Weekly News and Notes

The first month has almost passed!

The hustle of October and November will soon be upon us, with progress reports, recommendation letters, grading of tests and papers, establishing SMART goals, beginning the evaluation process, and who knows what else.

I generally put a quote on my white board in my office, usually changing it every couple of days. I don't know what drew me to Nietzsche this week - things aren't that bad. No, it's not "I stared into the abyss and the abyss stared back" - though it sometimes feels that way, even without a pile of essays to grade on a Sunday afternoon. This week, I quoted: "To forget one's purpose is the most common form of stupidity."

I've used that line this week with a couple of wayward students, asking what their purpose during a specific period was. I've used that line with a couple of teachers, frustrated by a lesson or student. And I've used that line with myself, because among the minutia, the meetings, the emails, the Tweets, the conversations, and the planning, we all need to remember our purpose:

Please, don't read into the use of "The Jerk" ! I just think we need to remember our collective purpose and ways we can support the students, each other, and our community, and that has, at times, gotten me through the existential "why are we here" and "what are we doing." There will be times where we all need pep talks, so I hope you can all come back to a sense of purpose in what we're doing at Medway High School!


Highlights from Walk-throughs

Each week, we hope to highlight some lessons that we see from walk-throughs, as we start to get into more classrooms. Please don't take lack of a mention as a slight - that's not the intention - and we certainly hope to get into many, many classrooms to share some of the great happenings from the building.

Today we saw a great use of a gallery walk in Mr. Mackenzie's 9th grade English class, where students were pulling apart direct quotations from specific short stories and analyzing literary terms within those quotes, such as imagery or theme. The students were silent, and the posters served the multiple purposes for students: students learning from each other, close reading of text, and reviewing content for an upcoming test.

Mrs. Hallett's senior physics students were firing projectiles toward a bull's eye/target in the main lobby today; we have video, which hopefully you can make out! Unfortunately, Google wouldn't upload it properly, so hopefully you can view it here!

Finally, earlier this year, Mr. Bryan's physiology students were given a disassembled skeleton as a pre-assessment. Here's what their work looked like:

Teacher Eval

There will be a meeting after school on Monday in the library for all professional status teachers who are going on cycle this year, meaning entering year one of the teacher evaluation. We will hopefully clarify some of your questions!

For all staff, you can expect a letter in the next couple of weeks from your primary evaluator initiating the process. If you are wondering who will be your primary evaluator this year, ask Mike, Dot, or Doug.


Homeroom Next Week

We will be holding a homeroom next Wednesday, which is a Day 6, for about five minutes at the beginning of the day. Class officers will be going around to make some announcements, and we will be distributing student ID's and student photos to any student who has yet to pick them up. We will announce for students to report to homeroom at 8:02, and around 8:10 we will send them to first period class.

Attendance will be taken in the first period class. Thanks for your assistance.

Mark Your Calendars

Some upcoming dates and events:

October 8: Faculty Meeting
October 10: The Senior Class is hosting a dance from 7-10 p.m.
October 11: Professional Development Day.
October 25: The Senior Class will hold its annual Halloween Parade. Sigh.

We hope to have an agenda and plan for the PD Day ready next week so folks can plan from the choices that will be offered.

Weekly Resources

The Weekly Resources can be found here.  One piece that I added that is particularly good includes some steps for teaching critical thinking.

There is also an interesting, and very outside-the-box, piece on grading backwards. I took some time to skim it and found some of its ideas conversation-worthy, but I'm not entirely sure how it works in practice. If anyone out there reads it and wants to discuss, I'd love to have some feedback.

Have a great weekend!