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!

May 18, 2012

Just to spite someone you all know, :-) the first thing included in this week's FWR is our Content-PLC Focus 2012-2013 Survey (http://bit.ly/JIpx6z). This is the one we ran out of time to take yesterday and is tied to the yellow sheet. Takes 5 minutes. :-) Thank you for your input as it will help drive building and differentiated professional development for 2012-13.

(-:   Take survey now   :-)

Now that you've finished the survey...

End of Year Staff Check List FAQ - First...before you ask questions in the office, please read through the check list and ask a teammate for the answer (sort of the "ask 3 and then ask me" theory many of you use in class). :-) Here are a few FAQs we've heard this week...

• Cum folders and Perm cards stay in the office or office conference room when placing stickers and writing on them!
• Data folder boxes are ready to go in the conference room. PLEASE put them in the NEXT grade level box alphabetically by grade not classroom.
• Grade level leaders (K-2) have your shapes and envelopes are behind Paula's desk. DO NOT seal them.
• Directions to print end of year Final Progress Report for cum file were attached to the FWR email I sent. Please read through them.
• IA Assessment labels were placed in your box (gr 3-5).
• Attendance stickers were placed in your box.
• We will hand out IA Assessment and MAP results on Friday. SEND them home on Monday. 

The data folders will need to include the following: the most recent spring benchmarking (instructional and independent) sheets within the data folders, problem solving packets and the current and previous data sheets. Leaving previous DIBELs packets for kids going in to grades 3-5 is optional. The data sheet will be generated from the excel sheet I sent each team. If you have problems pulling up a student's name and/or data on the Excel sheet, let me know as I've fixed a couple 'bugs' already. 


iPads - Carrie and I met this past week. I've made the decision to not check out iPads this summer. There is a lot of set up that needs to be done to them prior to the fall so they are ready for your classroom. We will use some time prior to school to provide training and get them checked out to you.


Grant to work on in the summer - Greater Iowa Credit Union understands that money is tight for teachers. That’s why they've developed a special grant program to allow K-5 teachers to purchase items they may not otherwise be able to afford. Classroom supplies, technology, equipment, field trips–there are plenty of possibilities!

 REPEAT: Site for the Week: Making the Most of End-of-School days 

Check the Dates to Note

Final Thoughts for the Week

...where I keep talking/typing and you 

don't necessarily have to continue listening/reading. 

"Are you serious, Clark?" is a quote my brothers and I use with each other when we are questioning each other's validity to something we've just said (we've also seen Christmas Vacation 100 times). I think one of them may have said that to me after I attempted to wrap up your wonderfully entertaining celebration skits/videos. But truth is...I was being serious. I love getting up and coming here each day. The work our entire team (teachers, office, associates, custodians, nutrition) has done with the kids this year has been amazing and I am proud to be along with for the ride. Of course, because of your hard work, I am the "world's greatest boss" and site manager of the year (see below). ;-) Thanks for the great season of "The Office", gang. Enjoy the last few days with each other and our kids. Your summer break (and The Office Season 3) is just around the corner.