Friday Weather Report: February 17, 2012

~~ITBS~~ Iowa Assessments Wrap-Up - Please refer to Lyndsay's email from Thursday regarding the procedures to follow PRIOR to turning materials back in to the office. It is EXTREMELY important all the steps are followed before you bring them down to us. Questions? Let us know.

Conference Scheduler window closes this week. As of now we have just shy of 80% of our students scheduled. We have extended the deadline and parents have until 11:59 pm Sunday night to schedule their conference. Starting next Monday, each teacher would need to log in to the website to check which students have not been scheduled and schedule them online yourself. Entering them on your schedule is a must! You will need to call the parents to let them know the time and know that reminder emails from the site are only sent out to parents who completed the online process themselves. All parents will not be able to access the scheduler after Sunday

Professional Development on February 22 will be district wide and within your grade level or content related teams. You should have received an email from the instructional coach (or Sharon) working with your team as to the location, time and brief "what to bring" message. The intent of next week is casual conversation around your PLC process, your current goal/action plan, and sharing of resources and ideas!

The laminator was moved to the office copy room. We hope this helps with the issue of running through 3 rolls of lamination in less than a month. I appreciate you laminating items of need only and working with parent volunteers to do so efficiently if you are having them laminate your materials. As with any work area, please make sure you pick up after yourself in the copy room too! We did look in to a more efficient laminator, but I felt taking space on the playground or gym was not a good idea. ;-)

PSC Team meeting was moved to next Monday morning at 8:00 am and we will be meeting with Jordan and Penny.

Staff meeting is set for next Friday, February 24 at 8:00 am. Guests will be our very own, Dr. Wilkerson, and Fran Gorde from EFR Employee & Family Resources. Any team want to provide treats?? Thank you in advance for volunteering.

Rebranding Teachers - A blog I ran across this week was a great reminder for me as to how much change we have seen in education and the "art of teaching" over the past 10, 20, 50 or 100 years and their attempt to represent the work you (teachers) do in a more modern fashion.

Teachers are currently represented by uninspiring, childish visual imagery. Images like apples, chalkboards, and the ABCs neither revere the profession of teaching nor do justice to the intellectual and creative development teachers help guide in students of all ages.

The blog on the Studio 360 website is worth reading and seeing how they are attempting to 'rebrand' teachers to fit the work you do in connecting students to meaningful content and learning.