September 9, 2013

We're four weeks into a six week term.  Your diligence and hard work shows, and I hope you are able to feel satisfied with your work and the work of your students.  Thank you for your steady commitment and steady progress toward the learners in the building.  If you're able and interested, you might consider rewarding yourself with something from Dairy Queen on Friday afternoon; it's Hixson Family Fun Night, and we benefit from purchases made between 3 and 8pm on 9/13.

Monday's Faculty Meeting
We will meet in the cafeteria immediately after school on Monday for a faculty meeting.  I will be responding to some of the conversations I had last year regarding social justice.  My goal is to do the following:

• Begin answering the question posed in our School Improvement plan: "How can we create a more just and equitable school?",
• Provide another way of creating a vision for justice and equity, and
• Connect both of the above with the strategies that mention "low expectancy students" in iObservation.

This is a tall order, and I will do my best to ground this in the work of your classrooms and your teaching practice.  I will do my best not to make this just an intellectual exercise, although, honestly, a piece of it will be.  My hope is that with some thinking and planning you can transfer this to the work of teaching and learning.

Some Other Notes

• If you haven't taken an opportunity to review the faculty feedback on the SIP, you may click here to review this information.
• If you are interested interested in a graphed trend line of MAP map results from 2008 to 2013, you may click here.  This might be more helpful than just the numbers I shared on 8/30.
• Some parents have asked if all teachers are implementing the Grading and Retake/Redo practices because their students seem to be unaware of it.  Please make sure you share these retake/redo opportunities with your students.  Click here to read what I published on the blog regarding this practices; click here to see what I shared with parents.

I will be out of the building Monday afternoon to attend CPI re-certification training.