August 9, 2012 - Welcome Back Edition!

ALL Staff Picture Thursday at 9:00 AM

Meet on the playground and wear purple if you can!

Carrie will be scheduling team pictures on Thursday too, so please

think about what you'd like to do/where you'd like to be for

your team picture! 

Nuts and Bolts Meeting Goes Online This Fall!

In an attempt to save you/us time, I'm using a YouTube video to go over all the "Nuts and Bolts" items instead of standing in front of you for 45 minutes on Friday. Please review this video sometime prior to Friday afternoon at your leisure. Download the staff meeting agenda here and the BINGO cards are in your mailbox. The BINGO card will help you follow along! Bring these cards to Friday's 1:30pm meeting so we can discuss questions and to win amazing door-prizes. ...well, some nice prizes and a few other ones you'd expect from me. 

Dates to Remember - Please bookmark the "Dates to Remember" Google.doc. If you or your team has dates to add, please do so. The items in blue are from last year's calendar and no corresponding date or time has been set. Anyone can update this document throughout the year. The link will be on the right side of the FWR for easy access.

PLC Meeting Room - The conference room by 2nd grade room will be our PLC meeting room for all teams except SPED's every other week meeting. 

2012-13 BLT Team - Our first meeting with this year's BLT will be on August 10 @ 10:30am. Purpose will to be review August 14th Vision Day PD. It should last 45-60 minutes. We will meet in the library.

Budget - Repeat: With the increase in student numbers, I'm approaching the budgeting a bit different this year. Each teacher will be allotted $100 (New to MGE will have $150). After Office Depot supplies are processed and delivered to teams, I will let each team know what extra funds exist for each grade level. Please use the requisition form that was emailed out to teachers as we are trying to avoid reimbursements for personal purchases this year.

Overhead Projectors - If you do not want your overhead projector, you may place it in the hallway and it will be taken out of the building (it won't return). If you want to keep your cart but not the projector, place only the projector in the hallway. If you want to keep both, it needs to be stored in your room or your grade level supply closet.

PTO Supply Boxes will be delivered starting at 1pm on Monday, August 13th. The PTO can place the boxes directly on the students' desk if your rooms are open and unlocked. We had over 150 students purchase theses boxes directly from PTO.

AEA Support Team - We have some changes in our AEA support team this year. Please welcome our new AEA staff to Maple Grove and welcome back our returning crew! I hope to have them at our staff meeting Friday afternoon! Click here to download a copy of the entire AEA team supporting MGE this year.

Psychologist - Samantha Gregory

Consultant - Susan Howell

Speech - Cheryl Rigler

Social Worker - Vicki Sanders

Occup. Therp. - Shannon Corkrean

Physical Therp. - Mindy Elliot

Early Childhood - Jessica Hagist

EC Social Worker - Jen Downs/Catharine Roling

EC Occup Therp - Heidi Webber

A Message from Central Print - Some great reminders from Central Print can be found here but I also wanted to extend their invitation to come visit:

Encourage your staff to feel free to stop in and see us at our new location!  We are now located at the very EAST end of the hallway in the Athletic wing (old YMCA) of the High School.  (If you walk out the glass doors heading to Prairieview you've gone too far!?! )  BUT you are close!  Just before heading out the glass doors facing east) there is a doorway on the left - walk thru that door and the next door and you will be in Central Print. Have a great year! Peggy Tippin & Lynette Gartman (987-2722 or cprint@waukee.k12.ia.us)

Heath Screening - If you haven't signed up for your FREE health screening, do so today!

Visit www.iowahealth.org/wellness

USERNAME:      WAUKEE

PASSWORD:      SCREEN12

Final Thoughts for the Week

Where I keep typing/talking and you

don't necessarily have to keep reading/listening.

On the right side of my FWR, I include some quick links for staff. One that I forget to check myself on

a regular basis is "Tuesday's Tips." This link takes you to Dr. Alan Zimmerman's blog page and his 

weekly motivational or thought-provoking blog entry. Zimmerman is the author of many books, including

one of my favorites, Pivot. For the first time in almost 6 months, I checked out his Tuesday Tip and 

thought it was appropriate as we prepare to welcome 750 students and nearly 1500 parents to MGE!

If nothing else, read the headline quote and ponder to yourself how you fit in with making MGE THE 

place to learn, grow and laugh for all.

For the full entry, click here.

Dr. Zimmerman’s Tuesday Tip:

“It is not your customer’s job to remember you.  It is your responsibility to make sure they don’t have the chance to forget you.” Alan Zimmerman

Dr. Alan Zimmerman’s Personal Commentary:

When I ask my audiences to name the companies that provide some of the best service 

in the country, their lists are remarkably similar.  People seem to know where they can 

expect exceptional service and they also seem to know where they’ll get mediocre service. 

After all, people ALWAYS talk about the service they receive.

Summer Updates...July 2012

The updated Back to School schedule can be downloaded here

A Date to Note...we will be having a MGE Family Picnic on Friday, August 3rd (6-8p)!! This is open to all Maple Grove Elementary staff members. For more information and to RSVP, please vist: http://bit.ly/LVeJnq 

Staffing - Two teacher additions to Maple Grove this month. Jennifer Eddy will be the new Pre-Algebra teacher serving MGE, EE and BVE. She is coming to us with multiple years of teaching middle school level math, including pre-algebra! Michelle Huber was hired as our new reading lab teacher. With Michelle's experience with upper elementary classroom teaching and reading teacher experience, she will be a great fit as we look to meet the needs of our struggling readers outside the K-2 classrooms! New associates hired include Kelly (Taylor) Coffman, Rose McCoy and Michelle Smith. Kelly was in our Level II and 5th grade classroom last spring; Rose has multiple years of experience as an associate, most recently at SMS; and Michelle is coming from PVS! All come with a great personality, focus on kids and experience so we are thrilled to have them as a part of our team! Final puzzle piece? Two recess/lunch associates need to be hired prior to school starting. Please send interested applicants to our district website!

Section Sizes - "How many desks do I need??" We keep getting incoming/outgoing student emails from district office so these are just current numbers (i.e. don't get rid of extra desks yet!!). If you need extra desks, email Shelley sooner than later as I don't see the numbers below decreasing. I will make class rosters available via our grade level Google.doc by July 25th BUT IT WILL NOT BE FINAL until you get your rosters from Paula prior to school starting. At this point, including our PK students, we will begin the year around 740 students.

• Kindergarten (137) - 23/room
• 1st grade (144) - 24/room
• 2nd grade (118) - 24/room
• 3rd grade (125) - 25/room
• 4th grade (112) - 28/room
• 5th grade (95) - 24/room 

Budget - "How much can I spend this summer on classroom supplies??" With the increase in student numbers, I'm approaching the budgeting a bit different this year. Each teacher will be allotted $100. After Office Depot supplies are processed and delivered to teams, I will let each team know what extra funds exist for each grade level. Please use the requisition emailed to you if you are wanting to purchase items this summer. If you do not know how to use it, ask a friend (and then ask me if they don't know how either. :-) Until August 1st, those can be emailed to me. After that time, email them to Paula.

Related Arts/Duty Schedule - "Is the schedule final??" Is it ever? :-) There were some minor changes to Draft #2 but those teachers know the changes. I'll refrain from emailing out and printing a color copy of the FINAL draft (#3) until I make sure all eyes have seen it. Corrections should be emailed to me ASAP. "When will we get the duty schedule??" My hope is August 3rd.


Upcoming Dates to Note - In addition to Back to School Schedule, a few other dates worth noting on your calendar. I will also continue to update our year-long "Dates to Note" document (and you/your team can too).

• Curriculum Night will be Monday, August 20th. Times and dates for other bldgs:
• 6:00-6:30 Grades K-1 **** 6:30-7:00 Related Arts
• 7:00-7:30 Grades 2-3 **** 7:30-8:00 Grades 4-5
• WH/MG -8/20
• SE/BV – 8/21
• WE/EE – 8/23

• Assessment Schedule
• DIBELS/Benchmark: 8/23-8/29, 12/3-12/7, 4/22-4/26
• MAP: 9/17-9/28, 12/4-12/19, 4/1-4/19
• ITBS: 2/12-2/14
• CSIP: 5/6 (AM)

• Classroom parties will be:
• Fall Harvest Party – 10/26 @ 2:30
• Winter Party – 12/21 @2:30
• Valentine’s Party – 2/15 @ 2:30

Summer Updates...June 2012

I hope you're all enjoying your summer with family and friends! It has been a good one for me so far. Lots of time with kids/Jen and much more golfing lately (still not any good)! Also, I am still attempting to process the wonderful presentations and information we gained from the PLC Institute a couple weeks ago! It was well worth the trip and I hope to get those of you who have not attended one, to an Institute in the near future! As for the purpose of this post, it is my attempt to keep you all in the loop! I will update as the summer progresses so check back in (if you like). :-)

June 21, 2012
Staffing - Many of you already heard we hired Kerry Sprague as our school nurse! We are excited to add her to our office staff this fall. We have hired two associates this summer already. Stacey Squires will be returning as an associate this fall and we are excited to have her back with us! Megan Dalton has transferred from Shuler to MGE this summer and will be in our new 1/2 time associate position in Jen Latcham's room. She is bringing multiple years of successful experience as an associate within the district! Additional associate interviews are taking place next week so stay tuned. We were also approved for a 1/2 time additional reading teacher last week!! After talking to Julie, Kristin and Leslie today, we will begin putting together a job description and post the position. We believe we will be able to serve more kids at more levels this year and are excited for the opportunity provided! More to come on that one.


PLC Meetings - This is a repeat to many but just wanting to make sure the consistent message is out there: through conversation with BLT and PSC teams, we will be moving to a "daily PLC" meeting rotation this coming fall. Teams will meet at days of the cycle with 5th grade working with me on another idea of PLC later in the day. I'm still working on the logistics, but it would basically look like the following. More conversation during our initial building meeting in August and my next post will include some of rationale and conversation about why we are making the move.

• 8:00-8:50a (or 8:55a) with classrooms covered by a mix of teachers/associates.
• Day 1-1st; Day 2-2nd; Day 3-3rd; Day 4-4th; Day 5-BLT/PSC/PBIS/SPED; Day 6-K
• 5th grade tentatively Day 2 during band; 2:45-3:40p

Schedule - The RA schedule for 12-13 sits in "Draft #2" and is being reviewed by RA and BLT members. It is challenging to schedule for 30 (and possibly 31) sections with all the other "tight" variables (lunch, recess, ELP, SPED, reading lab, pre-algebra, etc.). Although the schedule will never be ideal for all, I appreciate your flexibility in making it work for your students and classroom!

Enrollment - We've been sitting pretty steady at 710 students (+/- 5) since summer started. Our kindergarten enrollment sits at 135 so we will see what July/early August brings.

Summer Cleaning - Our summer cleaning crew headed up by Shelley has been plugging along and the building looks and smells better already! :-) Not only do they work hard each day, but I've enjoyed the laughter next door during lunch this summer...I'm sure they are not laughing at me. ;-)

My schedule - I will be here the rest of the month except June 29. If you're trying to track me down in July, here are the days I'll be here and/or available. For the week of:

• July 2 - around but not in the office consistently
• July 9 - here all week except Monday
• July 16 - here on Monday; gone the rest of the week
• July 23 - around but not in the office consistently Mon-Tues; on email but not here Wed-Fri
• July 30 - will begin regular 8a-4p hours!

Back-to-School Schedule for 2012-13 has been initially announced and is tentative. More information will be provided from Dr. Wilkerson later this summer but I wanted to give you a general idea of the days/times as you begin to think about the upcoming school year (I'm not forcing you to think about school though!!):

Monday, Aug 6 - New to Waukee Teaching Staff professional learning (AM) is optional but highly recommended. Mentoring induction will be in the PM for all 1st/2nd year teachers new to the profession and their mentors.

Tuesday, Aug 7 - New-to-Waukee staff report to Prairieview (theater). Work with mentors in PM.

Wednesday, Aug 8 - New-to-Waukee staff work in buildings. Meet with me in the AM.

Thursday, Aug 9 - All Teaching Staff report! Work in classrooms.

Friday, Aug 10 - All Teaching Staff: building level mtgs/professional learning and assorted district meetings; time to work in rooms.

Monday, Aug 13 -  All Teaching Staff @ Lutheran Church of Hope in AM; work in building in the AM/PM. Open House for PK-5 is 5:00-7:00 pm.

Tuesday, Aug 14 - MGE Vision Day (formerly known as Data Day). This professional development day will be a great opportunity to have some fun and to begin the process for us to get insanely focused on what our students need. In turn, we will spend time looking at what we (our staff) need in order to able to provide the needed response. Continued work between now and August by the team of teachers who attended the PLC Institute this summer and our BLT will provide a fun and engaging Vision Day for all!