LS Weekly Memo Week 8, September 26-30, 2016

Thanks to all for your creativity in making our first all in one night BTSN work.  With each week we are figuring more and more out about our new teams, building and schedule.  Thursday’s faculty meeting will be focused on fine tuning our operations and learning about dyslexia. Friday will be spirited.

Building Updates

Building Issues

Jon and I do our walkthrough tomorrow afternoon.  Be sure your Building Issues are on listed.

LS Building Open on Homecoming

Thanks to those who signed up to be a LS Building Guide this Friday.  We will open the building from 3:15 - 4:15 pm on Friday with a couple of people in each wing. Teachers, please lock your room if you are not going to be in it. Who knows how many folks will come.

Daily Operations

• All windows need to be fully operable to support cooling of the building.
• All blinds and shades need to be fully operable for safety
• The exposed concrete plays a critical role in heating and cooling the building
• Limit the electricity demands you are adding to the building

COMMUNITY

Homecoming Pep Rally, Walk for Fun and more

Friday will be busy.

Uniform Optional Day - OES Spirit Day

8:10 - Pep Rally

8:30 - 2:00 Walk for Fun

3:15 - 4:15 LS Building Open

4:15 - Homecoming Events begin

Upper School Student Help

Beginning Thursday, September 22,  Robin will have a new team of Upper School students available to perform all types of on-campus service:

Every Wednesday, 10:20-10:50 (note that this is only half an hour & adjust your expectations accordingly!)

Every Thursday, 10:50-11:50

They’ll do anything—indoors, outdoors, office work, classroom work, you name it.

See Robin Schauffler’ semail fro details.at I can. Email me, and I'll let students know of your request and have them contact you directly.

Austin Schock

Austin begins his student teaching next week so his last day with us is Friday. Please join me in wishing him all the best in his pursuit of a teaching career.

Buddies

Please fill out this short survey to help Kirstin and Chris determine new buddy partnerships! We hope to start working on buddy groupings by Wednesday.

Playground

Faculty Design Team meets with playground designer on Wednesday to begin process, clarify role of Student Design Team.  Details to come.

Faculty Design Team - David, Kirstin, Chris T, 4th grade teacher, Tina, Laura F-F

Student Design Team - 2 members from each 4th and 5th grade class

Library mindfulness

The library is open for 2-5 recess on F and D Days and we will be offering an opportunity for our students to practice mindfulness for about 15 minutes.  Please let Lara know if you have any questions/suggestions.

Library Resource

The New York Times just published an article titled: Children’s Books That Tackle Race and Ethnicity. The library has copies of most of these titles. See Lara for more information.

Educational Support for Students

See Ari to review files of students with known learning differences.

Say Hey Event

Make sure nothing is put on the calendar, for any room in your division on Thursday, November 17, 2016 after 3:30 pm.  The Say Hey event is scheduled to begin at 5:00 pm and we will have 500 visitors on campus.

Patty Walhood, retired LS Librarian, Memorial

The service for the Walhoods will be November 12 at 3PM at Grace Memorial Church in NE Portland. There will be a reception at the Holliday Park Plaza from 5:30- 8pm.

OES Employees Photos

PROGRAM

BTSN

Thanks to all for making BTSN work so well.  A survey is going home to parents on Monday.  Send your feedback to Chris, Kirstin or David.

Tech Tips of the Week

1. Updates that your computer asks you to do for 10.11.X you should do but as always have your important documents for the school year backed up to your Google Drive accounts. You should be at 10.11.6
2. We are NOT upgrading to OSX 10.12 aka Sierra at this time. We haven't tested this within our network to know what impact it has on wireless or other applications that you use regularly.
3. Reminder please restart your computer this weekend, and again on Monday morning after arriving in the building. It will help to start with a clean slate going into the week and a nice connection to our wifi and network. Your computer does all sorts of things to clean itself up when you shutdown and restart so it gives it a chance to do those things.
4. Update Google Chrome: since this app gets a lot of use, please be sure it is up to date. CHROME>ABOUT GOOGLE CHROME> yours should be at version 53.0.2785.116 (64-bit)

Heather and Callie’s Roles

Heather Wenrick - LS Chaplain

Callie Schulman - LS Religion Teacher

Religion Classes and High Holidays

Callie will be away from school for Rosh HaShana (10/3) and Yom Kippur (10/12); please note if your schedule is affected and let Callie know if you’d prefer to cancel or reschedule your class.

Author Visit

Thanks to Green Bean Books we are welcoming (once again!) Mac Barnett to our Library. Grades 1-2, please let Lara know if you would like to bring your class just before 10:00 on October 11th to the Library to hear him speak.  If you are coming, we will get you the optional pre-order forms to be sent home and then returned to us by September 26th.

Volunteer Needs

Next step will be for your room parent to contact you and coordinate a time to meet, discuss and plan your volunteer needs.

Extention

Kati Stenstrom has created a detailed Extension description and FAQ.  Please review.

October 14 PGD Day

Please follow this link  October 14th - PGD Day Commitments to record your plans.

If you plan to attend the NWAIS Fall Educators' Conference, please notify Jean Verheggen by September 25, as Jean has kindly volunteered to register all OES attendees.

PGD Opportunities

A terrific Executive Functioning workshop that Ari was able to attend last year. Sarah Ward returns to Portland, OR, by popular request to present two Executive Function Seminars at the DoubleTree/Hilton. November 1, 2016 - From School to Home and Back Again: Executive Function Skills Across the Day

And The Mindful Classroom: Whole-Brain Child and Drama Free Discipline, October 28, 2016, St. Thomas School, Medina, WA

Faculty Meetings

Thursday, 9/29 - All LS Meeting - Modify and clarify operations; Dyslexia Presentation

OPERATIONS

 

Transitions and Duties

• Know your duties
• Please check the duty doc
• Be on time
• Know transition responsibilities
• Review Transitions Document

Chris Thompson made a great screencast of the process of creating a "My Duties" calendar. If you need help doing this let Chris or Jeffrey know and you can walk through it together.

LINK TO VIDEO

LINK TO GOOGLE SHEET THAT IS MENTIONED IN VIDEO

Please remember not to leave children unattended if you don’t see a duty person to hand them off to. With the large playground spaces, every duty matters.  It is part of your schedule and responsibility to find coverage for your duties.

Please find a replacement if you have a duty conflict--begin by looking at the duty schedule to see other teachers who may be available at that time and then approach them in person or with individual or small group emails instead of emailing all LS.

Please note there is a separate morning duty schedule for Late Start Thursdays. Assistant teachers staff the before school duties on Thursdays so we can meet.

Lincoln Logs

Supervise carefully. Nurse Laura reports 2-3 injuries per day, primarily of 1st graders

We have had many injuries due to gravity and falling logs

2 children are required to move extra long logs

If children are inside or under parts of the structure, no child can be on top

Forts will be periodically dismantled

Epi pens are no longer kept in the first aid kits for walks to the wetlands or for field trips.

• important to always gather any student prescribed epi pens for your outing
• two stock epis are in the small project kitchen-soon to be moved to the kitchen when a cabinet is installed.

New Substitute Procedures 2016-2017

• We are no longer using the substitute cell phone number-do not call or text
• Do email requests to lssub@oes.edu
• Send an email to lssub@oes.edu when you need a substitute
• Kathy will check this email box at 6:00pm and 6:00am. You may send the email as soon as you know you need a sub.
• Kathy will email teachers and subs as soon as the assignment is made.
• Only for morning of emergency on the way to work needs-after 6:30am. Send a text to Kathy Finn-Brennan at 503-989- 3737

You can access a Google Doc of this information here if you’d like to add a copy to your Drive.

Automated Substitute Finder System

We are pursuing an automated substitute finder system.  Details still emerging.  We are targeting 2nd semester fro a roll out.

Food from Home

We are fortunate to have a food service that is so committed to tending to the dietary needs of our students.  Rarely, we find ourselves in a situation where a student needs to bring food from home rather than use the school’s food service. We will consider this option only 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

Instrument Storage

If students take the bus or otherwise will not have a parent escorting them to the chapel basement, they will need to store their instrument in their regular classroom.

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.

LS Weekly Memo Week 7, September 19-23, 2016

Congratulations on making it through the first full week of the year. Our systems around lunch, recess and transitions are improving. Next week the duty schedule becomes real with all of us doing the actual duties we signed up for.  Be sure to review the Transitions Document to know updated transition details.  Best of luck with our new approach to BTSN.

Building Updates

Donor Celebration Last Night

Saturday Night we hosted over 100 community members in our building and thanked them for making it all possible.  Our guests enjoyed exploring the building (all classrooms were open) and taking part in mini-classes.

• Let me know if anything was left behind in your room.  We did our best to clean it all up.
• Leftovers are in the teaching kitchen refrigerator and to be enjoyed.  All are welcome to take home items at the end of the day Monday.

Windows and Doors

I discovered several windows that were not properly functioning and some doors that are not closing properly.  Please complete maintrequests for any of these issues in your room.

Shades - Check to be sure yours are completely operable and can close all the way

Lights - The lights are motion activated.  Maintrequest if your motion sensor is not set right so lights are always on or go on whenever someone passes by your window.

Daily Operations

• All windows need to be fully operable to support cooling of the building. As you are setting up be sure to keep your windows fully operable.  
• All blinds and shades need to be fully operable for safety.  Be sure to keep sills clear of obstructions.
• The exposed concrete plays a critical role in heating and cooling the building. Keep it exposed.
• The building was designed to be our most energy efficient building on campus.  Please limit the electricity demands you are adding to the building:
• Personal refrigerators are particularly inefficient
• CFL and LED
• Turn off lights

COMMUNITY

Maintenance and Facilities Appreciation

If you are interested in bringing in a treat on Monday morning as a thank you for our amazing Maintenance and Facilities colleagues feel free to bring it by Lara’s library office and she can bring it up to their workspace along with a thank you card.  She is planning on bringing coffee cake, etc., but fruit or other yummies would be nice if you are interested (totally optional!).

Upper School Student Help

Beginning Thursday, September 22,  Robin will have a new team of Upper School students available to perform all types of on-campus service:

Every Wednesday, 10:20-10:50 (note that this is only half an hour & adjust your expectations accordingly!)

Every Thursday, 10:50-11:50

They’ll do anything—indoors, outdoors, office work, classroom work, you name it.

See Robin Schauffler’ semail fro details.at I can. Email me, and I'll let students know of your request and have them contact you directly.

Buddies

At your weekly team meetings Kirstin and Chris hope to gather some input from you about potential for buddy classes. A survey will come out next week to solicit your interest in focus areas as well as your feedback about buddy pairings.

Library mindfulness

The library is open for 2-5 recess on F and D Days and we will be offering an opportunity for our students to practice mindfulness for about 15 minutes.  I would love if you could pass word onto your students about this choice-We will start close to the beginning of recess and ask that students arrive with the need to be restful and mindful.

Please let Lara know if you have any questions/suggestions.

Educational Support for Students

See Ari to review files of students with known learning differences.

Epi pens are no longer kept in the first aid kits for walks to the wetlands or for field trips. Many of you do this already, but it will be important to always gather any student prescribed epi pens for your outing to carry with you just in case of an emergency. There are two stock epis kept in the small project kitchen-soon to be moved to the kitchen when a cabinet is installed.

Food from Home

We are fortunate to have a food service that is so committed to tending to the dietary needs of our students.  Rarely, we find ourselves in a situation where a student needs to bring food from home rather than use the school’s food service. We will consider this option only 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

OES Employees Photos

Sub Hiring

We interviewed several great substitute candidates last week and have one more interview this week as well as reference and background checks. Stay tuned!  

New Substitute Procedures 2016-2017

• We are no longer using the substitute cell phone number-do not call or text
• Do email requests to lssub@oes.edu
• Send an email to lssub@oes.edu when you need a substitute
• Kathy will check this email box at 6:00pm and 6:00am. You may send the email as soon as you know you need a sub.
• Kathy will email teachers and subs as soon as the assignment is made.
• Only for morning of emergency on the way to work needs-after 6:30am. Send a text to Kathy Finn-Brennan at 503-989- 3737

You can access a Google Doc of this information here if you’d like to add a copy to your Drive.

PROGRAM

BTSN

Full details in BTSN 2016 doc

The Rotation:

Time		Homeroom in Classrooms	Specialists in Dining Commons	State of LS in LS Library
6:00-6:25	Parent coffee social on LSP
6:30-6:55	Session 1	PK, K, P	1st, 2nd	3rd, 4th, 5th
7:00-7:25	Session 2	3rd, 4th, 5th	PK, K, P	1st, 2nd
7:30-7:55	Session 3	1st, 2nd	3rd, 4th, 5th	PK, K, P
8:00-8:25	Session 4	Open	Open	Open

Heather and Callie’s Roles

A couple of folks have expressed some confusion about what Callie and Heather each do. The confusion is understandable as in years past the LS Chaplain has taken on both responsibilities. While Callie and Heather each have distinct roles they are also collaborating in their planning so some common themes will be explored in Chapel and in religion class.

Heather Wenrick - LS Chaplain

She is responsible for Chapel, supporting our Lower School community through pastoral care, and tending to the spiritual development of the community. She is a member of our student support team.

Callie Schulman - LS Religion Teacher

Callie is teaching religion in PreK - 5th grade. She is a specialist teacher and part of the Religion Department.  Let David know if you have questions.

Religion Classes and High Holidays

Callie will be away from school for Rosh HaShana (10/3) and Yom Kippur (10/12); please note if your schedule is affected and let Callie know if you’d prefer to cancel or reschedule your class.

Author Visit

Thanks to Green Bean Books we are welcoming (once again!) Mac Barnett to our Library. Grades 1-2, please let Lara know if you would like to bring your class just before 10:00 on October 11th to the Library to hear him speak.  If you are coming, we will get you the optional pre-order forms to be sent home and then returned to us by September 26th.

Volunteer Needs

Next step will be for your room parent to contact you and coordinate a time to meet, discuss and plan your volunteer needs.

Extention

Kati Stenstrom has created a detailed Extension description and FAQ.  Please review.

Professional Library

Our professional collection has found a new home in the Lower School Conference room. There is a clipboard where you can check-out materials.  Please return them to us in the library so we can check them back in and we will reshelve them for you!

As a result of paring the collection down to fit the space, there is a cart in Project Room A in the Library (right next to the tech office) of books which would love to find a home with you.  There are some really good books to pick from so come by when you have a chance!  It will be there for the duration of the week.

Service Learning Materials

If you found any materials (gloves, etc.) that belong to Service Learning (gardening gloves, garbage bags, etc.) in the course of the move, please let Kristen know where they are, and she will come collect them and consolidate them into the Service Learning storage area. She would like to begin an inventory of supplies next week. Thank you!

October 14 PGD Day

Please follow this link  October 14th - PGD Day Commitments to record your plans.

If you plan to attend the NWAIS Fall Educators' Conference, please notify Jean Verheggen by September 25, as Jean has kindly volunteered to register all OES attendees.

PGD Opportunities

A terrific Executive Functioning workshop that Ari was able to attend last year. Sarah Ward returns to Portland, OR, by popular request to present two Executive Function Seminars at the DoubleTree/Hilton. November 1, 2016 - From School to Home and Back Again: Executive Function Skills Across the Day

And The Mindful Classroom: Whole-Brain Child and Drama Free Discipline, October 28, 2016, St. Thomas School, Medina, WA

Faculty Meetings

Monday, 9/19 - FLG/ PGD - See John Holloran email for details

Thursday, 9/22 - NO Meeting. A break after BTSN

OPERATIONS

 

Transitions and Duties

The Transitions document has been updated.

This will be our first week with everyone on their regular duties! Please remember not to leave children unattended if you don’t see a duty person to hand them off to. With the large playground spaces, every duty matters.  It is part of your schedule and responsibility to find coverage for your duties. Please find a replacement if you have a duty conflict--begin by looking at the duty schedule to see other teachers who may be available at that time and then approach them in person or with individual or small group emails instead of emailing all LS.

Please review the duty schedule as well as the transitions document. We have added some information to the duty schedule to help provide clarity.

All recess duty teachers need to identify who will lead students, monitor the middle and sweep the playground.

3/4/5 Lunch and Lunch Recess now has an early bell for kids who want to get 5 extra minutes of lunch, this is also to help stagger lunch access in the Dining Hall. It worked well on Friday and Kelly was pleased as well with the flow. Let’s keep an eye on time. Bells should arrive early next week to help signal students.

2/3/4/5 Afternoon Recess has been modified. Extra duties have been added.

1:50-2:05 2nd/3rd have recess while 4th/5th have snack, water, restrooms

2:05-2:20 4th/5th have recess while 2nd/3rd have snack, water, restrooms

2:05-2:20 Additional duties have been added to support 2nd/3rd teachers who have started CPT but have students returning for snack. One teacher will walk in other grade level while other two teachers will gather students in Performance commons for snack, water, and bathrooms before PE.

2nd/3rd enter playground through the side stairways and return to classrooms through the side stairways.

4th/5th enter playground through the main entry and around the building and return to classrooms through the side stairways.

Duty teachers greet students on the playground and walk students back to their classrooms

We have added extra duties to help with Prek-P lunch recess and BY Loop Road. We need all duty spots filled and as you can see from the schedule there are holes. Extra thanks to Laura FF, Julie M, Amy R, Katherine, and Shelley who have already taken on extra duties. Please review and let Chris know what extra duties you can cover.

Please note there is a separate morning duty schedule for Late Start Thursdays. Assistant teachers staff the before school duties on Thursdays so we can meet.

Importing Duties to Google Calendar

Chris Thompson made a great screencast of the process of creating a "My Duties" calendar. In it she mentions being careful about loading the CSV file to your personal calendar (in my case Jeffrey Sprague). The safest route is to put it in a separate calendar that you can use every year called "My Duties". If you need help doing this let Chris or Jeffrey know and you can walk through it together.

LINK TO VIDEO

LINK TO GOOGLE SHEET THAT IS MENTIONED IN VIDEO

(With written instructions if you prefer)

Lincoln Logs

Please supervise carefully.

Forts will be periodically dismantled.

Forts will may be built to be in or on top of but not both for safety reasons.

Special Lunch Requests

Kelly Cowing and her staff need special lunch requests, such as sack lunches, 7 days in advance of when you need them.  3rd-5th grade has an interesting alternative that Tonya proposed.  With 4 business days notice, 3rd - 5th graders can come to the lunchroom and make their sandwiches and sack lunches. Why such a long lead time?  Kelly works hard to limit waste so has food orders calculated to expected demand.  She needs enough lead time to place your food order.

Siblings at Car Pick Up

Just a reminder that older siblings should join their youngest sibling in his/her car pickup area. If the younger sibling is absent or in a class, the older sibling still goes to the place they are usually picked up. There are a few exceptions for sibling pickup:

• Students with PreK siblings should wait with any K-4 younger siblings or in their own car pickup area until the guardian signing out their PreK sibling comes to retrieve them.
• K-5 students with Middle School siblings meet Ari or Lyn on the front walkway and then proceed to the Middle School waiting area.

Instrument Storage

If students take the bus or otherwise will not have a parent escorting them to the chapel basement, they will need to store their instrument in their regular classroom.

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.

Safety/ Security Issues

If you have any issues related to safety or security be sure to do a maintrequest and note that it is a safety or security issue. You can help by being sure doors and windows are closed and locked when you leave.

Storage

• Please use the clear plastic storage bins for items placed in storage
• Rolls of paper, colored paper and poster board are getting moved from Room 10 and old LS Library to our storage area.

Safety

• Post your emergency evacuation route in near an exit in an obvious location
• Post your Emergency Procedures flip chart with your clipboard near your desk in an obvious location. Remember your clipboard should have the green/yellow sheet as well as your class list.
• Bathroom Storage - no permanent storage in any of the classroom bathrooms due to ADA  and emergency guidelines.  Temporarily putting wet boots and hanging wet jackets in the bathroom is fine.

Cheese

In an effort to reduce the number of mini-refrigerators in the new building we will store cheese in the following areas

PK, K, P - Teaching kitchen refrigerator

1st, 2nd, 5th - mini refrigerator near sink

3rd, 4th - mini fridge has been requested

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.