margaret’s grades 3-5, Kirstin proofs Laura’s and Margaret grades 1-2
• Music - Kristen and Amy proof each others
• PE - Proof each others
• Spanish - Kelola proofs Alfredo’s. Chris proofs Kelola's.
• Science - David proofs Jane’s

New science play equipment has been added to the Kindergarten playground, funded by a Beginning Years application to the Lamb Endowment. The Lodge teachers will be introducing these materials to their students this week.  If you supervise PreK, Kindergarten or Primary students on that playground, here are the agreements for the new materials:

• Materials will be stored undercover in the east area of the playground
• We’ll begin with the ramps, towers and balls and add water later
• To begin, we’ll use the materials for science explorations/inquiry and keep them together in the east section of the playground (not on the slide, for use in building forts, as props, etc.)
• When we do add water, the pump is for water only (no dirt or bark chips).
• It’s important children do not throw the wooden balls. “You may roll the balls” or “Rolling is the safe way to use these” may be helpful phrases.
• The materials should be sorted and stored at the end of every recess, which may mean designating a few extra minutes to cleaning up before ringing the bell

Thanks for your help in establishing positive use and caretaking routines with these new materials!

Gatherings

Thursday and Friday 2/16-17 - Akehurst Class will share their class play

Friday 2/24 - All LS Love Assembly

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.

2/6 Assistant Teacher Meeting Rescheduled to 2/27

The Feb. 6th Assistant Teacher Meeting has been rescheduled to Monday, February 27th to accommodate a hiring visit. This is still a D day--the change has been made to the calendar.

OPERATIONS

VALIC Appointments

OES is proving you with the opportunity for free financial consulting with Valic. Sign-up online for your own session with a Valic advisor.

Rotating Calendar Confusion

February and March are a bit confusing. Since the rotation days are the same between all divisions and we all have different report writing days off, the days get out of order. I have pulled from the Year Long Intensive Schedule and added some notes to clarify.

A friendly reminder that your Google Calendar has your schedule and should be your go-to for knowing days and classroom schedules. This is our first year and it is bound to be messy. If you want Chris to review your schedule with you, she is happy to meet.

There have been a lot of parent conversations, professional development efforts and instruction around the area of growth mindset lately. We’d love to invite you to use your best growth mindset around the schedule.  Yes, adjusting to a new schedule is frustrating! Yes, trying something new sometimes means learning from the things that don’t work out! Your feedback and ideas will help us improve things for next year, so we’ve created this document for ongoing schedule feedback. And in the meantime, here are some phrases we use with kids that may be helpful for our students and for us:

Flex Classroom

When a group uses the Flex Classroom for a meeting that they need to put the room back in order and ready for teaching. I have drawn a map on the whiteboard for reference.

FIre Drill in Chapel

In the future, if there is a drill during Chapel, I would ask the front two pews to use the back door ( to the right of the altar when facing it) to speed our exiting from the Chapel.

Early Dismissal Plan/ Emergency Dismissal Plan

All LS employees are expected to remain for at least 30 minutes after the scheduled dismissal time to help with student management.  We will plan for the dismissal of faculty after assessing how many students we have remaining.

Employee Resources

A helpful tool is created in the OES website for employees to save time searching different sites when you need to access the basic forms like check request, catering, maintenance requests and other resources. Check out this link:

Employees Quick Links

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.

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.