Staff newsletter for 01/02/2017
Published on January 2, 2017
Hi Team,
I hope you had a relaxing and enjoyable break. I hope that your time was well spent and you are rejuvenated and ready for a new year.
There is a lot here today, so let’s get going.
Tutorial
During tutorial these next two weeks, you will be with the groups that are in powerschool. Please take attendance in powerschool.
Thanks to the great work of the behavior committee we will be making a few changes to some of school rules and processes:
On Tuesday, there will be a behavior assembly in the gym during A and B tutorials. Please come with your students when you have students. We will review some updated expectations for students.
On the following days review specific guidelines for students according to the following schedule:
*Wednesday-Behavior Flowchart( Made into kid friendly tree-chart) and school dress and grooming matrix.
*Thursday- Hallway Behavior
*Friday- Recess Behavior (playground equipment) Student Contest for Creating Videos/Posters/Public Service Announcements.
Next Week, from Monday to Thursday, Students will work on creating videos, posters, and PSAs for following school rules.
*Monday- Teachers review all KMS Behavior Expectations and divide areas of behavior expectations to tutorial students (Students create product to share with class and school.
*Tuesday- Work on projects
*Wednesday-Work on projects
*Thursday- Work on Projects
*Friday-Present projects
The behavior committee will be sending more information about these PSAs and other things as well.
For Tutorials starting January 16th, we will have one teacher assigned to mindfulness (as a result of tardies, and other misbehavior (see this article for more background on mindfulness)) and lunch duty for Tutorial A and Tutorial B. If you are interested in volunteering for that, please let me know. We will need two teachers each tutorial cycle, and everyone else will continue as usual. The teachers will do mindfulness on Tuesday and Thursday and will do lunch duty during Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Students will come to mindfulness during their lunch. Teachers will still have their duty-free lunch during the other tutorial cycle.
Thank you again to our behavior committee for their leadership in this area.
Upcoming Calendar items:
If you haven’t subscribed to the school-wide calendar, yet, please do.
Grades are due on the work day on January 14th. Drop/add for electives opens up the week after Christmas break. Just a heads up that you may have to navigate to “dropped students” to input final S1 grades on students who were dropped for the class or moved to a different period if they use 1/14 for grading.
Resources:
This sort podcast is about engaging in a power struggle with a student. It’s never worth it.
Why Teenagers cut, and how to help This article is a refresher on how to help struggling students. This is something that we certainly deal with in our school, and we have fantastic counselors to take the brunt of this work. You do not need to be a counselor. Help the students by getting them to someone who is trained to help them deal with this.
As we continue to help our students be more in charge of their learning, this article reminds us to “Encourage Interests”, not expect passions.
Thanks,
Jethro