Upcoming at AWS...
Monday, September 11E DAY
8:00am Morning Meeting in the MS Lounge
10:00am All Schools Chapel
10:30am Snack in the MS Office & Break
3:15pm MS Faculty Meeting in the Design Room
Tuesday, September 12
F DAY
8:00am Advisory
10:05am Snack in the MS Office
10:20am Flex
Wednesday, September 13
A DAY
8:00am Advisory
10:05am Snack in the MS Office
10:20am MS Chapel: McConnell Advisory as Acolytes
2:15pm Design Meeting
Thursday, September 14
B DAY
8:00am Advisory
10:05am Snack in the MS Office
10:20am Long Advisory: Grade Level Meeting
2:15pm Math Meeting
3:15pm 6th Grade Team Meeting in the Design Room
6:30pm Back to School Night
Friday, September 15
C DAY
8:00am Advisory
10:05am Snack in the MS Office
10:20am Clubs
3:15pm 7th Grade Team Meeting in the Design Room
Daily schedule
Please remember the variation for Morning Meeting, Period 1, Period 2, and Morning Activities.Professional Growth: Goals & Meetings
The initial deadline for articulation of goals was Friday. Before the end of this week, please complete goals articulation and schedule a meeting with Bill before September 22. The Goal Setting template is the first doc within your folder.To guide our professional growth process this year, I've created a folder for everyone in Professional Growth Docs 2017-2018 (this link is among the Important Links above). Only you, Clare, and I should have access to your particular folder. Please add your folder to your Drive. The folder includes the following docs:
- Goal Setting Template
- MS Formal Observation Templates
- MS Informal Observation Templates
- Mid-Year Reflection
- End of Year Reflection
- Schedule for Professional Growth Process 2017-2018
Back to School Night
The draft schedule for Back to School night is here. At our meeting on Monday, we'll review the schedule and details for the night. We will begin in the Great Hall at 6:30pm - this will include with brief introductions of everyone in the MS and some general reminders, followed by a brief overview of PHE, Athletics, and Design. If you're not on the PHE, Athletics, or Design teams, please head to your next location after the general reminders. As we did last year, we'll ask parents to make no more than 3 moves to avoid total chaos, so you may not be meeting your students' families in your section's classroom. Arts, Language Acquisition, and Math will be presenting together at each grade level. After classroom rotations, each grade will gather in a larger space to talk about Journeys and address classwide/grade level information. Advisors: please plan to join your grade's Journeys meeting.
As you think about welcoming families for a brief introduction to your course, please be sure to share the following:
- major units, key concepts, ATLs, and peak experiences (big projects, experiences to look forward to) central to the course;
- what you expect from students (in-class tasks, what goes into their overall grade, how much homework to expect, etc.);
- what you expect from parents (how to support students, communication, etc.);
Grade Level Teams & Collaborative Time
As we get accustomed to the new meeting schedule, please keep a few important reminders on your radar:- If you are unable to attend a Grade Level Team meeting because of a scheduling conflict, please be sure to add any comments to the meeting agenda if there are topics or students to be discussed or reach out to the Grade Level Team Leader (6: Jessica, 7: Niki, 8: Jen) to provide any details or context. Please be sure to check the notes from the meeting as well.
- If you are unable to attend a MS Faculty Meeting, please be sure to add any comments to the meeting agenda or send to me directly, and be sure to follow up by reviewing the notes from the meeting.
- Subject Area Team meetings are collaborative time to be used as the team sees fit. Occasionally, we will have particular tasks for teams to address, but otherwise it's for the team to decide how best to use the time - reviewing curriculum, soliciting feedback on course design, attending to MYP framework, working on the MYP Action Plan, etc. (but not individual planning time). If your team isn't sure where to start, feel free to reach out!
- Arts and PHE have not been slotted into a regular meeting time. Please be sure to convene at least every other week. For other Teams, if your Subject Area Team is facing scheduling conflicts, please find another common time (at least every other week) to connect.
PSA & Social Media
In the MS Blog for families, linked to Friday's Flash, I reminded families of our policies regarding technology and encouraged them to engage their students in a conversation about tech and social media. Please be assiduous about monitoring students' use of technology while they are on campus. All use of technology, including school-issued and personally-acquired devices, is subject to the PSA policy. If you observe any violation of our tech policy, please reflect that back to the student in the moment and, if appropriate because of the nature of the action or because of an observed pattern, confiscate the device.During Tech Orientation Sessions, the MS Info Session before school started, and in that post, I asked families to take a close look at how their students are engaged in social media. As we have seen, students' involvement with each other via these platforms has already made its way into our school culture. Advisors: please consider making this a running conversation with your groups.
Chapel
Thanks for signing up! Here's the updated Advisory Chapel calendar:- September 27 (Inquirer): Drown/Rockne
- October 11 (Open-Minded): Taylor
- October 25 (Open-Minded): Gettel
- November 8 (Thinker): Price
- November 29 (Thinker): McConnell
- December 6 (Caring): Leenstra
- January 31 (Reflective): Hartmann
- February14 Knowledgeable): Hunt
- March 14 (Communicator): Calcote
- April 11 (Balanced): Strate
- April 25 (Balanced): Flores/Paço
- May 30 (Principled): Wagstaff
This folder includes a few templates for your group to use as well as the planning doc. The planning doc includes more information about cultural and religious observances happening near the Chapel date. Please feel free to make a copy of the original slides or script template in the folder, and use them for your group's Chapel.
Differentiation
- As Jen reminded in an email last week, when approaching differentiation, here are a few resources:
- Jen!
- Librarian!
- ActivelyLearn.com
- Understood.org
- Concordia University's overview of Differentiated Instruction
- Differentiation Central
Think about...
NWAIS Fall Educators Conference
We're all going to the NWAIS Fall Educators Conference! It's never to early to start thinking about the variety of sessions. The theme is "Power Through Association: Building Communities with Purpose," and the keynote and featured speakers will surely strike a chord with our ongoing conversations about school climate, diversity and inclusion, and hot topics in education. Notably, all of the keynote and featured speakers are women (which is a big deal for independent school conferences). The conference is still accepting proposals for poster sessions - if you'd like to feature something, sign up!Upcoming cultural & religious observances...
- Tuesday, September 12 is the Ethiopian New Year.
- Thursday, September 15 marks the beginning of National Hispanic Heritage Month.
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