Happy new Year!What I love about a new year are the feelings of renewal that come with it. January 1st comes and anything seems possible. New goals are set. New plans are made both personally and professionally. The extra days off from work and more focused time with family and on other endeavors helped me to recenter and recharge. I hope it has done the same for many of you. I love reading poetry and quotes and the one here by Emerson is one of my favorites, in particular, because of the focus on the present day. He notes, "Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year." In the photos above, we see some fantastic moments we created with our students right before break with our Spanish Exchange visit, creative 3-D modeling, mystery readers that bring joy, inquisitive experiments, and winning moments through teamwork. As we enter a new year, what inspiring moments do we have in store? What authentic learning experiences do we have planned to level up their learning, discovery, and inquiry? When our students walk through our school doors, join me in remembering, "this new day is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays." Wishing you all a happy new year! May each and every day of 2024 be the best day in the year. Portrait of a Learner January ChallengeThe first MURSD Inspired Learning Day (ILD) of the year is on Tuesday, February 6, 2024 (with a snow date of Tuesday, February 13)! Schools are beginning the process for developing proposals and schedules to plan for the day. We will continue to connect our Portrait of a Learner Competencies directly to our Inspired Learning Days. As a build up to the Inspired Learning Day we will have a fun New Year's challenge to highlight our PoL competencies with our community. Those who participate will be entered into a raffle which will take place at on February 6th and three people will win a prize for participating. 1. Take a photo of your students in action displaying one of our Portrait of a Learner Competencies and post it to Twitter (X), Instagram, or Facebook with the hashtags #MURSDThrives and #PortraitofaLeaner. Feel free to also tag either me @MaureenMCohen or our district page @MendonUptonRSD. 2. If you do not have a social media account yet, then you can e-mail me at [email protected] and our social media coordinator, Molly Smith [email protected] and we will try to share some of them out. Partners Preparing for Learning Walks - January 8thInstructional Partners will meet on Monday, January 8th to finish preparations for our January 17th learning walks. It's been a while since the group got together so we're looking forward to seeing everyone. We'll meet in the Central Office conference room. Please be sure to put in for a sub on January 17th, if you need one and let Colleen or I know if you have any questions. --Cheryl Mentors and New Educators meet on January 9thJust a heads up to mentors and new educators that we will all be meeting on January 9th in the Nipmuc PDC. This meeting will be a joint meeting that we look forward to each year, as we so infrequently are able to bring everyone in our mentor/mentee community together. Let Andrea of Cheryl know if you have any questions. DISTRICT PD COMMITTEE MEETING - January 3rd The district PD Committee will be meeting tomorrow on January 3, 2024 at 3:45 in the Miscoe staff room to review feedback collected in December, and determine short and long-term learning outcomes for our programming. Please connect with your PD Committee reps if you have any additional ideas to share or feel free to join us. Positivity starts with us - JANUARy 12th 1/2 Day PD DayWe plan to kick off 2024 in a way that will remind us that focusing on ourselves is essential so we can be our best for our students. On Friday, January 12th we've organized a district-wide PD day that will give us the chance to come together and reflect on what we need to be our best selves. Part of our PD will be a keynote by Carrie Stack, a former educator and motivational speaker whose message is that positivity starts with being good to ourselves. The other part of our PD day will be a menu of workshops and activities that you can choose from to start the year right in the way you think best for you. We have a great selection of workshops including one focused on organizing google drive, a nature walk, CPR, pickle ball, and more. Please visit our PD website which will be posted on Wednesday for more information and select your workshop in TeachPoint by next Wednesday, January 10th. If you have other workshop ideas reach out to Colleen Terrill. If you have questions about TeachPoint, reach out to Kim Lowther. Welcoming Newcomers and attending to mental healthSchool and district teams that are involved in welcoming and supporting newcomer students are invited to join DESE at 2:00-3:00 p.m. on Tuesday, January 30 for a webinar titled “Building a Supportive Infrastructure: Addressing Mental Health and Trauma Support for Newcomer Students.” This session will feature presenters from Chelsea Public Schools and Boston Children's Hospital’s Trauma and Community Resilience Center. The webinar will also include updates from DESE on available resources. Registration is open online. On a related note, the U.S. Education Department has re-released its own Newcomer Toolkit. This toolkit is a resource for state, local, and school leaders in supporting multilingual learners and general education educators who directly serve immigrant and refugee students. Additionally, an English Learner Toolkit reminds educators of the civil rights of families of newcomer students. Please also see DESE’s newcomer FAQ (download) for additional assistance. UTILIZING TRAUMA-INFORMED, PROACTIVE SENSORY REGULATION STRATEGIES IN THE CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENTThose interested in learning more about pro-active sensory regulation strategies are welcome to access Massachusetts Partnership for Youth (MPY), create a login using these instructions, and register for free. This 5-part webinar series will focus on the following topics and dates. Registration provides access to all of the webinars, will also provide a link to the recording of all of the webinars should you not be able to attend on the day/time:
Reminders about Mandated TrainingSome educators may have received an email from Kim Lowther before the break asking them to complete mandatory trainings. Kim will be sending another email reminder out on January 16th to those who still have not completed their trainings. Please try to finish them before this date as they were due in October. Laughter is the best medicineFor the readers out thereI set an ambitious goal of 50 books this year and while I didn't reach the goal and got to a little under 40, but came across a few that I gave five stars and four stars, shared below. My most recommended to others would be "Don't Forget to Write" and "Remarkably Bright Creatures." of what I read this year. In addition to these listed, some of the educational and leadership books I enjoyed included "Leading the Whole Teacher," "Leading from Where You Are," "Belonging," and "Street Data."
In 2022, my top contenders were "Project Hail Mary," "The Book of Lost Names," "Book Lovers," and "The Maidens."
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