Weekly News and Notes

Happy February Vacation everyone!

Speaking to many of you this week, this vacation comes at a time when you have just hit some momentum in the third quarter, having dug out after the storm and just established the routines. Hopefully you will be able to keep that going through March, knowing that the next stretch we have is a difficult one!

Belief Statements Workshop!

Great job on Tuesday with the development of our Belief Statements. We are obviously just at the beginning of this, but we have a number of great starting points from which our students and parents can build. In the coming weeks and months, we will continue to build on our core values, solidify our belief statements, and move toward revising learning expectations and developing rubrics based on them.
The statements have been compiled; expect to see something after vacation.

Coming Attractions

The Program of Studies will be finalized in the next couple of weeks, and we will begin engaging students in the process of selecting classes for 2013-14. From there, we hope to be able to move into the scheduling of the building and looking at class numbers. The department heads have been involved in a critical and creative look at the way some classes are described and offered, and the conversations have been productive so far!

Marcie Tudor will be in the building after vacation, beginning additional MCAS support for our grade 10 students identified as needing support in math, and eventually those in need for science. Study hall teachers - you will be provided with the list of students involved, in case they arrive to study on certain days, so you can direct them to Marcie. Full instructions will be sent next week.
We have instructions prepared for MCAS proctoring; there will soon be a meeting for all those involved in MCAS proctoring, as well as some who are not, to ensure that we have backups in case of absence. As always, that week will require a great deal of flexibility. Mark your calendars: March 19, 21 and 22 will be the ELA test!

We have heard of folks sharing the wealth with the additional free periods with the seniors leaving. We will hopefully be able to use that time for common planning, looking at student work, Atlas work - all the things that we didn't have time built into the schedule for. Hopefully, as the kinks are ironed, we will be able to structure this common time more concretely!

As next week is vacation, there will be no notes published next Friday.

Have a great week!

Weekly News and Notes

Hunker down, everyone!

Hope everyone has made the proper preparations and is ready to ride out the storm! If all the predictions are correct, we will all be spending Sunday digging out from an historic weather event.

Junior Parent Night/Junior Conferences

As many of you know, the Junior Conferences with Guidance have been ongoing, and the junior parent night was held this past Wednesday evening. The conferences will be continuing through March. These have been extremely productive, and we are readying the juniors for the first steps in the college search process, at least from a formal standpoint. If you have questions about either of these, feel free to check in with one of the counselors.

Mandatory Parent Meeting

The first of the mandatory parent meetings has been rescheduled to Monday, February 11. A reminder that the parent of any student who wishes to attend Ring Dance or the prom must be present for this or a second event, which will be hosted in March, in all likelihood. We are also working on a plan for parents who are unable to attend these workshops. The program is very similar to the one the students saw last week, basically underscoring and highlighting the social host laws and their ramifications for families.

As you can imagine, there has been some pushback, but the issues relative to substance abuse are shared by all of us in the community, and the dialogue with parents is a crucial part of this. We appreciate your support of the programs, and urge you to direct parents with concerns in the direction of the administration, particularly those of you who are class or club advisors and hear of complaints in advance of your social events this spring.

Scheduling

We will be finalizing the process for scheduling the building for the 2013-14 school year in the coming days, with a timeline just about complete. We are tentatively planning a Grade 8 Course Selection night for the first week of March, and we will also have  Program of Studies night for all parents in grades 9-11 the following week. That same week, we intend to meet with students in class assemblies; as we know what periods those will take place, we will let you all know for planning purposes.

This timetable will also be published for the faculty when it is complete, hopefully by next week, to ensure that all teachers know where (and when) their steps fall in the process.

We will be attending a scheduling workshop in early March as well, and the goal is to create a schedule that is more efficient and that meets the needs of more students - and thus satisfies more course requests. There have been a great deal of conversations with the Unified Arts (art, music, PE) to shore up some gaps in their scheduling and support their programs, as well as to increase the number of students enrolled in electives.

New Field Trip Form

This has not yet been made final, but in an effort to make the field trip approval process easier, particularly with all the pieces of information that need to go to certain places and people, the following document was developed:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zGii50P4sjbc8E8vIsYM-2967IOkF87QikP1AN_PwtU/edit?usp=sharing

Before posting to the P drive or sharing on the conference, let me know if there is any feedback; this has already gone to department heads, who had made a couple revisions, and it should be rolled out in final for the second half of the year.


Read of the Week: How Will Common Core Change Teaching?

Video of the Week:

Be safe!

Weekly News and Notes

Greetings,

A few reminders:

Grades must be input by Tuesday. Let us know if you have any issues or concerns.

The mandatory parent meeting has been rescheduled for Monday, February 11.

Study Halls for Second Semester

I'm sure there has been a great deal of confusion, based on the calls and emails I have received, but I assure you that study halls for second semester are not all that complicated.

First, if you are not seeing your roster, make sure you are looking at the study that meets second semester, not first semester. Students have been advised to report to the study that is on their schedule - though the room number may change on a daily basis. Teachers indicated that was better for them, and so we obliged that with the schedule. However, be patient as students learn which study meets where on a given day.

Secondly, if you are missing students at the beginning, please wait for Mary to have changed attendance based on who has signed in at the library. If a student is not present, and there is no indication that the student is in the library, please process this as a cut. There were very few of these first semester; hopefully, the change will not create more confusion with the students.

Finally, please check your schedules. It is possible that you have a hall, computer lab, or lunch duty where a study was last semester. The coverage for those areas is listed below:

LUNCH DUTY:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
	D Period Burch Collins Lynch	E Period J. Rojee Petrarca Amaral	F Period Bryan Christie Lynch	G Period Murphy Infanger Jacobs	A Period Infanger Trottier Foucre	B Period Pacelli Webster Aigler	C Period Trottier Mackenzie

COMPUTER LAB:

DAY 1	DAY 2	DAY 3	DAY 4	DAY 5	DAY 6	DAY 7
A  CLOSED	B  COUTU	C  CLOSED	D  CLOSED	E  AMARAL	F   BRYAN	G CLOSED
B   AMARAL	C   GUILFOIL	D  JACOBS	E  KIRBY	F   LYNCH	G JACOBS	A WEBSTER
C COYLE	D  CLOSED	E  TROTTIER	F CLOSED	G CLOSED	A NASSIFF	B J.ROJEE
D WEBSTER	E CLOSED	F INFANGER	G CLOSED	A CLOSED	B CLOSED	C CLOSED
E CLOSED	F LYNCH	G CLOSED	A NASSIFF	B A.ROJEE	C CLOSED	D CLOSED
F GUILFOIL	G CLOSED	A CLOSED	B CLOSED	C SHIRE-SWIFT	D LYNCH	E AMARAL

Hall DUTY:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
A		---	Nassiff			Murphy
B	J. Rojee		---	N. Amaral			Brodeur
C		Trottier		---	Coyle
D				Infanger	---
E	Infanger	Brodeur		Petrarca	Murphy	---
F		N. Brandon					---
G	-	Pacelli

To read this chart, the period is listed down the left and the day on the top. For example, Jay Rojee has hall duty on day 1 during period B. Dave Murphy would have hall duty during period E, day 5. Hopefully that makes sense.


SENIOR PRIVILEGES

A link to FAQ's on the Senior Privileges can be found here. We met with the Class of 2013 today, and the students were obviously receptive!


Teacher Eval Process

Earlier this week we held a meeting for any teacher in a developing educator/non-professional status cycle to explain formative conferences and where the road will be going from here. We plan on scheduling a similar meeting come March/April with the professional status teachers coming to the end of the year one of their two-year plans. Please see Doug, Dot, or Mike with any questions or concerns about your SMART goals, any of the individual indicators, competencies, etc. We are all in this together!

MCAS is Coming!

Just a reminder that MCAS will be administered on March 19, 21, and 22 for English Language Arts. No doubt there are some of you who are planning long, long range, particularly for your sophomores. For some reason, there is no test on the 20th - not sure why the state has given the day off in between!


Weekly video:

Lest we take ourselves too seriously, I had to share this one. After all, as the video quotes, "The person upon whose capable shoulders rests the responsiblity for their education is that unsung hero: the teacher." Pay careful attention to the depiction of the students and the narration - my favorite part may be the teacher's desk drawer and the lunch behavior! It's hard to make out at the beginning, but it looks like this was made in 1953!

Infographic of the week:

This chart here explains the difference between differentiated and personalized learning:

Article of the Week:

Awesome piece from The Atlantic on the need for parents to allow students to fail.