It's sure been nice to have you all back in the building and hard at work this week. Your efforts to get things ready for your students by Monday morning have been impressive, especially given the other demands that have been placed upon you and your time. Thanks for your commitment and for your efforts to ensure that our school year gets started on the right foot. You really are a superior bunch of people and I'm stoked to be working with you this year.
Just a few updates for the good of the order...
Specials
Next week, 13-17 Aug., is Week A of your specials schedule. Specials will begin on Monday. Please plan accordingly.
Attendance
Teachers: please do your attendance on paper and on the computer for the first 10 days of school. Look for an attendance folder from Erin's office soon.
Open House
Don't forget to plan for Open House Night on 28 August, 6:00-7:30PM.
Athletic Event Passes
We have 2012-2013 FUSD Athletic Event Passes for you in the front office. These passes get you and a guest into FUSD sporting events for free, if you're interested. It also, interestingly enough, obligates you "to assist the administration in any emergency supervisory situation which arises before, during, or after an athletic event." And, it's not valid for FUSD events held at NAU.
Telephones
If you moved classrooms during the summer, or if you're new to our building, please remember to change the voicemail recording on your phone to match your new assignment in your new room. Shaddy has detailed instructions which he can forward to you. But it's a pretty simple process. If you're able to have the former user log in to the phone's messages menu for you it's as simple as pressing the menu button on the front of the phone and then select "4 for setup options" and then "For greetings press 1" to change the current voicemail recording to your own.
Lunchtime snacks
Please remind your parents that they can block the purchase of snacks from their child's account with the cafeteria personnel. Little ones, especially, often overspent their accounts last year because parents didn't know they were automatically able to purchase snacks with their money in their lunch accounts. We will soon publish a school-blog and Facebook note to this regard, too.
Special Area Teacher Collaboration
Due to our new specials schedule, there exists opportunities for our four special area teachers to collaborate with you for about 5 hours during the work week. They will be available during this time to work with you and your students to integrate their special content into the core academic areas. They will be available to you or your grade level for about three weeks at at time and will hopefully each be able to work with many of you throughout the course of the school year. Likewise, this new schedule will allow them meet together as a CT and to equitably have the same amount of prep time as classroom teachers as well. They are looking forward to meeting some of with you during the next week to begin to work out these collaboration schedules. If you have an interest in this new approach, please make your interest known to them, too. This is a work in progress, but one that we're all very optimistic about. Please try to be understanding as we build it into something that works to everyone's advantage. Thanks! [see: sample collaboration schedule]
First Days Intake & Dismissal
As mentioned via email yesterday, "I appreciate that some of our teachers have noted that our
new dismissal procedure may require some small adjustments in order to ensure
that this crucial transition time works as smoothly and as safely as possible.
Therefore, it’s my request that you make arrangements with
your grade-level and/or hallway cohorts to ensure that at least one teacher at
each grade level be present to collect and walk parent-pickup students only to
the front of the building when they are released via the intercom at dismissal
time. This will ensure that our students meet with their parents and also
that, if parents are late, we’re aware of who remains."
Perhaps upper grade students will not require this kind of close supervision all year. Let's address that at an upcoming faculty meeting. Likewise, perhaps there will be other ways that we can improve this system. I'm open to your ideas. I've merely tried to put the best plan in place that I could for now given the new constraints we're forced to work with. It's my hope that dismissal under this new procedure is both safer and more orderly. That is the goal. Thanks for being willing to work through the bugs with me as we figure this all out together.
Likewise, please be ready to render aide and assistance to any/all parents and students on our first days of school next week. Let's work together to ensure that everyone has a wonderful first impression of Marshall Magnet School, that they are able to get where they need to go expediently, and that they are able to accomplish what they need to do with the capable assistance of the happiest, most helpful staff in town.
Class Sizes
Last of all, as I've mentioned before, I am well aware of the ever-growing enrollments in some of your classes. Growing enrollment is ultimately a very good thing! But, for the near-term, I want you to know, I am in regular, almost daily communication with the superintendent about this situation. As always, she assures me that if these numbers materialize on the first few days of school, that we will be able to open a new section, likely a 4/5 in room 29, to accommodate all of these students. Should this occur, teachers in the effected grade levels, RTI- and ELL-specialists, and I will meet after the school day on Monday or Tuesday to create this new section. This will, naturally, foster an unavoidably disruptive situation for some, but we will do our best to make it as easy and seamless a change as we possibly can. Please assure your parents of the same: be patient, we'll fix it. But please realize, until we actually see these students on campus, we cannot make a decision to add a staff member to our building. Thanks for your patience with this. I understand your trepidation, as well as that of our parents' unease in this regard. As always, I am committed to doing whatever I can to ensure that the best is done for Marshall School, however our membership as a component part of a much larger organism constrains us from being able to make these changes prior to the start of the year.
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