January 21, 2011

Staff Meeting is scheduled for January 28th.  The 2nd grade will be doing a team builder and the 5th grade will be providing snacks.  Thank you in advance!  Fran Gorde will be here to talk to our entire staff about employee assistance program and Dr. Brad Buck will be speaking to staff who administer the ITBS assessment at the end of the meeting.


Recess - Inside or outside, teachers need to be ready to pick kids up or be in the room a couple minutes prior to the end of recess.

Attendance - Please put the attendance/lunch count sheets Paula gave you in your sub folders.  We need to ensure our subs have access to the form to use so we stay on top of attendance.

Classroom Rewards - You have been very creative this year with your classroom rewards.  Many were brainstormed during one of our initial PBIS professional development days and I have heard students getting excited about upcoming celebration days.  One class reward I would like discontinued is "electronic's day."  For many reasons, I would encourage teachers to come up with another classroom reward - one person had a great idea for substituting something else in this day - take your entire class to the computer lab to play games on the computers.  I appreciate teachers giving this your attention and if you have specific questions, let me know.

Cover Me certificate this week goes to Heather Morey!  I'm hoping she picks her lunch break for me to cover.

Final Thoughts for the Week

...where I keep talking/typing and you 

don't necessarily have to continue listening/reading. 

I'd say this piece of the FWR is back-by-popular-demand, but I am not sure anyone noticed it had been missing.  :-)  Sometime down the road, our staff will take a look at the parent survey results from the online survey that was offered to the parents of Waukee students this past fall.  This week, I received and had a chance to look through the results and comments myself.  I must admit, I do get frustrated when people are not 100% satisfied with what I am doing and to my surprise (no really) the results did not come back 100% satisfied!  I know that many of you bust your rear end every single day to meet the needs of kids, parents and each other and the results are telling me that what we, and I, do may not be good enough for everyone. We may need to do more.  So....what does that mean for me?  For our Building Leadership Team?  For our office staff?  For our teachers?  Our associates?  Our nutrition team?  Buildings and grounds? ...etc., etc., etc.  

The good news (and there is much to share) is the the survey results tell me that Maple Grove Elementary is "good."  The feedback is we are doing well or very well in many areas and in many specific things individuals do, or our teams and our building does for kids.  My thought is to not be satisfied with being good and begin to ask myself, "How can we do better tomorrow than we did today?"  Jim Collins summarizes better than I can when he says...

Monday - SPED Team Mtg (8am) - MAP begins! - PTO Mtg @ 7pm (no teacher presentation)	Monday, Jan 31 - MOVED BLT Mtg (8am)
Tuesday - PLC+ (1st AM / 4th PM) - K/2 PLC (8am) - 2nd grade music practice - 2nd Gr Music Program (6:30 @ WHS)	Tuesday, Feb 1 - 5th Grade TI (8am) - K-2 PLC (8am) - PLC+ K-AM; 3rd-PM
Wednesday - 3-5 PLC (8am) - Early Out PD (district TBA)	Wednesday, Feb 2 - 2nd Grade TI (8am) - 3-5 PLC (8am) - Early Out PD (Bldg: Prob Solving)
Thursday - District Soc Stds Curriculum Mtg	Thursday, Feb 3 - District Admin Mtg (AM-Barry/Marron)
Friday - LAST DAY to enter DIBELS - Staff Mtg (8am)  **2nd-Team Build / 5th-treats - Conference sign up ends	Friday, Feb 4 - MAP ends