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| Our School Story Click to download |
I feel like I've been trapped in my still deconstructed office much of this week. I'm sorry I haven't been as visible in and around the building and in your classrooms as often as I like to be. I've been more consumed than usual with parent-relations concerns and with delivering reports and paperwork to the district and the state this week, but the end is in sight, I think. Hope to be able to get around to your rooms more consistently next week.
Our School Story
One of the things I've been working on the last few weeks is our School Story, an accountability report for the School Board that Dr. Hagstrom has required all principals to produce. Because it pertains to the student improvement plans I've asked our third, fourth and fifth grade teachers to develop to specificially investigate, accommodate, and remediate the progress of our non-ELL and non-SPED inclusion students who are making little or no progress on AzMERIT, I wanted to make it available to you. You can download a pdf of our School Story here.
My thanks to our RTI team, upper grade CTs, and admin interns for their help in developing this report for the Board.
Fall-downs, Stumbles, And Various Other Mishaps
Remind your students to report any/all mistreatments and injuries that they incur in class or on the playground to you immediately, even if they're self inflicted due to an innocent slip-and-fall or act of clumsiness. And, please, if you feel that a student's injury rises to a level of seriousness, no matter the cause, that it should be evaluated by the nurse, please make sure this happens ASAP. Finally, if and when you've had an injury reported to you, and especially if you've referred a kid to the nurse during the school day, it's always nice to write a quick note or give a quick phone call home to mom and dad to let them know this happened.
TPEC Pre-conferences
I will be attending gradelevel CTs next week to review the current TPEC Rubric with our teacher teams. At that time, teachers will need to be able to tell me whether or not they prefer to be accountable as a member of a gradelevel team or not. Likewise, you or your teams will need to indicate which approved student-growth measure you would like to use to evaluate your students' progress this year. Remember: for purposes of your TPEC, the goal of this component of your evaluation is to demonstrate student growth and the TPEC steering committee has determined that one point of growth is sufficient to meet this criteria. The approved measurement types on this years TPEC are as follows:
How To Win-Win-Win
The PTO met for the first time this school year on Wednesday evening. Turn-out from parents was impressive, with some 20 individuals arriving mostly on-time. Co-presidents April and Steph did a great job facilitating a fun, light-hearted meeting that kept to the agenda and evoked laughter from all of us throughout.
I bring this up only to point out that, while many Marshall parents were in attendance on Wednesday night, only two Marshall teachers were. This concerns me for several reasons and, while I hope you don't perceive what I'm going to write to you today as too much of a scold, I do hope you'll take what I'm about to say to heart and bear it in mind next time the PTO convenes on 04 October.
First of all, we're super lucky, and have been super lucky for a long time, to have a vibrant, social, active, and interested group of parents leading the PTO here at Marshall. Not all schools can say this. And any school that exists without an engaged PTO will tell you: the toil we undertake each day is only made more difficult without their assistance and support. Broader support of the PTO from the faculty at Marshall would likely be perceived as an acknowledgement of all that they mean to us and an encouragement to them to please continue to do so.
Second of all, I'm convinced that missing PTO is a missed opportunity. On Wednesday night, for example, our two teachers and I were put quite unexpectedly on-the-spot, with the best of intentions, by the board and the Gallop Committee members, asking us to, right then and there, determine how/where/why/when to expend the Gallop funds this year. As you know, our needs at Marshall are boundless, and between the three of us we tossed out a number of ideas for the PTO to consider. But in your absence, your voice was not heard in this process, and I sincerely wish that it had been. I hope, going forward, that if you hope to benefit from the PTO's largess, which I know they sincerely wish to bestow upon you and your students in meaningful ways, that you will find yourself in attendance at their meetings where you can be among the decision makers in this valuable and meaningful process.
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| The Parent Engagement Committee job description Click to embiggen |
I'll be honest: I really hope to see more Marshall teachers at upcoming Parent-Teacher Organization meetings this year. The bottomline is simple: It's good for you, good for us, good for them if you're there. That's a win-win-win if ever there was one.
Foster Grandparents
Jessica Bagley has asked that I reiterate to you that April Smith, an experienced Foster Grandparent, is available again this year to serve part-time in a K-2 classroom. If you're interested in having her volunteer in your room, please let Jessica know of your interest, 928-600-9223.
Clothing Exchange
Our annual Clothing Exchange will happen on 09-11 October in the Gym. Donations are currently being collected. Please see Mrs. Burgoon or Mrs. Bianco to drop things off or for additional information.
Dodgeball
We raised over $7000 from individuals and organizations who wanted to sponsor Dodgeball this year. But because we were only able to recruit 11 teams to play (we need about 20 to make it a viable competition), and despite moving the event from spring to fall and from a Sunday to a Saturday, we still weren't able to make it happen. So, we've made the decision to cancel Dodgeball this year and probably forever. Feels like the event has, quite simply, run its course. We'll be returning all sponsorship donations this week and, perhaps, in the future we'll meet together as a planning committee to determine if we can come up with ideas for a fundraiser to take its place.
Calendar
- Monday 11 Sept
- Suzuki Violin begins
- Coe at Admin Council, 1:00
- Coe at Move On When Reading meeting, 4:00
- Tuesday 12 Sept
- 10% Tuesday at Fratelli, all day (Phoenix Ave. and Ft. Valley locations only)
- Thursday 14 Sept
- Payday!
- Friday 15 Sept
- Emergency Drill (Fire), 9:30
- Saturday 16 Sept
- Dodgeball CANCELED
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