Become a Professional Development leader at Marshall. Make some extra $$

Gretchen Markiewicz writes about another paid training opportunity:
I am gearing up for another year with the PD Teacher Leaders and I do not have representation from [Marshall]. I am looking for classroom teachers interested in learning more about professional development and willing to work a few extra hours a month (for a $1000 stipend), collaborating with me, you, and the EIS person/people at your site, to really get collaborative teams and PLCs off the ground... Please, please see if you can find somebody this year... Thanks for your help.
Obviously, it would be a great thing for us to have someone in-house who could provide us with relevant, Marshall-focused professional development as-needed. Might also be a good thing for you, too, what with the generous stipend and all. So please, consider it. If you're even just mildly curious, have a look at the job description. If you want to sign-on, follow up with Gretchen directly via email.

Thanks!
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About how we didn't meet AYP

Hillary Davis, education reporter for the Daily Sun, has written a pretty good article in the paper today outlining how Marshall and several other FUSD schools failed to meet NCLB's annual Adequate Yearly Progress standard on AIMS in 2011.  Read it online right here.

FYI: We are designated as a "School Choice School" for two other FUSD schools who have failed to meet this AYP standard for the past two years.  We expect to receive several students from these schools whose parents have elected to have them transported away from their neighborhood school to Marshall at district expense.   We are compelled by law to accept them regardless of our current enrollment.

Should we not meet AYP in 2012, it is my understanding our students will be given a similar option.

But we're not going to let that happen, are we.
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Staffing updates and what-not

It's been great to see so many of you coming through the building in recent days!  Most especially, it's been wonderful having Malinda back on the job full-time.  I'm so glad she's here now!  You have no idea...

I can't stop smiling.

In case you were wondering about staffing
  • We've completed our end of the hiring process for the special education parapro classified position we were advertising earlier in the summer.
  • We've also completed our end of the process for hiring my fifth grade position, too.  
  • We're hoping to wrap up our interviews for the Positive Behavior Support position later this week.  
  • And finally, we're still waiting to hear something conclusive about a couple other SPED positions that are being filled at the district level.  

Thanks to all of you who participated on our hiring committees this summer.  As always, I am perpetually indebted to you.

Paid Training Opportunity!

Brad Kamradt is seeking a Marshall staff member or two to complete a 2-hour training in early-August on the new Genesis attendance and lunch-count system.  He's paying $27.11 per hour for the training.  Anyone who volunteers will have my enduring gratitude.  Likewise, following the training, you will be asked to train the rest of us on Genesis on the afternoon of Friday, 19 August.  The training session for our staff is expected to take about an hour.

Please contact Brad Kamradt if you're interested in helping us out by becoming a Genesis trainer for our staff.
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Faculty Meeting, August 16, 10:00 AM

Hello everyone,  

We're gonna get together as a group on Tuesday morning, August 16th at 10:00 AM after the all-FUSD meeting at Flagstaff High School (which is currently slated to run from 8:00-9:00 AM).  Our meeting shouldn't take too long.  Promise you can work in your rooms the balance of the day and most (if not all) of the day on the 17th.

Below are a few things you might normally find copied and placed into a file for you at the First Faculty Meeting of the school year.  I'd like to see if we can forego the usual massive stack of paper.  Instead, I'd like to go over everything listed-and-linked below when we get together in the Conference Room on that Tuesday.  For that reason, I'd like to ask that you:

Please try to remember to bring your laptop to our First Faculty Meeting.

It should come in super-handy.  But, don't worry!  You're still going to get a folder.  Some things just can't be done online, I guess.  And it will probably still be chock-full of stuff.  But hopefully it'll be a lot thinner than usual, not quite so heavy-laden.  Ya know.  Hopefully, together, we can review most of our important stuff online, set a few bookmarks, save a tree or two, and perhaps leave it at that.

Of course, I want you to feel free to print these things out (or not), either before or after we meet... If you like.  Totally up to you.  But in an effort to save expensive paper, invaluable support-staff time, my time (for whatever it's worth), as well as wear-and-tear on our dearly-beloved, oh-so-delicate copier, I thought it might be an interesting experiment to link to them here instead, and let you use them when/as you see fit.

These documents will always be here.  All year long.  Might even turn out to be handier online than as another file for you to misplace... Or is that just me?

Please note: I'm not exactly done-done populating the lists below.  But, I should be by sometime prior to the 16th.  Nevertheless, in the event you're interested in any of the things that follow, you're welcome to take a peek.  If you do, I'll even ask you for your feedback. Thanks!

2011-2012 Schedules & Calendars
2011-2012 Documents & Websites
Online Sign-up Forms


Sundry Other Online Things That We Need To Discuss
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08 July 2011

Hello everyone,

I've only got a couple things to report.  PLEASE READ them both.  Thanks.

One thing:

Gretchen Markiewicz writes:
"An incredible opportunity has come our way! We have been invited to participate in a Solution Tree Virtual Conference on Professional Learning Communities on Wednesday, July 20th, 2011. Rick and Becky DuFour, the renowned PLC experts, will be addressing conference participants in Hollywood, CA, and we will stream them live here in Flagstaff. We'll have a representative from Solution Tree facilitate the keynotes; all participants will receive books and materials to support PLC implementation at their sites. This training will be held at Sinagua Middle School from 8 – 3:30.

Register for this 6-hour session (1.5 hours for lunch) with colleagues from your school (hopefully your principal too!!) and learn all about how to make your PLC the most effective it can be. Earn 6 menu hours for 301 pay and .5 undergraduate credits for salary advancement. Get materials to help you with the process. Spaces will fill up fast so please register ASAP on ERO, for FUSD 2947, "PLC Virtual Conference with Rick & Becky DuFour"

I've enrolled myself for this neat opportunity on 20 July.  I'd encourage all of you to consider it, despite the fact that it's the middle of summer.  Should be a rare opportunity to focus on getting better at this PLC thing.  The district's mandating even more structured and deliberate PLCing for the coming year.

Another thing:

I'm at the end of my fourth day here in the office at Marshall.  Still not officially your interim principal; still waiting for the board to approve all of this.  Regardless, it's been a loooong week.  And I'm not sure what to report to you as far as "What I accomplished this week" goes.

I know it's summer.  And I know you're all off doing what teachers do over the summer.  And I envy you.  But, at the same time, I need to ask a few favors.

I would appreciate your help with schedules:
Some of you have already volunteered to come in and help me work thru this concern.  Thanks!  Let's see if we can come up with a common time (sometime next week would be great!) to get 3-5 of us together to work out a rough draft.  If I haven't talked to you already, and you'd like to help out with this please let me know.  I'll welcome every additional set of eyes, and each new mind.  We need to figure out which aides cover which kids and which classes, plus lunchroom, lunch playground, and morning before-school playground, too.  I've no special gift in this area.  So I figure, the more the merrier... and perhaps the-more the less-disappointed, as well.  Want to help?  Please, let me know when you can come and help.  Thanks!

Likewise, I've worked up a teacher-duty schedule.  Or I've tried to.  Mostly by emulating last year's duty schedule.  But I'd love to have some feedback on it.  It's online. And on the wall in the office.  Please, have a look at it and let me know how it looks to you.  You can view the teacher-duty calendar online.

The Specials Schedule is already done, thanks to Janelle and Stacie.

I need your help with hiring:
I cannot hire without committees to interview candidates.  We only need to hire a few key jobs before school begins... but the sooner the better... my former job (fifth grade); a Positive Behavioral Support Aide (half jenny's former position); and a SPED Resource parapro (to replace Eugenia (Peggy) Ramos).  If you're available to help with any/all of these interviews, I'd like to know your availabilty (and phone or email, whichever you prefer), so I can call you to form a committee once we have a few applicants.  This is important.  And I can't do it by myself.

Thanks for reading thru all of this.  I'm still excited to be taking on this challenge, despite the fact that the initial glow has been somewhat diminished by the onset of reality.  Please, bear with me.

And thanks in advance for your help.
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