March 22, 2024

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• For Week 1 of Forward testing, it went as smoothly as it could.  Huge shout out to Brad and Jessica who spent so much time on the phone and computers to get it working smoothly again.  Another shout out to all proctors who continued to encourage students to do their best work and be resilient and limit frustration when it could easily take over!

• This week's College and Career Week was another success.  I have had so many parents and guests comment on how much they enjoyed coming in to speak to the classrooms.  I know that you had to rearrange schedules for this, but it was a wonderful way to connect with our community and for our students to learn about all kinds of career options. Thank you to all of you for making this a great week!

• Shout out to Sophie Mosher for putting together a bulletin board of staff members for our students to see all of the colleges staff has attended and graduated from.  Our students love to learn more about us!

• A few of our students have behavior charts to help communicate to them and their families about their behavior at school.  Today a 4K student was brought in to the office to share his good news of all smiley faces!  Shout out to Jill for making him the superstar today and allowing Trisha, Leah and I to celebrate with him.  I love when he said, "I wasn't in the office at all today!"  :-)

• Shout out to Jahra for taking on make-up testing for third graders today.  I appreciate your help with this and also for providing a wonderful testing environment for students to work in.  Shout out to Alexandra for teaching the math lesson and Taylor for working with them to get her students in the testing group as well!

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, 3/25-3/29
• Spring Break!!!
• Happy Birthday to Shanalyn on Wednesday, 3/27
• Happy Birthday to Brad on Saturday, 3/30

Nitty-Gritty

• Talent Show
• This year's Talent Show is in the planning stage.  The dress rehearsal is scheduled for Monday, April 22 with the event planned for Wednesday, April 24 at 6 pm.  (The art show is planned for the hour before.) If you would like to participate in the staff entry, please make sure to let Sue O'Toole know right away.  She always comes up with something fun and amazing for staff to do.

• Personnel Update
• After spring break, we will have a change in a couple of our classrooms. Karissa Wagner will be subbing for Stephanie Schuett while she is out on maternity leave.  While Karissa is teaching next door, Eneida Christner will be subbing as a para with Jill Koenings in 4K in room 107. She is a familiar face to some of us. Eneida has 3 children in the district, two of them in the elementary wing.  She is excited to join us.  She will start on April 1 and will be with us until May 31.  Please help make her feel welcome as a staff member!

• Dodgeland Summit Survey
• Earlier this week, an email was sent out from Christina regarding this summer's Dodgeland Summit.  The survey is very important and helpful for the planning of this event for staff professional development that occurs each summer.  Please complete the survey by April 5th.

• Virtual Field Trip Option
• The International Wolf Center is offering free virtual field trip programs to schools.  There are a few options to sign up for.  If this would be something that would fit with your instruction and you think your students would like it, please check it out HERE.  The tip from the center is that the wolves are usually more active in the mornings.  Just putting it out there for your consideration. 

• AI in Education
• I want to make one more message about encouraging you all to explore the AI tools that Sam, Christina and Brad have been presenting on for the past month.  I didn't get to go to all of them, but the ones I did attend were incredibly helpful.  Sam has spent a great deal of time adding a section with research, resources, tools, etc about AI onto the Staff Resources page.  Take the time to check them out and see if you can find a tool that just got faster by using it.  This past week I experimented with it to help me write a reply email to a parent and it was very helpful and efficient!  The staff resource page is HERE.

PD Spotlight

Spring Break is here.  If you are like me, you are planning to get some extra sleep this next week!  I wanted to share with you about the importance of self care and spring break is a great time to practice it!  This article HERE comes from the National Council for Mental Wellbeing and describes some tips for self care.  It is not meant to only be done on breaks from work though.  I hope this helps give you some ideas for how to care for yourselves.  You are always giving so much of yourselves, your time and your talents, that I want to make sure that you have enough left in the tank for yourselves.  You are important!  My wish for you all is to have a relaxing, peaceful, and safe break.  See you all on April 1st!

Behavior Specialist Information

Please take some time to review universal expectations with your class after break. Here is the checklist.

Recess Information

Please sign-up for recess reboot after break. Paraeducators, please try to make one of the presentations as well so we can be consistent in our enforcement of recess expectations. Sign-up

Junior Coaches will be gone on a field trip on April 10th.

TechKnow Tip

This week’s mini-learning session centered around utilizing AI when interacting with parents. The best place to start is a solid prompt and HERE is a great list to start! Remember that prompts are meant to be a starting basis and are most effective when you tailor them specific to each individual situation.

Friday Funny

In honor of the 2024 baseball season that starts this next week, here is a funny meme with Hank Aaron, one of the best Brewers to play the game! (I can't wait for baseball to start again!)