Updates - 25 Sept. 2015

Hello everyone,

Don't mean to get too creepy.  But I want you to know: there are certain members of our staff here at Marshall that I watch a little more closely than others.  I watch you, not because I am concerned about your professionalism or work-habits.  And not because I harbor hopes of catching you if you stumble off your game now and then.  Quite to the contrary.  I watch some of you closely because I consider you our indicator species.  By watching you and your at-work demeanor, I feel I'm able to, in a sense, take the temperature of this little biome of ours, to better assess current and perhaps even future trends in our corporate attitude and overall sense of well-being.

My local barometers are telling me that many of you are currently under stress.  I want you to know: I understand that state-of-being all too well.  In fact, I feel much the same myself of late.  It's occurred to me that the stress and frustration I think I'm perceiving in many of you may, in truth, be a kind of reflection of what's going on in my own head and heart.

In view of what seems to be our current collective condition, I've been compelled to recall the Wellness Wheel that Adam Saenz introduced to us in the video we watched together at our first faculty meeting back in August. My wheel's never been perfectly balanced, but it's more than a little out of true right now.  Maybe yours is, too.  I've copied (without permission) the wellbeing inventory [.pdf] that Dr. Saenz included in his book, The Power Of A Teacher, and filled it out for myself, revealing some of what might be the source(s) of my anxiety.  It might be helpful for you to complete it, too, to help you understand for yourself where in your own life you might want to focus your attention in order to regain some much needed balance.  I like to encourage you to complete the inventory today.

Progress Reports
Our resident gradebook guru, Heather Overton, has provided a set of simple, step-by-step instructions to help you produce progress reports for your students:
1. From GradeBook Main, go to any of the core subjects (not Homeroom)
2. Click on Reports
3. Select "Detailed Progress Report by Subject" in the drop-down box
4. Choose Run Report
5. Your whole class should be in the same report and all subjects that you have entered grades will be listed on that printout.

Heather will host a quick workshop in her room next, Friday, October 2 at 12:45 if you feel like you would rather walk through the steps together. Please feel free to email, call, or stop by her room if you have any questions about progress reports.

VOICE Committee Elections

Dietrich Sauer has asked that each site submit the name of a certified and classified staff member to represent Marshall's interests during monthly VOICE Committee meetings.

Please feel free to nominate yourself or one of your peers by submitting a name in an email to me.  Please do so no later than this coming Monday 28 September.  If more than one person from each category (certified/classified) is nominated and is willing to "run" for office, we will hold a balloted election during the school day on Tuesday 29 September.  We must submit our representatives' names to Mr. Sauer on Tuesday by the end of the school day.

Lunch Stuff

Teachers, please arrive on-time to retrieve your students from the playground after lunch recess.  Likewise, please stress to them the importance of lining up quickly and, most especiallly, quietly when the lunch recess bell rings.  Loud and unruly behaviors during this time of transition can be very disruptive to classrooms located adjacent to our outside doors.

Staff Webpages
Teachers, please update your Marshall School staff page immediately to reflect our new telephone number.

Calendar

Week B

• Tuesday 29 Sept.
• Fratelli 10% Tuesday for Marshall School, all day
• Wednesday 30 Sept.
• Coe at Elementary Admin mtg, 9:30-11:30
• Picture Day in Fit Kids and Science Lab, all day
• Friday 02 Oct.
• Mustang Gallop at FHS track, all morning
• Progress Report workshop in Overton's room, 12:45
• FHS schoolwide emergency drill, 2:30

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Updates - 18 Sept. 2015

Green grass and fall colors

Hello everyone,

Happy Friday!

Nice to see grass on our field finally this week!  We're probably going to be asked to keep our students off it for a while in order to allow it to take root, which may not really start to happen until spring.  Plus, the jogging track materials that will surround the grass are back-ordered.  So anyway, the long and short of it is, the snow-fencing is likely to remain in place for some time to come.

The snow-fencing will then continue to make it difficult to access the narrow gate from our campus to FHS in the event you're outside during a lockdown or an evacuation.  I'm proud of the groups who improvised during our practice today and hid behind the ballfield fence.  That was smart!  Going forward, however, please know, you shouldn't have to do that.  Members of the crisis team have been given keys which will allow them to unlock the padlock on the big gate at the south end of the baseball field.  This will give you access to our well-established place to hideout during a lockdown when you're locked out, or during an evacuation when we need to get to the dome.

Progress Reports
The first grading period officially ends on Friday 09 Oct.  That's just about exactly 3 weeks from now.  You will recall: we will not be sending home standards reports at that time.  Instead, to hopefully save you some time, we will print and deliver to our families at parent-teacher conferences detailed progress reports in grades 3-5.  You'll do that in Synergy by selecting and printing the Detailed Progress Report by Subject.  No attendance data will be reflected on your progress reports.  If you would like to have attendance data for your conferences, please ask the front office to produce a report for you if you're not able to do so yourself.

For grades K-2, FUSD's expectations in this regard are somewhat different.  If you're not equipped to print a Detailed Progress Report by Subject for your students, please ensure instead that you're able to provide some sort of current snapshot of student achievement for your parents at conference time using the resources you have at-hand such as AIMSWEB scores, STAR/AR tests, high-frequency word lists, running records, portfolio components, summative assessments, etc.

United Way
October is United Way campaign month in FUSD.  Dietrich Sauer and Sylvia Johnson are chairing the effort district-wide and they're seeking coordinators at each site.  They'd like to hear from someone(s) at Marshall by Monday 21 Sept. who would be willing to participate along with them in this effort.  If that's you, please contact them.  Thanks.

Eureka Math
Our third grade team has developed a great flyer to help steer parents in the direction of the help that's been placed online for Eureka Math.  I put the flyer on our Facebook page the other day and it turned into one of our most popular, most interacted-with posts in a long time.  The .pdf is available here.  And, if you're so inclined and wish to adapt this for your own purposes, the MS Publisher .pub file can be downloaded here.

Calendar
Week A

• Monday 21 Sept.
• Coe & White at Flag Community Foundation award$, 10:00-12:00
• Coe @ FUSD school security meeting, 1:30
• Wednesday 23 Sept
• Second grades to NAU, 9:30-11:00
• Thursday 24 Sept.
• Coe & White at district-wide PBIS training, 8:00-4:00
• Bus evacuation drills, 9:00-10:00

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Updates -- 11 September 2015

Hello everyone,

Thanks, all y'all, for your hard work preparing for and working through Connect To School Night last night.  Feedback directed to me by parents as they left was exceptional and full of praise for you, your programs, as well as your poise and preparedness.

Thanks especially to the Parent Engagement Committee for pulling the ever-challenging childcare arrangement together so expertly once again and to those non-classroom faculty who tended to our many charges so responsibly.  On the night, we lost no one, allowed no one to be injured, and kept the whole lot of them entertained throughout.

All 'round just another job well-done all in a (long) day's work.  Thanks for being Marshall, Marshall.

You make me proud.

TPEC Preconferences
Please review the TPEC version 4.0 (2015-2016) rubric prior to your team's collaborative meeting next week.  We will be reviewing my own extra-specially terribly-annotated (some have suggested that my handwriting is kind of awful) copy of the rubric together at that time.

I will also be asking your team to determine if you will be working collaboratively for the purposes of evaluation this year and to choose performance measurement instruments then, too.  Your choices for measurement tools at the moment are as follows: AIMSWEB Reading, AIMSWEB Math, and/or AZELLA.

Calendar
Week B

• Monday, 14 Sept
• Payday
• Coe at Admin meetings, 10:30-4:30
• Tuesday, 15 Sept
• Science Council in the Science Lab, 3:45
• Site Council in the Library, 4:00
• Friday, 18 Sept
• Gallop Kick-off assembly in the Gym, 9:00
• Lockdown Drill, 10:00

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Updates - 04 Sept. 2015

Hello everyone,

I hope you have a nice long weekend and are able to find fun and relaxing things to do in the company of those you love.

Thanks for meeting on short notice today.  I wanted to say something uplifting to you, to encourage, sustain, and embolden you.  I'm not sure I succeeded, but I thank you for indulging me while I tried.

At 3:00 the other morning, I kept replaying this speech in my head. It's closely akin to what it was I hoped to be able to say to you today; that's how proud I am to be a member of this company of yours.  Henry V's Eve of St. Crispin's speech is one of my favorite scenes in any film ever.  I hope you will watch and enjoy it and, moreover, that you will be able to see through the rousing-but-complicated Shakespearean prose, and the far-more-desperate-than-ours circumstance, to the real meaning of the words.  They come close, albeit by way of an extremely overly dramatic piece of acting, to mirroring many of my own thoughts about you, and us, and all that we've been forced to endure together.



Parapros vs. classroom aides
Sounds like a rousing scenario for a no-holds-barred cage match, doesn't it.

It's not.

But I would like to take a second in today's Blue Note to remind all of you of the difference between a classroom aide and a special education paraprofessional.

Classroom aides are assigned only to our kindergarten classes through our Title 1 budget "to provide early literacy support and intervention" to all students in a given classroom.  Classroom aides are assigned to teachers not specific individual students.

Paraprofessional are provided to certain individual students (or small groupings of students) based on discrete components of their Individual Education Plan.  The FUSD M&O Exceptional Student Services budget pays for them.  As members of a given classroom, paraprofessionals are permitted to provide both academic and/or behavioral assistance to all students.  However, please note: paraprofessionals are assigned to students, not to teachers.  As needs change, as IEPs are revised, as students move toward greater independence and/or move in and out of our school, paraprofessionals must be reassigned to areas where needs exist.

Classroom aides can be directed to perform any number of duties, including support tasks such as copying, collating, and recess duties based on teacher-need.

Paraprofessionals should not be directed to perform the aforementioned duties by classroom teachers, but may be asked by their special education supervisor or the school principal to attend recesses in order to provide supervision and support to the students in their charge in that setting.  Needless to say, they may always render aide and social support to all students on the playground, but they should always be on duty along with another staff member (typically a classroom teacher or general aide) in order to be able to immediately carry out their primary function, which is the care of the child(ren) to whom they have been assigned.

General education classroom teachers should not ask paraprofessionals to carry out clerical work, support tasks, or any assigned duties for them.

These directives do not apply to paraprofessionals in district-wide special programs whose assigned duties and responsibilities differ greatly from paraprofessionals assigned to inclusion students in gen-ed classrooms.

Dismissal

It's not funny.

We've had a number of kids miss the bus the past couple weeks because, as they told us, they "didn't hear the announcement."

Up here in the front office, we find that a dubious excuse for not being in line in the gym to be loaded on-time.  Every bus is announced repeatedly well in advance of its departure.  Therefore, I'd like to ask everyone to pay extra attention to ensuring that your students are quiet and ready to listen at each day's end when we begin the dismissal procedure.

Also, I'd like to point out that it's viewed as quite discourteous when your students miss the bus for the aforementioned reason and then you do not attend to them personally in order to locate (and then wait, often for a looooong time, for) parents who must be called to the school to pick them up.

PE
We will have a new sub going forward for PE classes.  A vacancy position for PE at Marshall has been posted online.

Calendar
Week A

• Monday, 07 Sept
• NO SCHOOL - Labor Day
• Thursday, 10 Sept
• Connect To School Night

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