October 18, 2019

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• A first grader was reading a book to me during Literacy.  He started by saying, "This book is hard."  But he stuck with it, read every word, and was starting to use strategies to break down words and make meaning.

• Writing pieces are coming along nicely in many classrooms.  I have seen many students in the past week that have persevered through this complex task, working on coping with their frustration and ultimately feeling good about their progress.

• Staff expressing their thoughts and ideas professionally to others and myself with the purpose of making our school a great place for our kids to learn.

• Quick, caring responses to help out fellow teachers with students that are struggling or in crisis.  As a professional, it is always nice to know when there is a fellow teacher(s) just around the corner ready, willing and able to help out when needed.

What's Happening at Dodgeland

Tuesday, 10/22 -

• Optional meeting with Mindy regarding 2nd Step Resources (see below)

Wednesday, 10/23 -

• Picture Retake Day
• Newsletter article's due

Thursday, 10/24 -

• Parent/Teacher Conferences 4-7:30 (Jenny's providing an early supper in the lounge for everyone!  It'll be ready at 3:00)

Friday, 10/25 -

• Professional Development Day (agenda to be coming soon)

Nitty-Gritty

• Some grade levels are looking at adding an SEL day into their WIN rotation schedule.  If your grade level is looking for resources to help with the plans for these lessons, Second Step has resources that accompany the lessons that Mindy teaches during GG.  On Tuesday, Oct 22 from 3:15-3:45pm, Mindy will have an OPTIONAL meeting in the EL PLTW lab to share and help staff members with logging in to the Second Step site, finding and downloading resources, and ideas to help both staff and students continue to work on these important SEL skills.  If you have any questions, please see Mindy.

• I received a message from the program coordinator at UW-Oshkosh Literacy Graduate program.  They are investigating interest in creating a cohort that would meet in Beaver Dam starting in the Spring of 2020.  This cohort would lead to licensure as a reading teacher (1316) and optionally, a reading specialist (5017) and master's degree. Click here for the brochure and contact info. I don't know anything about the program, just passing on the information.

• CESA #6 is looking for volunteers that may be interested in reading applications for the Herb Kohl Fellowship/Scholarship program.  Click here for more information.

• I am so enjoying the opportunities that I have to continue to learn about our DES system, routines and procedures.  This week, I learned that there is a structure to record the outcomes of the parent contacts I am making or the responses that have been completed in Educlimber.  Then Educlimber emails out the update to staff who submitted the open review referrals.  Thank you for your patience with me.  Most of the open items in my open review Educlimber list, I had already addressed, but I did not know how nice it was to keep the notes in this central location and then have it automatically sent out to staff that need to know about it.  Now that I know this, it will be a much more efficient way of keeping staff members in the loop of the incidents that arise.

• Parent/Teacher conferences are next week!  This is our opportunity to connect with our students' families.  A strong home/school connection helps our students tremendously.  If you would like my attendance for any conference please let me know.

• Garth will be here to work with us to continue our work on prioritizing and creating the DES Target-Based Grading system for part of the PD day.  The agenda will be out soon to describe the full day of learning/work that will include other pieces of the day as well.

PD Spotlight

This week's PD Spotlight is slightly different.  I am relating what I am researching and what I've learned in the past with the realities of the weekly actions of our students. I am reminded that our students have already told us that an issue at Dodgeland in every part of our district, is that students are not nice to each other.  I believe this is contributing to the culture of the building, the preoccupation with social conflicts, and ultimately, the difficulty of attending to learning tasks.


I am finding in the last few weeks that I am spending much of my time sending the same message to student after student.  I know that Mindy in GG and classroom teachers send the same message.  My simple message is this:

At Dodgeland, we expect students to speak kindly to one another at all times, to respect each other's differences and use the words "please stop" when something is happening that is bothering them.

Lately, I have been hearing many unkind words being slung around from student to student.  In some cases, this is the start of more physical incidents as well.  It is never okay for students to use their hands/feet on someone else in anger (or really anytime).  Most students that I speak to know that hitting, punching, kicking, etc is wrong, but they don't have other ideas of what to do instead.  When I ask, "What could you have done instead?" is answered with either "I don't know" or "Don't hit."

Children by nature are mimics.  They mimic what they see, what they hear, including responses to stress that they have witnessed.  They are also impressionable and ready to learn new ways of behaving and responding.  We have the opportunity, and yes, the challenge of helping them to develop healthy social skill habits, regulation skills and coping strategies.   This is part of our work.

I am aware that GG lessons have centered around kindness and bucket-filling.  I believe that students understand what this means and can discuss these ideas in detail in classrooms.  The generalization and application is where the breakdown seems to be occurring.

So, I have been thinking about how I could piggy-back off of Mindy's GG lessons.  Is there another way that I can send the same message, but through my lens?

One thought I have is to prepare a short lesson that I can deliver to your classroom in the coming weeks.  Or, I could prepare a video to show students with my message.  Behind the scenes, I have been and will continue to send the message of expecting kindness/respect.  I will share the same message with every parent that I interact with and consistently ask students to practice tone of voice, kind words, and resolving conflicts using the problem solving wheel.

Please speak to me if you'd like my assistance with this in your classrooms.  In the meantime, thank you for continuing to expect kindness, praising students that exhibit kind words and actions, and modeling for them how to treat all people in our school with respect and kindness.  Remember, there is always a student (or 2 or 3...) that is watching us.  What a fantastic job we get to do each day!



Friday Funny

You may already know I like Marvel Comics and the SuperHeroes genre, but did you know I am a HUGE Golden Girls fan too?  This is why I love this picture/caption below!