1. Homeroom attendance is a daily responsibility and requirement. Please... take your attendance accurately every day. That means keeping an eye on students who are skirting past the office and into homerooms late. Avoid the confrontation with them at all costs, but if you've posted attendance as announcements start, simply send Wanda an email indicating who may have come in after the bell, so we can deal with it. There are some students who are hustling past the office and down to homeroom after the bell; marking them present without any ramifications or consequences undermines those who are holding the proverbial line.
2. To that end - when you check period attendance and notice that a student is there but was marked absent in MMS, PLEASE LET THE OFFICE KNOW! (This is especially important in the first two periods of the day!) Often times that helps us with our record-keeping and finding out if a student has arrived late and bypassed procedures, or just human error has occurred. Either way, we need to have an accurate record of who is in the building (and who is not).
3. If either of these requests seems uncertain, or you need support on either request, please let us know, and we will be happy to assist.
Again, attendance for the past couple of weeks, after a decent start, has deteriorated in terms of its overall accuracy. Please... take your attendance, both in homeroom and in class, accurately EVERY DAY.
The Wanderers
A few things on passes that we are noticing and reacting to:
We have a few members of our community who are wearing out the tread on their shoes wandering around. Feel free to NOT issue some of these students passes. We are all working on finding appropriate ways to respond aside from sending them out, and we have made attempts to be as proactive and progressive with discipline as possible. That said, it's an ongoing process, and imperfect.
Also:
Please be judicious in giving passes at the end of the day. Last period hall duty folks are reporting a number of students out, particularly from study, and particularly after 2:15. Those students are leaving and not going back. You have the right to say: "no, wait until the end of the day," or "you can go, but if you don't come back, don't expect to go again." It would cut down on a lot of our wandering at day's end!
Thanks for the support on this - we have done a great job --- all of us --- on cutting down the number of students in the corridor, and we want to keep this up!
New Teacher Evaluation System
Many of you have already started working on SMART goals and the new teacher evaluation system, including gathering evidence and artifacts to support your proficiency on specific indicators. Some plans are in place to utilize PD360 to support you in those efforts. As that occurs, we will be sure to forward them and train the necessary people.
Also, as many people have been sharing SMART goals with evaluators, department heads, administrators, and peers, we will be compiling a centralized database of all SMART goals. That will allow people to see who is working on what, and folks could then potentially meet during free periods to discuss their goals and determine ways to support one another. One of the administrative goals would be to support people through the provision of that time and to achieve their goals. Again, more details to follow.
Activity Calendar
Some parents and students had indicated a need to have all schedules centralized as to what is happening in the building. To that end, we have worked on establishing a calendar through Google that combines activities, events, field trips, and athletics; it can be found publicly at: Medway Activities Calendar It is also showing up on this blog homepage, as well as Doug's blog.
Holiday Giving Project
Thanks to all who have volunteered to assist with the Holiday Giving Project. Students from SADD and Peer Counselors will be collecting next week, beginning on Monday. There seems to be a great deal of enthusiasm among the students, so let's encourage them to give as much as they can!
Links of the Week:
For those who are working on blended learning, this is a terrific article: http://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/the-flipped-classroom-model-a-full-picture/
A couple of good videos: This first one explains Common Core using illustrations.
For those involved in inquiry-based learning:
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