Weekly News and Notes

Good afternoon!

We hope this message finds everyone well and having survived a long week! To echo the sentiments of the parents and other missives that have been sent, great job with parent-teacher conferences this week! Parents have been effusive with their compliments and impressions left after Wednesday. Now we just need to sustain momentum!

Some of the parents have been inquiring about callbacks. One recommendation is to handle those by email, and perhaps to focus the conversation you could send the grade report, along with a couple of open-ended questions for the parent. Something along the lines of: "In order to focus our conversation, I would like you to respond to a couple of questions. 1. What concerns about this class do you have? 2. What do you see as your child's strengths/weaknesses? 3. How can we work together to support ___ with this class?" You may find the parent answering the questions for you and keeping the virtual conversation brief! (If you happen to see Jay Rojee, he used a similar format to occupy waiting parents on Wednesday).

Again, if you have any dire concerns - make the call. If you need any of us to support you with what could be a tricky conversation, let us know and we're happy to be there. Again, with grades closing very soon, we don't want anyone being broadsided!

Student Discipline Statistics!

We are having a great year thanks to everyone's collective efforts. Here is a look at the discipline totals through the first five cycles of the schedule from last year to this year:



 
You will see that the biggest change has been in the decrease of actual office consequences. Detentions are down from 76 at this point last year to 23, and suspensions have been reduced from 29 (out-of-school and in-school) to 0! Thus, as you may expect, the number of incidents reported are down, from 135 to 60, through the same number of days. This is a credit to everyone, from all the classes to the students, and it has enabled us to spend some time processing with the actual incidents that are reported, since there aren't constant proverbial fires to put out.

So thank you! Thank you for the great start and working with students to set this type of tone, and while we are not so naive as to think that these incidents won't pop up as the year progresses, we are off to a terrific start.

To those looking for some additional classroom tips, check out this video, circa 1947. I'm sure Mr. Grimes (yes, that is this teacher's name) shares some of our frustrations on our worst days, but the first couple of minutes will definitely give you a laugh!

Halloween Parade

Thanks to Ms. Ryan, Ms. Aigler, and the class officers for today's event and its relative smoothness. Yes, there was the usual hooting and hollering throughout the hallway, but the halls were completely cleared within ten minutes of its end. According to some of the records, there were 40 fewer student dismissals and about 30 fewer absences. Once again, these seniors have met the task, for the most part, with which we have charged them and rose to the occasion!

SMART Goals and Ed Eval

In the coming weeks, those who are on cycle can expect something more formal from an evaluator as to a follow-up on SMART goals and beginning the cycle of evaluation. As we get more direction on the procedural pieces, we will do our best to work everyone through the inception of the process with as little stress as possible.

Field Trip Approval

We know that many of you are eager to bring students to extensions of our classrooms and go on field trips. For the purpose of clarification: please discuss these field trip opportunities with your department heads and colleagues in advance of bringing them forward. We would like to extend opportunities to more students - and provide equitable chances for all students in a given course, subject, etc. That said, we have to balance these opportunities with time on task in teh classroom (and the time sacrificed away from other classes). And, as weather conditions may become an issue, we may ask that certain trips be kept until springtime.

Student Leadership Group

Just a reminder to all clubs/activities that the Student Leadership Representative Group will meet Monday morning at 7:15 in the office; all clubs, activities, and classes should be represented. If you wish to attend, feel free!


Boys Soccer Team : 2012 TVL Champions!

Congratulations to the boys soccer team on clinching the TVL Championship on Thursday with a 1-0 win against Hopkinton. We know that many of you will join in rooting for our volleyball, boys soccer, and girls soccer teams as they make their way to the postseason!


PD360 Video of the Week:

For those of you who are focusing on implementing more specific assessment tools, the following videos may help:

Formative Assessment Strategies: http://www.pd360.com/index.cfm?ContentId=2515

The How of Assessment: http://www.pd360.com/index.cfm?ContentId=138

Link of the Week: For those of you on Twitter, this article provides an educator's guide to #Hashtags that can be used to assist with your own professional learning.


Let's hope Sandy stays good and west of here so we can avoid this:

Medway Weekly Available

The Medway Weekly is available.

Click here!

Weekly News and Notes

Greetings!

This week brings us closer to the closing date of first quarter grades, which will be on November 9, 2012. Parent-teacher conferences will be next week, which will hopefully give parents more of an idea of where students stand. If there are students in your classes who are struggling or in danger of failing - i.e. have less than a seventy but have been inconsistent - please reach out to those students' parents/guardians, or even school counselors. We don't want any families blindsided come mid-November!

Halloween Parade/Senior Dress-up

We met with the senior class officers this week to outline our expectations. The timeline and specific details will be coming from Ms. Ryan early next week, but you can expect the seniors to be done with the festivities by the end of second period on Friday. Specifically, we discussed that this senior class has been outstanding so far in terms of meeting our expectations and rising to the occasion, and we do not expect next Friday to be any different.

Ideally, there will be no need for cleanup, but the students will be handling that on their own. We also have promises from them to avoid any air horns or silly string - and that their lack of compliance with our requests for some manner of decorum will potentially result in our lack of support for future events. As we seek to impart on them an understanding of RESPONSIBILITY and RESPECT, we hope that you will echo that thought - that we think they can do what we ask, not simply post a list of things we don't want to see.

Again, more details will be out early next week.


SMART Goals

We had asked for draft SMART goals to be submitted by Friday, October 19; those of you who need additional time, please make sure you check in, so we can have everyone on the same page heading into the next couple of weeks! Again, if you wish to know if you are on or off cycle, see Doug, Dot, or Mike.

Student Leadership "Senate"

Beginning Monday, October 29, Mike will be meeting periodically with a group assembled from a representative from each club/activity/class. The goals are to bring all the agendas together to find ways that all clubs can support one another, as well as to get some of the divergent fundraising needs under a common umbrella. Many people have expressed at least a subtle frustration with the amount of fundraising that goes on - and how faculty and staff are repeatedly hit for money! We want to try and find a basis for the different groups to support one another, both in terms of finances and mission, as well to find some priorities that we, as a school, can support in full.

Field Trips Update

As the year continues, and folks start to request more field trips, please be respectful of the time that students will spend out of the building and that a teacher may spend away from class. There are some concerns when a teacher leaves the building with a group of 15 and leaves 100 behind. Also, we need to build into the field trip costs opportunities for all students to go - we don't want anyone left behind because he/she cannot afford the trip.

We have set up a calendar in FirstClass so people can see when a particular field trip has already been booked. Again, we love opportunities for learning to occur outside Medway High School, but we may need to be creative in finding chaperones or finding opportunities for all students in a particular course/grade/subject/etc. to get access to these opportunities. Anyone with ideas - we're open to suggestions!

AP Results

We'd like to to thank the Department Chairs for being part of the process of sharing AP results at this week's School Committee meeting. We had the task of reporting on AP, MCAS, SAT, and ACT results, and having each share with their curricular level of expertise made for a great joint effort. Feel free to consult with them if you're interested in any of the results and/or the specifics.

Committee Updates

Two different committees from a district level have met in the past two weeks: Literacy Action Planning and PD Planning. Many thanks to Aubrie Rojee and Kelly Bliss for serving on each, respectively. We hope to use both committees as platforms for bringing ideas to and from the high school staff, as well as assessing the needs of this building in the context of the district goals. As more information is made available, we will hopefully disseminate that to the rest of the building.

Videos of the Week

PD 360 Video of the Week: Heidi Hayes Jacobs "Mapping to the Core: Planning for Curriculum Success" - Part 2 Segment 2 of 4 of this program. In this webinar, participants gain an overview of an innovative learning experience provided by Mapping to the Core LiveBook and LivePlanner, written by Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs and the Curriculum21 team. Click Here!

Resource of the Week: A great piece on how students learn from Educational Psychology (the infographic is particularly easy to follow!)

Article of the Week: We shared this on the high school conference, but if you missed it: here are five tips on having a better parent-teacher conference.

Video of the Week: Where do good ideas come from?

Remember - you can follow Mike on Twitter, @MedwayHSDean and the Medway Weekly, our journal of weekly resources, can be found at: http://paper.li/MedwayHSDean/1346850266#




 

Medway Weekly is Out!

This week's edition of the Medway Weekly, with some terrific articles and videos, can be found here:

http://paper.li/MedwayHSDean/1346850266#


Happy reading!

Weekly News and Notes

Greetings!

As our last four-day week for a while winds down, we hope that people have had an opportunity to get into their regular classroom routines and start to digest all that we have going on this year! Obviously, there is a great deal already, with the teacher rubrics and the new system for evaluation.

You have obviously noticed us in and out of classrooms, which will be part of our regular routine. They will enable us to learn more about instruction and learning, to validate effective practice and ensure continued use of those practices, help create a community of learners, open classrooms to all staff, and focus teachers and administrators on the learning process It will also help us design more useful PD.

1.

Research has suggested that walk-throughs yield the following benefits (among others):

• Teacher sharing of best practices; Increased principal awareness of what is happening in classrooms;
• Better principal understanding of curriculum gaps and inconsistencies;
• Better principal understanding of professional development needs;
• Improved quality of conversations about instruction; 
• Development of a common language around instruction.

So, we will continue to be in and out of classes, and hope that you share in the dialogue!

Cafeteria Support Needed

We are asking you to position one person in the line for the first few minutes to avoid situations like the one below (although, with the new regulations, most of that food is not available to our students)!

Oh, the days of the college cafeteria - and all those beautiful empty calories!

SMART Goals  

At this point, just about everyone in the building has been through the initial rubric and SMART goal training. As you begin crafting your goals, and determining whether they are specific, measurable, attainable, action-oriented, realistic, and relevant, feel free to seek us out for support. We expect all SMART goal drafts to be submitted to Doug by October 19.

If you are curious as to your status in terms of whether you are on or off cycle, let us know. We hope to put something in writing next week to everyone as to their status, per our records.


UPCOMING EVENTS:

Parent-teacher conferences will be held on Wednesday, October 24. To date, we have close to 1000 appointments scheduled online. We are confident that moving into classrooms will cut down on lines and waiting, and will also enable you to be more prepared for each coming visitor!

The Senior Breakfast and Halloween parade will take place on Friday, October 26. We will be meeting with the senior officers and advisors in the coming week to review details, and we will be sure to pass along details to you as they become more specific!

Our next after school meeting will be held on Tuesday, October 23, and will take place in departments.

Reminder that grades close for the first quarter on November 9, 2012, and report cards will be issued on November 19!

 
This week's PD360 video of the week is on Common Assessments: http://www.pd360.com/index.cfm?ContentId=3789

If you are looking for another visual on SMART goals, this video may help:

 

With parent-conferences coming, you may get a laugh from this goofy animated short. Please don't take it too seriously!

A reminder that the weekly resources can be found at: http://paper.li/MedwayHSDean/1346850266#

Mike's Diigo links are here: http://www.diigo.com/user/mikerubin

Thanks for all your hard work!

Medway Weekly Available!

This week's edition of The Medway Weekly is out! Happy reading!

News and Notes for October 5

Greetings,

Another long weekend! The scheduling gods have certainly eased us into the school year, considering the number of four day weeks. The next month will feature consecutive five-day work weeks for the first time in the school year - remember to get plenty of vitamins and to stay fresh!

We have been meeting this week with student groups in anticipation of creating some more consistency with respect to some of the social norms at Medway High School. The students have been very positive in working with us toward a better interpretation of the rules, so that we can provide a safer environment for all students at Medway. We certainly do not like using consequences as the sole deterrent to particular behaviors, but it is important for students to know what the rules are and eliminate as many shades of gray as possible.

Not certain this is what the Class of 2013 had in mind for Thursday...

You may have heard some rumbling about a senior skip day this week. Please be aware that the school does not, can not, and will not condone any skip day of any kind and will support decisions to hold students accountable and responsible for their actions given their choices. See Doug's blog post for his email to parents.

We are also looking at better ways of disseminating information to families in this era of instant information. Mike's Twitter account will provide some news from the school, and we are investigating establishing a school Facebook page, where we can post announcements and news. Advisers to clubs and classes: if there are specific announcements you want going out virtually, or if you have suggestions, please let Mike know! Again, we aren't posting information to multiple places for information overload, but for people to access information as they see fit.

To that end, we are trying to work on updating a Faculty Handbook with helpful tips, from the professional responsibility (i.e. how to take attendance and post grades), to the procedural (i.e. how does someone request a workshop/professional day), to the "personal," if you will (i.e. where is my mailbox or where do I get a cup of coffee). Department heads will be straw polling the faculty for tips - or if you have some resources to share, let us know.

If you didn't catch The Medway Weekly, it's located here.

The PD360 Video of the Week discusses the difference between assessment of learning and the assessment for learning: http://www.pd360.com/index.cfm?ContentId=143.

As always, check out Mike's Diigo links here, and his Twitter feed here.

FACULTY FLASH MOB:

Can our faculty be better than this?

Contact Ms. Rodgers if you are interested in being part of this for the Pep Rally in November!

FERPA:

Just a reminder about FERPA - and our responsibility to ensure that students' rights are protected. Here is a handy "primer" regarding basics in case you need a refresher.

Upcoming events:

The senior class Halloween Parade is due to occur on Friday, October 26, in advance of Halloween. Ms. Ryan and Ms. Aigler will be working with the class officers to ensure minimal disruptions to the school day and to make sure the building is left in good working order - there will be no mess!

PSAT registration is ongoing, as is SAT registration. Both tests will be given in the next month.

Parent-teacher conferences will be held on Wednesday, October 24; Doug distributed information on how to set up teacher accounts. Parents have been instructed on how to sign up, and a couple have already done so with relative ease. This will assist with both privacy and preparation for all of us!

Be on the lookout for some discussions that will be taking place in the coming weeks and months regarding the program of studies and course registrations for the 2013-14 school year (yes, it's already time for that).

There will be a handful of students taking the MCAS retakes on November 1 and 2. Please be flexible if you happen to have those students in your classes.


Enjoy the long weekend!

Powerful statement

Very impressed with this video - each time I watch parts of it, I become more taken with her amazing poise:

Medway Weekly Available

Good morning,

The Medway Weekly is out - available online at http://paper.li/MedwayHSDean/1346850266.

If you watch one thing from this week's edition, see this video: http://youtu.be/uIwBwJzl5eI

Happy reading!

Mike

Bookmarks!

Here are some places to go for info and resources, besides this blog. Again, pick and choose what you want!

Mike's Twitter: https://twitter.com/MedwayHSDean

Mike's Diigo Profile: http://www.diigo.com/user/Mikerubin

The Medway High School Diigo links: http://groups.diigo.com/group/medway-high-school

The Medway Weekly: http://paper.li/MedwayHSDean/1346850266