Week Beginning March 1, 2021

 The Week Ahead

Group 1 On-Campus 

Kyle out all week 

Advisory Slides Link

 Monday, March 1

• Faculty Out
• Kyle all-day (Ashley La & Alexis)
• Will & Tracey out PM  (Molly for Will; James for Tracey)
• Student Diversity Leadership Retreat Begins 12:00 pm - 4:15 pm 
• MS Chapel 2:00 - 2:30 pm 
• MSB Soccer HOME Game 3:15 pm 

Tuesday, March 2

• Faculty Out
• Kyle all-day Alexis)
• Will all-day (Ashley La)
• Tracey all-day (Molly)
• Student Diversity Leader Retreat 8:00 am - 2:00 pm 
• Attending (may not be on campus and will not be in classes)
• Grade 6 - Kaelynn, Guneet, Ireland, Lee, Harrison
• Grade 7 - McKay, Trinity, Reagan
• Grade 8 - Avah, Emma 
• MSG Volleyball @ McMuarry (dismiss at 1:50 pm)
• PM Advisory 2:00 - 2:30 pm 
• Advisory Challenge Day part 1 - LINK TO ADVISORY CHALLENGE INFO
• Shelli will also send via email 
• MS Leadership Team Meeting 2:30 - 3:30 pm 
• MSB Soccer Practice at 3:15 pm 
• MS Cross Country Practice at 3:15 pm 

Wednesday, March 3

• Faculty Out
• Kyle all-day (Ashley La & Alexis)
• Clare in Admissions Interviews all day (on-campus)
• COVID testing available from 8:00 am in the MS Faculty Workroom 
• Grade 6 Math Club  1:30 - 2:00 pm 
• MSG Volleyball Practice 3:15 pm 
• MSB Soccer Practice at 3:15 pm 
• MS Cross Country Practice at 3:15 pm 
• Grade Level Team Meetings - 
• 2:00 - 2:30 PM Grade 6
• 2:30 - 3:00 PM Grade 8
• 3:00 - 3:30 PM Grade 7

Thursday, March 4

• Faculty Out:
• Kyle all-day - No sub needed (Alexis to cover advisory)
• COVID tests due in the Faculty Workroom by 9:00 am
• Grade 7 Parent Coffee 8:15 - 9:15 am
• Clare & Math Team 
• Evacuation Drill - 9:40 am 
• no alarm to sound. Please take attendance by class NOT advisory
• MS Cross Country MEET @ Vashon (dismiss at 1:00 pm) 
• PM Advisory 2:00 - 2:30 pm 
• Advisory Challenge Day part 2 - LINK TO ADVISORY CHALLENGE INFO
• MS Faculty Meeting 2:30 - 3:30 pm 
• MSG Volleyball Practice 3:15 pm 
• MSB Soccer Practice at 3:15 pm 

Friday, March 5

• Faculty Out:
• Kyle all-day (Ashley La & Alexis)
• Clare in Admissions Interviews all day (on-campus)
• Affinity Groups begin 2:00 - 2:25 pm. Students NOT in Affinity Groups should remain in Advisory. 
• Linh's Advisory - Molly to cover
• Dimpy's Advisory - James to cover
• MSG Volleyball HOME Game at 3:30 pm 

Action Items

• New:

• Letters Of Agreement: You should have received a notification that your letters of agreement for next year are now in paycom. If you plan on returning, please complete these ASAP. If you are unsure or would like to talk at more length about your thoughts, please reach out to me so we can connect. I know it feels early to make a decision about something that is 6 months away! If you are undecided or need more time, let's find a time to connect this week. Thank you!

• Schedule for AFTER Spring Break and our return in full. Please look at the 2020-21 MS Schedule and the first tab "In School Schedule After SB". This really has not changed much since we published this at the start of school, but your commitments to other divisions may have. Please check over this tab very carefully and let me know if you see any clashes. It is essential that you use this tab and not your personal one, as we have yet to update those. If I hear nothing by Thursday at noon, I will assume we are good to go! Thank you for your help with this.

• Continuing:

• MYP Action Plan: A reminder that as you meet with your subject groups, please review your MYP Goals as a department. You can see the ones set in 17/18 and a tab for 20/21 for you to add to. Please see Angelica if you have questions about this. Subject goals should be added by 03.18.21, please!

• MYP Rubrics & Samples of Student Work: If you have not yet submitted your rubrics for your semester 2 units you are currently working on, please connect with Angelica ASAP. You can submit your rubric copies here. As you finish a summative, please select 3 - 4 samples to add to the folder too.

• Standardization of names for Summative Assessments: In an effort to avoid having to hand-enter all of our summative scores for each criterion at the end of the semester, we need to standardize our practice of titling those assignments in myAW. That standardization will allow Ruth to pull all of our scores automatically.
• So, here is what we need to do. When we are titling our summative assessments in myAW, they must start as follows:
• Criterion A – Miracle Worker Summative Assessment
• Criterion D – Genetics Research Summative Assessment
• The two key elements of this process are:
• Starting with the specific criterion you’ll be assessing
• Putting a space both before AND AFTER the letter of the criterion being assessed.

• 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. 

• 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. 

Changes to the Week Ahead, Updates, & Reminders

• Please consider if you use news articles in your class: There is a fine balancing act on using resources that support your content in class and also maintaining an unbias viewpoint. Sandra shared this resource with me as a great starting point on where media news resources fall in regards to news value and reliability and their bias left or right. It's fascinating reading and updated monthly. Please consider reviewing this and be open-minded to remembering the views and opinions in our community are wide and varied.  https://www.adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/ 

• Affinity Groups: A heads up that Affinity Groups now have the option to meet a time outside of the Friday, 2:00 - 2:25pm time slot. Because of this change, Tracey and Will are now free to rejoin advisory time. Please note, their groups will now be meeting at lunch on Friday instead. 

• New student in 6th Grade: We have a new student, Lea Brine-Ringeval, joining 6th grade on March 17. Those teachers affected should have received an email with specific details. 

• DEI Training: The DEI team has reached out to Kisha to ask whether we will be examining curriculum units for what we can add to them, or in looking for our own biases within them. She replied: 
• “With regards to Unconscious Bias, we will be looking at it through the lens of teaching and learning, and not everyone's personal bias. A helpful tool as individual pre-work may be asking folks to take one or more of the unconscious bias assessments through Harvard: Bias This activity is in service to remind folks that we all have biases, positive and negative and can be helpful for those who have not thought about it much or for whom bias is taboo to explore. Our 90-minute session will be an exploration of how to examine space, curriculum, and practice for bias.”

• Future PD: 
• Friday, March 12 - MYP Documentation Day, Action Plan, & DEI 10:30-12:30 pm 
• Thursday, March 18, 2:30 - 3:30 pm MYP Subject Action Plan Goals Due 
• Thursday, April 22, 2:30 - 3:30 pm MYP Subject Action Plan reviewed
• Friday, April 23 - TBD (no DEI)
• Friday, May 14 - TBD & DEI 10:30-12:30 pm 

 

Sandra's PD Corner 

I know I've said this before, but when you look at each month's religious and cultural celebrations, in aggregate, it really IS an amazing kaleidoscope of experiences and wonder. March dates are updated, but links for most events are still to come!  

• A Happy Purim to our Jewish colleagues today, Friday, Feb. 26th.
• As we close out this incredible February and are reminded to continue the learnings of Black History Month into the rest of the year. 
• The advent of March brings us Women's History Month along with National Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month and National Multiple Sclerosis Education and Awareness Month. 
• Monday, March 1st is Independence Movement Day for our students and colleagues from South Korea, our Baha'i community begins their 19 day fast, and our Japanese community celebrates Hina Matsuri on Wednesday, March 3rd. 

We have Title IIA and Title IVA funding available as well as some PD money to help support you in your PD goals. I will be looking for ways in the coming weeks to reach out to you all more directly to see how I can best support you in this space.  You know my PD and DEI Resources pages continue to be updated, but we're missing something in connecting you to that oh-so-special-PD-thing-that-fits-with-pandemic-20-21. So, I'll aim to find a way to work with you to find it.

That "what you admire most in a colleague" question?

Here's your answer so far.  Y'all are pretty cool, eh? (Thank you so much to all of you who answered!)

I haven't come up with a good new question... so I'll stick with this one for one more week.

Kudos

• Congrats to all those associated with the Gator Gala. What an amazing online event for everyone involved and I believe a record 430 families logged in and watched! At the time of writing this, the auction is still occurring, so we don't yet have a final number, but thank you to all who donated money and/or their time to helping with this very important event that allows us do all the wonderful things we do here at AWS. 

• To Alexis for jumping in this week as Kyle, while also covering her normal classes and ensuring the 7th grade was supported in their online classes. Good news! We have a sub to help next week :-) Thank you for going the extra mile.

• To Will, Andrea, Angelica, Kyle, Dimpy, Shelli, and the SC for being part of three full-day interviews, we held this week for the humanities position. Thank you for carving out the time during your already busy days to help in this very important process. 

• To Paula and Sandra for the opportunity to get us vaccinated! I can't tell you how excited I am and I know many of us all to feel a sense of relief. Thank you for all the logistics and planning that I am sure has to go into this. Here's to March 6!

Absent Students

• Follow this link for Anticipated Absent Students

The Month Ahead

• Thursday, March 4 - Grade 7 Parent Coffee
• Thursday, March 11 - Grade 8 Parent Coffee
• Friday, March 12 - PD Day 
• Thursday, March 25 - Civvies Day 
• Friday, March 26 - End of Q3