KARCHER STAFF BLOG
Karcher Character Students of the Week
All 6 of these students displayed positive character behaviors within our 8 focused traits:
Be... responsible, respectful, kind, safe, honest, loyal, compassionate, courageous.
Students: (left to right) Spencer Crone (Onyx), Joel Fisher (Karcher Bucks), Kirsten Damrow-Blinderman (Diamond), Brian Fremgen (Hive), Wendy Villagran (Elective), Alex Hofer (Silver)
All of the below pictures this week are from my time on November 4th. Sue Mosher and I had the opportunity to see personalized learning in action (fancy term for student-centered learning environments). Below are some pictures I took of some different ways to think about the organization of your physical space to give students choice.
*** If you could please shoot Jane an email with WHY these students received your vote for student of the week I would appreciate it. Moving forward we will put a quick sentence about why they were picked for the week. Making it a bit more personal (thank you for the idea Stephanie Rummler). So... for last week and this week please email Jane with the WHY. Thank you.
______________________________________________________________________________
Kudos
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
- Donna Sturdevant was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK! Congrats Donna and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits.
- Thank you Jacob Malewicki and Stephanie Rummler for taking the time to go see PBIS assemblies in action at Wauwatosa Longfellow Middle School. The information you gained we are all excited to infuse into our PB_S here at Karcher!
- Thank you ALL for a great first term of the school year! It is crazy to think we are already one term down. Thank you for making my first 9 weeks working with all of you such an enjoyable experience. I truly look forward to the rest of the school year with all of you!
______________________________________________________________________________
Reminders/Information
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
- BLT Meeting on November 9th.
- Board Meeting on November 9th @ 7:00pm. Larry Anderson's last day on the board as he has decided to retire. He served for the Burlington Area School District for 18 years and on School Boards for a total of 36 years. Come thank him for his service to the BASD.
- Barry Schmaling was voted by the board last week to fill the open seat on the board for the interim time period until spring elections.
- The String's Fall Concert is November 10, Tuesday night @ 7:30pm at BHS auditorium.
- November 11, Wednesday the PLC will be in the library learning our new literacy comprehension tool.
- November 12 and November 13 will be our first enrichment iTime periods. Students all signed up on Friday and things are looking fairly even throughout everyone's classes for our first round! Students will be in the same enrichment for both days (minus those going on the field trip).
- 7th grade field trip to the Field Museum in Chicago on Friday, November 13th (See Brad Ferstenou with any questions)
- Starting November 16 - November 24 advisory/iTime will be used for Character Curriculum with an assembly on the 23rd and 24th for the movies each advisory creates. See Patti, Alyssa, or Jack for details.
- November 23rd and 24th will be a modified schedule - copies are on the counter in the main office.
- Student Council representatives will be attending the Region IV JAM leadership conference in Oconomowoc on November 19. See Marilee Hoffman with any questions.
______________________________________________________________________________
Pictures from the week
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
Article of the week:
A continuation from last weeks article...
A continuation from last weeks article...
Surfacing—and Challenging—Mindsets
Case studies have also revealed that data reports can be a Rorschach test for schools: What teams see in data says a lot about their mindsets about students and schooling.
In one urban middle school, conversations about improving student achievement focused mostly on sending "bubble kids" (whose results fell just below cut scores for proficiency levels) to tutoring or after-school programs (Horn, Kane, & Wilson, 2015). Teachers focused on what someone else might do and rarely touched upon how they might change their own instructional practices to boost student learning.
The school principal also revealed a behaviorist mindset about student learning by directing teachers to show students their test scores to motivate (in other words, scare) them into doing better. This leader also quipped that the after-school math program ought to be reserved for well-behaved students—showing no awareness that poor behavior might reflect student disengagement or difficulties. The school's mindset appeared to be, "We're okay; it's our students who are the problem."
Teachers in the other school profiled in the same study dug more deeply into student test data, examining questions students had missed to determine what concepts learners were struggling to grasp. Yet even as they surfaced possible misconceptions, the new teaching strategies these data teams came up with focused on helping students perform better on those particular test items, rather than on improving instruction (Horn, Kane, & Wilson, 2015).
Seeking "Kaizen"
Blockbuster's executives were smart people with good information. However, their mindsets got in the way. Many had come from retailers like Wal-Mart and 7-Eleven, so they focused on generating impulse buys in the video checkout aisle. They also faced pressure from shareholders demanding quick results—which may explain why they ousted Blockbuster's CEO when he proposed dropping late fees and investing heavily in a digital platform to rival Netflix's (Satell, 2014).
High-pressure environments—whether in schools or business—make it hard for people to own up to their shortcomings and work together. That's exactly what a study of high-stakes accountability in an urban district found. The longer low-performing schools faced the threat of sanctions, the less apt they were to examine their underlying assumptions and current practices—and pull together to improve them (Finnigan, Daly, & Che, 2012).
Educators who fear being judged by their shortcomings will be less likely to engage in self-reflection. Unless thoughtful leaders create a safe environment and set a tone akin to what Japanese manufacturers call kaizen—the view that "every defect is a treasure" that offers a chance to improve—teachers can have all the data in the world, but they won't be able to use the information to guide improvement.
Calendar for November:
