First of all, sorry about the confusion regarding the cancellation of today's faculty meeting. Thanks to your loyal reading of this blog, I removed it from the MASTER calendar several days ago... but forgot to notify our webmaster of the change... and so it was still on the calendar you can find on the fusd1.org website. Sorry for the confusion. Shaddy and I are working to align these two calendars more closely. But, in the meantime, as far as school-business goes, please keep a closer eye on the MASTER calendar. It's up-to-the-minute up-to-date with everything that's going on around here. Promise.
Decisions, decisions...
Thanks for responding to our last poll pertaining to your desires regarding the frequency of posts to this blog.
[poll graphic removed]
With 35 votes cast, it appears 60% of you would prefer to see more frequent, shorter posts,
And so you shall. Watch...
Coming up next week
- All week: AIMSWEB testing K-5. Joy and Jenny have published a schedule. If you have questions, please follow up with them.
- Monday: No School. It's Labor Day.
- Wednesday: Tech Coach Training. Kasch, Bianco, Shaddy and I will be out.
- Thursday: Open House 6:00-7:00 PM.
Classroom Managment Plans
I've asked Nick Cathey, our Positive Behavioral Support guy, to meet with all classroom and special areas teachers to help you get started writing up a classroom management plan. We've worked up a simple and hopefully-effective Google Doc Form for you to fill-out and submit to us. Why? Simple. We'd like each of you to have a solid management plan in-place and in-writing... it's just good practice. But we'd also like to have a written record of your classroom system in order to allow us work consistently within your program when we're dealing with your students (and their parents) now and then. Look for Nick to drop by in the near future during you planning time.
Flyers were disseminated on Wednesday for the upcoming Marshall School Night at Chase Field on 24 Sept. Tickets are on sale in the office. More information is available on the Marshall School Community blog.
enVision Training
Sue Pierce sent out an email inviting teachers to an upcoming enVision math training session. Dates are TBA, but she has asked that you complete a short survey to convey your needs/desires in this regard to her.
Accelerated Reader
For the past year we've used the online version of Accelerated Reader at Marshall and, as a result, we now receive an annual bill for the services they provide. Our current bill was over $3000. However, Mr. Shaddy worked out a substantial savings (nearly $1000!!!) for us thanks to his persistent and deliberate efforts working with their customer service representative the other day (Nice work, Dino!). Chiefly he was able to finagle this savings because we only used 185 AR student accounts last year. So, this year, based on last year's utilization numbers, and in order to save such substantial amount of money, we're only ordering 240 AR student accounts. You should talk to him if you'd like your students to have a few of them.
Paper
More than you ever wanted to know about copy-paper: We went through 50,000 sheets of paper (Yes! Five-oh-thousand sheets. That's10 big boxes worth) in the first 10 days of school. As of right-now, we have about 35 full-boxes in storage. And that's it. At this rate, that's perhaps 30-35 days worth of paper. After that we need to place another order. Boxes of copy-paper cost $35.00 each. This quickly adds up to a lot of money, and potentially one of our biggest annual expenditures. If there's any way for you to reduce the amount of copying you're doing, please do so. If there's any way you can ask your parent-community to contribute to our paper supply, please feel free to ask. Some classrooms are doing this already.
You've been set a quota on copies: 2000. But it's not based on time, nor is it limited to that number. If you use your 2000 copies tomorrow, or not until January, whenever you run out, all you need to do is come and see us in the office. We'll reset you. But we're keeping a list. And I just gotta say: there may come a time where we have to enact a more equitable and economical means of managing our use of copy-paper school-wide.
NAU Students
We've been asked to consider bringing the NAU Praxis teacher-training program into our building. I'm not too sure of the details at this point, but because I get the sense this is something we might actually be able to see happen here by spring semester 2012, it's worth apprising you of the possibility now. If you've got an interest in being involved in helping make this happen... or if you've got strong feelings yay-or-nay about bringing this program to Marshall, please let me know.
In the same vein, I received a call this week from Suzanne Griffin, the coordinator for NAU's 308 practicum program. She'd be interested to hear from you if you'd like to have one of these pre-service teachers work for a short time in your classroom this semester. Please give her a call [901-573-2644] or send her an email if you're interested.
