March 11, 2022

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• I got to sit through a number of IEP meetings in the last week and teachers are doing a great job of starting with strengths when talking with parents.  In addition, they help parents feel like they are a part of a team for their child and their education.  
• Special education teachers supporting one another to help the students of the entire school and the system as a whole.  I love working with such collaborative teams!
• Kindergartners are writing persuasive writing pieces.  I love listening to students explain their thinking and trying to convince their teacher to do something.  
• Data meetings have yielded some high quality conversations to acknowledge the strengths that our students are showing and talking about what we can do next for to address needs.

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, March 14
• Bus Duty: Huso, Huelsman, B.Caine
• GG Lesson for week: Start of College and Career Ready (Jobs/How to change the world)
• Newsletter articles due (5th grade and 1st grade)
• Jenny in meeting from 9-10am
• EP training meeting: Document Log in IMC at 3:15pm

• Tuesday, March 15
• Social Media Posts due to Josh (Donovan, Schwoerer, Murphy, Bingen)
• Special Education meeting in Elementary Conference room @ 3:05pm
• Jenny in webinar from 1-3pm

• Wednesday, March 16
• Workout Wednesday
• Jenny in meeting from 9:45-11:00am
• 5K Grade Level Data meeting 11:35-12:25pm in Elem. conference room
• Recess Team meeting (Room 120) at 3:05pm

• Thursday, March 17
• Wear Green Day
• Bridges Math Coach visit (See below for more details)

• Friday, March 18

Nitty-Gritty

• Bridges Math Coach Visit
• On Thursday, March 17, we will have rotating subs to cover 5K, 2nd and 4th grade classrooms for 2 hours of time to work with Kris preparing for our curriculum work in June. We will do some ground work on Thursday that will hopefully give us a head start on the goal of completion of priority standards, learning target creation and success criteria for each domain for our math curriculum work. Please bring your assessment binder and any "kid-friendly" standards resources if you have them.  Achieve the Core resources and blank curriculum docs will be ready for each team to use.  Special Education teachers please see me about how you want to participate for the day.
• 8-10am - 2nd grade
• 10-12pm - 4th grade
• 12:30-2:30pm - Kindergarten

• College and Career Readiness Week is coming up
• Next week, the College and Career committee will be sending out an important email describing the planning that they are doing for the week before spring break.  This is a week to help foster conversations with our students to think about their futures and participate in a number of activities.  Thank you to the committee for their hard work!

• Looking Ahead
• The last Seals on Wheels visit is being planned for the week of April 18th.  This visit takes a little longer than the previous visits, so they will be setting up in the Elementary office and going to classrooms, or calling classrooms to get the students that have signed up for this service.

• Americorps Week
• Next week, March 14-18, is Americorps Week!  Please help me thank and celebrate our two Reading Corps tutors at Dodgeland.  Charlotte Schwark and Alexis Uttech work with a number of our students each day.  I so grateful for their hard work and the relationships they are building with our students.  

• Preparing for the Tech Refresh
• Please refer to Christina's email on Wednesday, March 9 regarding directions on how to save your documents/files correctly so that everything transfers seamlessly this summer.  The Dodgeland staff resource link is HERE to read and watch videos.  Watch for an email from me soon with the date/time that you will be meeting with the tech department to check on your saving process to prepare for the end of the year.  If you need support prior to your meeting, please reach out to someone on the Tech Dept team.  They are always ready to help and support you!

• Forward Testing
• Next month, our 3rd-5th graders will be taking the Forward test.  It is very important that our students do their best work and take it seriously.  I am just starting the planning for the testing, but as we prepare as a school to support our students, I wanted to share the 2022 Estimated Forward Testing times.  You may notice that the test times are a bit longer than last year.  Please keep this in mind as you plan for next month.

PD Spotlight

I have talked with many educators this year about how different the year seems to be from what we thought it would be like at the beginning of the year.  I think it's because we thought it would be a more "normal" year, but it really is not.  Almost daily, I can see how the pandemic has affected our students' learning, social skills and emotions.  The pressure that you all feel to help them learn and close gaps probably feels overwhelming some days.  Many of the "tips" that are out there talk about being consistent and following through with what you say.  However, the title of this article caught my eye.  When I read it, it gave me some hope because there were many things on the list that felt more doable to me and it energized me for going forward.  I hope this article does that for you too.

Friday Funny

I feel like this would be a VERY good support group for myself.  I apologize to all of you that have been affected by me this week (and every week this year really).  Anyone else feel this lately?