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| Have you checked our weather station lately? |
Wow, what a beautiful Friday-payday! Fall is definitely here. And such a lovely dusting of snow on the mountain this morning to-boot.
Really don't mean to gloat too much about this, but I did kinda totally-call Thursday's weather pretty darn accurately nearly a week in advance!
I love watching the weather, especially this time of the year.
You may recall, we're quite fortunate to have a lot of neat tools for weather-watching, right here at Marshall. Our home-grown Weatherbug weather station features a high-def camera, udometer (rainfall measuring device), anemometer (wind-speed measuring device), psychrometer (humidity measuring device), thermometer (heat measuring device), and barometer (atmospheric-pressure measuring device). That's a very sophisticated collection of scientific instruments... all located up on our very own rooftop.
You and your students can access our Weatherbug device and the data collected by its myriad instruments online at any time, day or night.
From the main Marshall School Weather Center page you can view enlarged or animated HD-camera images of the Peaks, check daily and monthly observations data tables and a number of different graphs, as well as review the local seven-day forecast. The online Weather Center also includes wind-chill, latitude and longitude, moon-phase, and elevation information for our location. A quick, simple live-updating display of current conditions for our station (FLGMM) is also available online.
I hope you'll take a few minutes soon to poke around a bit and refresh your familiarity with our weather station. It's a great scientific resource for our students.
Walk To School Day
We won! With 68% of our students walking on Wednesday. Well done, Marshall. Thanks to all staff, parents, and volunteers who helped out.
Staff PDs
Hopefully you've observed that we've made every effort to maximize your prep-time on Fridays by minimizing the number of required professional development seminars this year. Thus far we've had one but one two-hour PD as a staff this year. We'll meet next on 01 November to take a look at sample PARCC Assessment questions using our iPads. And that's it for the first semester: two formal PDs.
When we come back from winter break we've rescheduled the Team Mastermind training to our PD-day on 24 January in order to ensure that we're all able to attend. We'll likely have another PD in February and one more in May on the subject of documentation and presented by our Reggio-team. That's it for second semester: three PDs, bringing the total for the school year to five.
CPS
We will meet as a faculty next week on Thursday morning at 7:45 to review Child Protective Services reporting with Nancy McCleskey. Please remember, as school staff, we are all mandatory reporters. This means we are required to report neglect or abuse of our students to CPS whenever we suspect it may have occurred. You should never deliberate about making a CPS report. Nor should you fear retaliation for making a report. CPS reports are made anonymously. Bottom line: if you believe a child to be a victim of abuse or neglect, make the report.
Forms for reporting to CPS can be found on the wall behind the copy machine. You should complete the form, make your report by phone, and deliver a copy of the written report to me for filing in my office. You no longer need to fax a copy of the report to CPS after you've made your report via the telephone.
McCleskey will surely have additional information and insight into this process on Thursday. This is the only item on the agenda. Please be on time.
Tax Credit
It's that time of the year: time to review Arizona's public school tax credit program with our parents. Please do so as often as you are able during your conferences. All the information is online, as well as the form letters, brochures, and sample tax returns you might need to convey this essential message to your parents.
Remember: all of your students, all of our teachers, and every single one of our classrooms benefit from this program. It's essential that we all join together in the effort to raise these funds.
Thanks for your help!
Parent-Teacher Conferences
As your conference schedules become finalized early next week, please ensure the office has a copy. We get lots of calls asking, "When's our conference." It's nice when we can answer the question.
A robo-call about early release times will go out to parents on Sunday evening. A flyer with this information should have been sent home with students this week.
Also, we've had lots of questions in recent days from faculty and staff about lunch times next week. Kinda felt like I hadn't put it on the Blue Note two weeks ago... but I did. Anyway, by way of review, here's the low-down on our odd lunch schedule during conference week:
Tuesday and Thursday we will be on our typical early-release lunch schedule. Due to our odd dismissal schedule on Wednesday, 16 Oct., lunch will, likewise occur on a different schedule. It will be imperative that everyone abide by the schedule below as closely as possible, as we will be operating on very tight tolerances in order to accommodate everyone's lunch and recess that day. The lunch schedule for Wednesday only will be as follows:Finally, please check with me if you will not be working your full contract day during conference days.
- 9:35-9:55 -- K-1 eat lunch
- 9:55-10:15 -- K-1 on playground
- 10:00-10:20 -- 2-3 eat lunch
- 10:20-10:40 -- 2-3 on playground
- 10:25-10:45 -- 4-5 eat lunch
- 10:45-11:05 -- 4-5 on playground
South In Your Mouth
Still a little time to buy your ticket to this event (Ingols, Perkins, and Shaw all have tix), which takes place this Sunday evening at Epiphany. This dinner is a part of the church's annual Random Acts Of Kindness fundraising campaign, of which Marshall is one of the beneficiaries. RAK is an essential and generous funding source for our school. The presence of Marshall staff at these events is greatly appreciated by the church and the membership of their RAK Committee.
Calendar
Week B
- Monday, 14 Oct.
- Coe @ Heck for Read-aloud, 11:20
- Tuesday, 15 Oct.
- Early release @ 12:25
- Wednesday, 16 Oct.
- Coe @ Elementary Admin (Cromer), 7:30-10:30 -- Reasor has the helm
- Early release @ 11:10
- Thursday, 17 Oct.
- Faculty meeting in the Library, 7:45
- Coe @ Flagstaff Community Foundation awards 10:00-12:00
- Early release @ 12:25
- Clothing exchange in the Gym, all day
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