Week 4Denver teacher Kyle Schwartz asked her students a few years ago, “I wish my teacher knew…” This simple statement has gained a lot of traction in the last few years and has served as a prompt in classrooms across the nation to start the school year. Recently, I had a conversation with one of our teachers in district who is taking a few minutes a day to spend one-on-one time with students to get to know them better, conference, and build positive relationships. Watch this short video (linked above) and reflect on how practices and relationships in your classroom have changed as a result of knowing a student’s story. Link to the #MURSDInspires Reflection Form
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Week 3When you think back to teachers who made a difference in your life, what characteristics come to mind? Did any of your teachers influence your own desire to to enter education? Did they take the time to connect and get to know you? What was it about the relationship with that teacher that impacted you personally? Brent Coley hosts a regular podcast called Teaching Tales. Episode 51 is entitled “What Students Remember." As you listen to the podcast think about a positive impact you have had on a student. What kind of stories would they share about you? How would they describe how you made them feel? What actions did you take to establish a positive relationship? Link to the #MURSDInspires Reflection Form Professional Development Teacher Directed Day-October 5th
For this year, the full day teacher-directed day will take place on the October 5th PD Day, instead of the March PD Day. A couple of advantages of this switch include the ability of educators being able to have time to immediately build off of the EdCamp sessions, as well as have time for collaborative cross-discipline and grade level work. Logistics: For this October PD day, we already have had requests for many teachers to attend offerings taking place outside of the district. Additionally, you will be able to work in your respective buildings for your collaborative PD activities, as there are no full-district coordinated activities for this PD Day. Since people will be spread out over the district or out of the district, lunch will be on your own. Schedule: We are going to pilot using our Teachpoint PD Tracker for all of the sessions and the information provided in the form will be loaded into Teachpoint and used for sign-ins and then PDP distribution. Since we are piloting Teachpoint PD Tracker we will not be using the Sched.com builder that we used last year. Proposal: In designing your proposals for your professional learning, you will be asked to identify how it aligns with our new strategic plan, school improvement goals, or your proposed professional practice/student learning goals. For any vertical or cross-district work, which has participants from different buildings working together, you will need to identify your location for your work together in the submitted form. This year, you will identify the location (school/room) of where you will be working. All teachers are expected to complete a PD Proposal Form to let us know what you will be working on. If you are working with a group, one form with all of the group members names on it is adequate. For group work, you do not each need to submit a separate proposal, but please be sure to put in your full names into the proposal form. All of these directions can be found in the proposal form, and will be on our PD website later this week. Please complete the proposal form by September 22nd. October 5 Proposal Form #MURSDInspires 2018-2019 In addition to our in-service days, we offer a variety of PD opportunities for staff including book studies, #MURSDLeads, and workshops. This year, I will be sharing out a weekly theme in the weekly updates. These will be similar to the Reimagining messages of last year, but will include a range of information such as videos, blog posts, quotes, or podcasts. We will be offering PDPs for your participation and reflection upon the weekly themes. Using the following form, you will write a brief reflection on what you learned and how it can be applied to your classrooms or your practice. You will need to complete 20 reflections to earn PDPs (10 total) and you will receive an additional PDP for every 2 additional entries you complete. You will submit the entries in June 2019. This week's theme: Determined people working together can accomplish anything. Book Studies We will be starting up our fall book studies for PBL and for SEL in the Classroom on October 1. Please email Maureen if you are interested in participating in either of the book studies, as we will be ordering any needed books this week. SEL in the Classroom books have been delivered to all teachers last week, which will be used this year to support our strategic goals around Social-Emotional Learning. Any paraprofessionals that wish to participate in a book study will receive the SEL in the Classroom book as well. Primary Source Fall Course Offerings Our district has a partnership with Primary Source and have four spots for teachers to attend courses, as well as online modules. The courses are excellent. If you are interested in participating in a course, please email Maureen Cohen [email protected] the name of the course and why you are interested. Registration closes by the end of September. Here is a link to the offerings. Have a great week! Maureen Week 2“Determined people working together can accomplish anything.” The attached video shows penguins working together to stay warm. It's a really interesting clip of how they work together to ensure that everyone survives the winter and no one is left behind. So what do penguins have to do with the start of the school year, as we certainly have not needed to survive the cold with the record heats we have had? The clip illustrates the power of collaborative efforts, supporting your community, and not leaving anyone behind. Reflection: As of right now, we are two weeks into the school year. Reflect upon the following:
week 1Rita Pierson did a TedTalk a few years ago called “Every Kid Needs a Champion." During this talk she speaks to the importance of teachers connecting with students and making every student feel valued and important. Question: What will you do to make certain that each child in your class knows that they matter and that you care for them? Mentoring and Induction Programming
Based on feedback from mentors and new teachers, we have added in some new features into our mentoring and induction programming. For example, we have expanded professional development for new educators to our district in the second and third years in collaboration with other districts. Additionally, we have workshops for our new educators to the district with the first one being next week, Tuesday, September 11th on the IEP Process and ESped. Second and Third Year educators are also welcome to attend. All of the year's mentoring and induction calendar of events can be viewed here. Thank you to our lead mentor, Brenda Webster, for her coordination of new teacher events and for Diane Borgatti who is leading the first workshop session next week. DESE Instruction Support Networks DESE is providing a wide range of support networks for educators on various topics that are free. Please review these networks and discuss with your building principals if you are interested in attending any of them. http://www.doe.mass.edu/candi/networks.pdf Professional Development Day Summary Thank you for a productive and fun PD Day. Here is a link to our PD Website, which has a summary of our day and a link to a PD Survey. Please complete the PD Survey by Monday, September 10th. Primary Source Fall Course Offerings Our district has a partnership with Primary Source and have four spots for teachers to attend courses, as well as online modules. The courses are excellent. If you are interested in participating in a course, please email Maureen Cohen [email protected] the name of the course and why you are interested. Registration closes by the end of September. Here is a link to the offerings. Teachpoint There is a feature in Teachpoint which provides you with the ability to view your educator plan, which has corresponding tracking of your plan and documents. When you are logged into Teachpoint, you will see a calendar icon on the left. Click on that icon and your plan will appear. You will see that there are links to create forms, as well as due dates, which can help you keep track over the course of the year. Professional Development Teacher Directed Day-October 5th For this year, the full day teacher-directed day will take place on the October 5th PD Day, instead of the March PD Day. A couple of advantages of this switch include the ability of educators being able to have time to immediately build off of the EdCamp sessions, as well as have time for collaborative cross-discipline and grade level work. Everyone will want to start thinking about their plans for the day. A PD form for sign-ups will be sent out to everyone next week to complete by September 22nd. Book Studies We will be starting up our fall book studies for PBL and for SEL in the Classroom at the end of September. Please email Maureen if you are interested in participating in either of the book studies. SEL in the Classroom books have been delivered to all teachers last week, which will be used this year to support our strategic goals around Social-Emotional Learning. Any paraprofessionals that wish to participate in a book study will receive the SEL in the Classroom book as well. #MURSDInspires 2018-2019 In addition to our in-service days, we offer a variety of PD opportunities for staff including book studies, #MURSDLeads, and workshops. This year, I will be sharing out a weekly theme in the weekly updates. These will be similar to the Reimagining messages of last year, but will include a range of information such as videos, blog posts, quotes, or podcasts. We will be offering PDPs for your participation and reflection upon the weeklythemes. Using the following form, you will write a brief reflection on what you learned and how it can be applied to your classrooms or your practice. You will need to complete 20 reflections to earn PDPs (10 total) and you will receive an additional PDP for every 2 additional entries you complete. You will submit the entries in June 2019. This week's theme: Every Kid Needs a Champion |