Sunday, December 13, 2020

Week Beginning, December 14


As the last blog post of the year (phew, I hear you all say!), I did want to wish you all the happiest of holidays and hope that you take these two weeks to enjoy some downtime. While the Brown household (a mixture of Catholics, agnostics, and atheists) will celebrate this time with family virtually, I know others will celebrate a variety of holidays, traditions, and religions, and I hope whatever you celebrate, that it brings you joy and happiness. The blog will be back in 202, with our fingers crossed for a more normal 12 months ahead!


The Week Ahead

Advisory Slides Link


Monday, Dec 14
  • Kids on campus 8:00 AM - 3 PM with Andrea (until 12:30 PM), Molly, James, and Alexis in the Library. Please see the list of students below.
  • Kindness Meeting 11:40 - 12:10 pm - All are welcome to join. Click here to join the meeting
  • Chapel - 13 Days of Christmas announced
  • White Elephant photos to Kyle
  • Math Letters to Grade 6 Parents
  • Holiday Tea Drive-By and Pet Food Drop-Off (advisors and extras willing to help, please be 10 minutes early to your assigned time at the 10th St. Circle)
    • Grade 6 5:00 - 5:30 pm 
    • Grade 7 5:30 - 6:00 pm 
    • Grade 8 6:00 - 6:30 pm 

Tuesday, Dec 15
  • Kids on campus 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM with Andrea (until 12:30 PM), Molly, James, and Alexis in the Library. 
  • PM Advisory - Planning 13 Days of Christmas. Please submit the line and who will be singing via the Google Form by the end of advisory.
  • MS Leadership Team 2:30 PM (Olena Belashova observing)

Wednesday,  Dec 16
  • Kids on campus 8:00 AM - 12:30 PM with Andrea, Molly, James, & Alexis in the Library. 
  • Grade Level Team Meetings  CANCELLED Please use this time to send sunshine notes, review Universal Goals, and add comments by end of the day. 
  • She Kills Monsters virtual performance on Zoom at 7:00 pm. She Kills Monsters Performance Link 

Thursday, Dec 17
Friday, Dec 18 - PD Day
Action Items
  • New:
    • Check-in with Clare: Please reach out to me to set up a time to connect if you have not done so. Ideally, we would connect before the end of the first week back after the break. A quick reminder about the initial focus of these chats:
      • How has this semester gone for you? 
      • Are there changes, adaptations, modifications, etc., that you feel could occur within MS that would make the experience more positive for all (faculty, students, families) in semester 2? 
      • Your thoughts on returning to campus.
    • New Grade Category: You may have noticed that there is a new grade category - Middle School MYP Formative. Angelica and I would like to encourage you to use this when you are grading a formative assessment that would support a skill that we will be demonstrated on the summative assessment. You will be able to set this up as a 0-8 scale rather than a %, which gives a much more authentic idea for parents. 
    • Endeavor Grants: A reminder to consider applying for the AWSPA Endeavor grant. If you have deleted or lost the email regarding this, please see this pdf for the details. These will be due on January 7. 
    • White Elephant photos to Kyle on Monday :-)
    • Continuing: 
      • Summative Assessment Schedule: Please add any summative assessments you are planning in giving here in this doc. This will help us track work and avoid our students becoming overwhelmed. Please try not to add a summative to a day where there are already two due. 

      • HS Recommendations and Transcripts:  Grade 8 teachers and advisors, as you receive recommendation requests, please complete this document so that we can monitor and ensure all requests are processed. An email was sent to parents asking that they give us 3-weeks notice for recommendation deadlines by some may come through with a tighter deadline. Please let me know if you have any questions about this process. 
      • Sunshine Notes: Please attempt to send 2 sunshine notes each day this week. Please review the list of Sunshine & PC recipients but remember that this data is not automatically updated once a note is sent. 
      • Summative Assessments: As you start to assign your first summatives, we want to be able to give families a heads up about what is approaching. One way we have decided to do this is through the Grade Level Blogs. You will find a new tab on the Grade Level Meeting Doc called Units and Assessment. Please add your summatives here so that the Team Leaders can add this information to the blogs. Please see Will's Science example in there already.
      • MyMedBot: All AWS faculty and staff will be asked to complete the myMedBot app even if you do not plan on being on campus. A final question has been added to the app that asks people to state if they are planning on coming in or not. Using the app will allow us to be consistent across divisions about tracking who is on or off-campus. It will also eliminate the need for people to sign in or complete the old Google Form about your teaching locations for the week. If you have any questions, please let Sandra or I know. 

    Changes to the Week Ahead, Updates, & Reminders
    • Students on Campus this week: 
      • Grade 6 - John Saul, Augi, Ben, Glorian, Nora, Ireland, Laila, Ava, Veronica, Charlie (Wed & Friday), Abby B (Wed & Friday) Rachael T (all week), Issy J (all week).
      • Grade 7 - Joanne, Reagan, Bella, and Thomas S, Hamilton B
      • Grade 8 - Audri, Cooper, Alison S, Raya, Mia S, Jaewon, Sydney R
    • Kindness focus in January: Following on from a faculty meeting last month, Amanda, Heidi expressed their interest in leading us forward in a focus on kindness. If you are also interested in working with us on how we might create a positive impact on our community upon our return in 2021, please let us know. Or, we are meeting to discuss how we might achieve this on Monday, Dec 7 at 11:45am and anyone is welcome to join too.
    • Future PD: 
      • Monday, Jan 25 - DEI work & advisors to review goals 
      • Thursday, Feb 11 - DEI work & Standardisation of summative assessments
      • Friday, March 12 - TBD
      • Friday, April 23 - TBD
      • Friday, May 14 - TBD

    Technology Help 

    • Want to run a report on Responsibility Grades percentages? You can run this report for a specified time period – just Quarter 1, just Quarter 2, from the beginning of the school year to today: Cumulative Grade – By Section report. Thanks to Ruth for creating this. 

     

    Sandra's PD Corner 
    For those among us who celebrate, a very Hanukkah Sameach!! Whether you've decided to bring the Mensch on the Bench tradition to your family, or not, I do hope you enjoy the spirit of this Festival of Lights.  For the Scandinavians among us, a Happy St. Lucia to you on Sunday. and for those of us with Hispanic/Latine/Latinx heritage, Dec 16th is the beginning of the Posadas/Novena. (check out this Community page post for more info on each of these traditions!)

    While I am still (sorry!) behind on updating the PD opportunities (though I know many of you are busy enough doing all the things that perhaps additional PD isn't top of mind....), I have been adding new materials to the PD resources board and I want to especially highlight a few new resources (though I, again, encourage you to peruse them all. The format has changed, and you can filter for what might be most of interest to you (books, articles, curriculum, movies, etc.):
    • Since Time Immemorial- Adrienne Peterson (PS3-4) brought this one to our attention earlier this year and I've mentioned it before, but it's such a strong and useful tribally-developed tool to enhance and strengthen the presence of Native voices in our curriculum, I felt it was important to highlight again.
    • Native Education for All - Focused primarily PK-8, this is also a Native-produced series of lesson plans which are deep and strong. The folx at Illuminative who have developed NEFA have many other non-curriculum resources on their webpage. I encourage you to peruse it.
    • Guide for Integrating Social and Economic Justice into Math - this one isn't new, but this article shared by Jeremy Stubbs (USB) reminded me of it and encourages us to continue seeing how STEM and DEI can, and absolutely must, work together and also provides ideas of how we might jointly work to bring about the change in our curricula.
    And so, with that, I wish you a weekend of rest and some respite before this final week-of-classes push, and I encourage you to consider this: QOTW: How would you describe your weekend in one word? (or GIF!)


    Kudos 
    • If you or your students enjoy the Holiday Tea gift bags, please thank Ruth! She took this under her wing and created these wonderful bags of treats for everyone, on top of her normal workload. Thanks also goes to Cooper Whittle and Reagan Kress (and a few others from the library) who also helped pack and sort the bags this week. 
    • To Kyle, Will, Angelica, Alice, Devon, Shelli, and Andrea, for all their work on the Universal Goals. They have looked at, processed, rewritten, and have helped tremendously with the final version of these goals. 
    • Kudos goes to Scott and the prep work he has put into this week's virtual show She Kills Monsters. Please check this out if you have a chance this week. Maddie Strate is the Director and Caroline Overton, Ella Hays, and Katie Cook have starring roles!

    Absent Students
    The Month Ahead
    • Monday, Jan 4 - First day back
    • Thursday, Jan 21 - Curriculum Night: Your Student's Semester Report 6:00 - 7:30 pm 
    • Monday, Jan 18 - No School 
    • Friday, Jan 22 - Math Final Day (POTENTIAL!)
      • New schedule for this day that will not involve all normal Friday subjects
      • Subject Goals due by 3:00 pm 
    • Monday, Jan 25 - Professional Development Day 
      • DEI work 8:30 - 10:30 am 
      • Advisors to collate advisee goals by 1pm
      • Grade 6 Meeting 1:00 - 1:45 pm 
      • Grade 7 Meeting 1:45 - 2:30 pm 
      • Grade 8 Meeting 2:30 - 3:15 pm 
    • Tuesday, Jan 26 - Extended Advisory - Goal check-in and conference planning 2:00 - 3:00 pm (no athletics)
    • Thursday, Jan 28 - Extended Advisory - Goal check-in and conference planning 2:00 - 3:00 pm (no athletics)
    • Friday, Jan 29 - Conference Day (no regular classes); Semester 1 Subject Overview due by 3:00 pm 
    • Saturday, Feb 6 - Ticket to Thrive (all faculty will be needed for this short virtual event)
    • Thursday, Feb 11 - Professional Development Day
      • DEI work 
      • Standardization of summative assessments 
    • Friday, Feb 12 - No School 
    • Monday, Feb 15 - No School 

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