Weekly Memo Weekly Memo 44, Summer 2017

We hope your summers are off to a great start! Thanks for all your work getting reports out to families, handing up student files and preparing your technology for processing.

COMMUNITY

Lower School Office Staff

Lyn, Kathy, Chris and Kirstin are off for the month of July.  They will return August 7th. David is off July 24 - August 7.

New Faculty

If you’re on campus and run into our new PreK teacher, Kimie Fukuda, please introduce yourself and say hello.  She is teaching summer classes with Carole. If you’re extra lucky around town and campus, you may also run into our new third grade teacher, Suzanne Lee, or our new fifth grade teacher, Mary Duden. Welcome, Kimie, Suzanne and Mary!  

Students Not Returning for 2017-18

• Olivia Barron
• Gregory Carney
• Joseph Fenton
• Noah Fenton
• Renee Flavell
• Blake Hardy
• Cade Hardy
• Declan Kail
• Alexa Neal
• Mark Neal
• Kai Nozaki
• JaSier Ramsey
• Lily Sachse
• Alice Thomas
• Patrick Thomas
• Lauren Ulbrich
• Riley Ulbrich

Summer Building Use

Kati has figured out which spaces will be use for what camps this summer. She is spreading use around the whole campus. Review the spreadsheet link and let Kati or David know if you have any questions. She tried to let teachers teach camp in their own rooms.

Designated rooms planned use

PROGRAM

Opening Days Schedule:

Please see the schedule from Mo for details on our August schedule.

LS Events Calendar

The draft of the LS Events Calendar is in the LS Conference Room. During your stipend days take some time to look at your student’s, parents’ and colleagues’ experience across the year. Adjust your events as you see appropriate. Talk with others as is helpful.

Curriculum Order

Chris has ordered curriculum materials for handwriting and math. If your team wants other curriculum materials, please let her know in August.

• Handwriting without Tears for grades K-4. 55 copies for each grade level. Primary needs to contact Chris with which book to order.
• Bridges Student books v. 1& 2 55 copies for each grade level.
• Home Connection: Grade 2-5
• Student Bridges: Grades K-5
• Number Corner: Grade 2

Laptop Pick-up

Faculty laptops are ready for pick-up from the Tech Department. Plan on 20 minutes for the check-in of loaner/ checkout of laptops. Teaching Assistant laptops will be ready for pick-up during faculty meeting week in August. If any assistants need computer access for school projects during the summer, Tech will provide a loaner.

Beginning Years Resources

BY members should have received an email from Kirstin with access to a Google Team Drive where you can access and add shared documents.  This would be a great place to add documents you generate in your stipend that you want to share with the rest of BY. Please pay particular attention to the BY Summer 2017 document where she’ll add relevant information throughout the summer for you to check at your leisure instead of emailing you everything separately. Feel free to add questions for the BY team regarding setup, materials, etc.

Summer Reading

Hopefully everyone received their copies of Creating Cultures of Thinking and Piecing Me Together from their mailboxes. The pink bookmark in the Ritchhart book makes some recommendations for reflection, and we hope discussions will take place at your team summer stipends, as well. We will discuss and work with Creating Cultures of Thinking in our opening Lower School meetings, so please be sure to have read the book before August 30th.  The Piecing Me Together discussion will take place August 29th.

Professional Development Opportunities--Please RSVP before August 1st

We are thrilled to be able to offer another Harvard Project Zero course, similar to the online class Colesie, Katherine, Deborah, Carole, Chris and Kirstin took this spring. We loved the way the structure and resources of the class inspired and guided us to collaborate in a deep and meaningful way. The new course is designed by Ron Ritchhart, author of Creating Cultures of Thinking and you can read more about it here:

http://www.pz.harvard.edu/professional-development/online-courses/creating-cultures-of-thinking

This online course runs Sept. 18th through Dec. 17th. The application deadline is Aug. 7th, so please email Kirstin by August 1st (mcauleyk@oes.edu) if you would like to participate. The course only accepts applications of teams of 3-6 people, and the requirements include a one week online orientation and six two-week online content sessions.  You will meet with your team for about two hours per content session. The overall time commitment is about 3-4 hours/week. If we hear from more than six of you we’ll prioritize by trying to get representation across grade levels/specialties.

Professional Development Opportunities--Online

Harper and Sabine Bliss’ mom, Desiree, passed along discount information for an online course on Grit by Angela Duckworth, $18 instead of the usual $100 until July 7th for 44 min. of short videos, articles and supplementary resources on blending passion and persistence. Use the code TEACHERSROCK.

Teachers College, Columbia University and the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) are relaunching The Science of Learning–What Every Teacher Should Know MOOC (massive open online course) as a self-paced course on the edX platform. Created by Professor Pearl Rock Kane and Dr. Kevin Mattingly, both faculty at Teachers College, the course explores, through current research, how we learn — the way our brain makes, stores, and retrieves memories.  The course is free and open to all. Enroll today! bit.ly/2q8H8Bs#edsci1x

Fountas and Pinnell

Ari is scheduling two full day trainings (K-2, 3-5) with with Fountas and Pinnell trainers so K-5 have consistent training with the new Fountas and Pinnell Reading Assessment system: the implementation as well as the implications for instruction. This training will happen during the day (with sub coverage) in late September. Ari and Chris are buying and distributing kits this summer for assessments after the training.

Summer Stipends

Summer Stipends have been assigned. As you schedule, please enter your schedule for your summer stipends in the linked spreadsheet: Summer Stipend Scheduling. There are two documents you will need to submit to Lyn when you return in August in order to be paid for your time:

• Summer stipend completion form
• Summer report
• Forms can be  found in LS Important Docs, in the “Summer Stipend” folder.

During your stipend time, we ask grades 1-5 create Year At A Glance (YaaG) plan. A YaaG document helps to think about unit planning and timing for the school year. This is helpful as many of us have experienced a year in Bridges, we can see how the timing has worked and areas where we struggled to stay on target. Hopefully outlining a timeline for the year can help us hit and align all of our academic units and project highlights/milestones as best we see fit. Here are 2 examples of YaaG planning documents I have used: YaaG 1 and YaaG 2.

When we get back together we’ll be doing some work with the metaphor of “Big Rocks” from Creating Cultures of Thinking. You and your team might find this ‘big rocks’ reflection sheet another helpful reflection to guide your discussions.

Your team may also find the Purpose to Practice planning sheet helpful during your stipend.  BY began with this form at their last meeting: its intent is to help you distill the most important focus/priorities for your grade level (the big rocks!) and then to plan for your principles, structures and practices around those priorities. Send a copy/photo to your Assistant Heads when you complete one so they know about your thinking and can support your work!  We’ll also be working with this form in the fall.

If you missed it or need the link for the resource slides that Kirstin shared at the May LS Faculty meeting, you can access it here.

Schedules

During your stipend days, it may be helpful to reference the daily rotating schedule and the intensive rotating schedule. The duty schedule will be shared in August, as will the class and specialist schedules. Please review last year’s schedule and let Chris know if there are any changes made last year that are not reflected in this schedule. Google calendars will be made in August using this document.  

OPERATIONS

Laptops: From Brad Baugher (more details in his 6/17 email)

The faculty laptops that were turned in by last Wednesday, June 21st are ready to pick up. Classroom teachers and administrators are welcome to drop into the Drinkward Center Technology Room between 9-11 am and 1-3 pm anytime this week or next (except July 4th) to pick yours up. There are a couple of things the tech team will need to do after you log in for the first time so expect to spend a few minutes when you are here.

You could save some time by reading the OES Faculty Laptop Acceptance Agreement before you arrive to pick up your laptop and adding your name to the form that is linked in that document. This step is now required before you may receive your laptop.

For those who are unable to come in the next two weeks, you can either drop into the technology office on the second floor of the Drinkward Center and take your chances that someone will be here, or you can contact Scott Thomas (thomass@oes.edu) or Brad B. to set up a time to meet.

Cooling the Building

In an effort to realize the energy efficiency of our building, here are the basics of keeping your room cool. Remember that part of the building design is to provide a wider temperature range,  as low as 66 during heating season and as high as 76 degrees in cooling season.

1. Nighttime air flush to cool building down. Automatic, no teacher action required.

2. Open windows in am to cool room further

3. Press green light button, after opening windows, to increase airflow, cooling

4. After green light goes off, close windows and let building manage cooling

Your Announcements

Send any announcements you have for faculty to Kirstin, Chris or David by Thursday each week August-June 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.

Employee Resources

A helpful tool can be found  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.