January 4 - Tornado Drill @ 8:00
January 4 - Earthquake / Fire Drill @ 1:45
January 10 - PBS team to Cape
January 11 - PLC team to Cape
January 11 - Faculty Meeting is Cancelled.
January 12 - WINGS Party (AM)
January 12 - Club Day (PM)
January 15 - MLK - No School
January 16 - Collaboration Day
January 18 - School Board Meeting @ 7:00
Hope you had a great break. Remember that January 4-5 there will be no intervention. That time can be used to re-establish the rules and expectations.
The Four Pillars
Throughout this year, we have been working on a "re-boot" of our PLC process. We have been a Professional Learning Community for a while, but it has lost it's meaning or for some of us, it never really had any meaning. We would get together and talk about data and then go back to our rooms and teach.
This year has been different. We have had great discussions about teaching and, more importantly, learning. We have talked about instruction and data. We have tried to provide the answers to those four corollary questions. What do we want our students to know? How are we going to know if they know it? What will we do if they don't? What will we do if they do? We have worked really hard to make our meetings productive and to do what is best for our students.
I don't think I have used this term, but we still need to establish our 4 Pillars. The 4 Pillars are our core beliefs. I know we all have a general idea of why we are here, but to be truly effective, we need to boil that down to a few statements.
Pillar 1 - Mission
We have talked a lot about this along with vision, but what is this and how is it different from vision. Our mission is our "why". This is what we are guaranteeing our students. Most missions from schools sound pretty much the same, but the important thing is to align everything you do to support the mission. After all, it is why we are here.
We worked on our mission at one of our collaboration days. We took that work and the leadership team worked on it some more and here is what we came up with:
Provide a safe environment to help promote learning so all students can be successful in today’s society.
Now, I need to get more feedback from you all to go back and refine it further. Here is a link to a two question survey about our mission statement.
Pillar 2 - Vision
Vision goes hand in hand with mission, but there are a few subtle differences. A vision is where we want to be. Vision is a look at the future. It's where we want to be going.
In order to fulfill our mission, we must understand what we need to become. Our vision asks us what our future must look like in order to meet our mission. What should students and staff feel? What does our school have to become in order to attain our mission? The vision ultimately gives us direction to achieve our mission.
Our vision: We envision a school that is safe, energetic, and friendly; where staff, parents and members of the community work collectively to ensure academic and personal success of each and every student. We put our students first, and demonstrate positive attitudes, creative thinking, a commitment to learning, compassion for others, and pride in everything we do.
I also need feedback on this one. Here is the link to a very similar survey.
Pillar 3 - Values
Values and collective commitments are really where the rubber meets the road. This pillar is about your behaviors. This is about how we must behave as adults in order to fulfill our vision and meet our mission. Establishing common values is essential to holding each other accountable when we lose our focus on our mission and vision.
Sometimes the grind of the day gets in the way or the weeds get too thick, but having our values established gives us a way to see through the weeds and focus on what's most important, our students.
Here are the values that our leadership team came up with.
Values - Adult behaviors to fulfill our vision.
Work together
Students first
Positive attitudes
Creative
Commitment to learning
Compassion
Pride
This has been a fairly recent discussion, but once we have our values established we will create a list for everyone as a reminder of our collective commitments.
Pillar 4 - Goals
Everyone has goals. Whether personal or professional, we all have an objective that we are working towards. However, as a part of a PLC, we should have common goals. Something that we all work toward together. Something that binds us together in a common purpose. That's what a goal should do.
Although I think we all have goals, I don't have any teams with goals that are written down. If you don't write it down, it isn't something that you will work for. Think about goals for your teams and put them on your agendas.
Growth Mindset
Which one are you and which one do you develop in your students?
Working in the building.
I just wanted you to know about a situation we had in the building over the break. On December 26 at 5:15, a person walked on campus between the Annex and the Gym. He headed over to the kitchen and broke in one of the doors facing that parking lot. He made some chicken nuggets and a peanut butter wrap. He rifled through some drawers in the cafeteria and then went around to the custodian closet. He also made his way up 6B and into some unlocked classrooms. Finally, around 7:30 he left campus.
I tell you this, because he did this while there were students and adults at Boys and Girls Club in the Annex. He wore a lanyard with a name badge and picked up a walkie talkie and wore it like he worked here. This is a big building. Be safe when you come to work after hours. Bring someone with you or at least check in with them periodically. Call me or the police if you see someone you aren't sure belongs here. He have a standard crew that works the evening shift. Ray, Glen, Keith, Ruben, Terry, and Cheryl all work the evenings. We have had a few subs due to some medical issues, so you also might see Sylvester or someone else.
Be careful and be aware of your surroundings. This guy had moved in to the old Grad Center and was trying to cook meth with some cleaning supplies. He had stolen some chromebooks and the walkie talkie. He is currently in jail.
Be Safe.
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