May 30. 2017

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher 2016-2017 School Calendar


Student's of the week for 

• Brannt Balfanz: (Applied Academic) 
• Brannt is a very kind person and hard-working student. He is a great example of what following the Karcher Way  should look like.
• Cheyenne Strothman: (Onyx) 
• Cheyenne is doing a fantastic job working hard to stay caught up in all of her classes. Her effort and attitude in everything she is doing right now is greatly appreciated by her teachers! Keep up the great work Cheyenne!!
• Kirsten Damrow-Blinderman: (Silver) 
• Kirsten is a positive force in class. She is never afraid to stand up for what is right or to fight for her opinion in debate. We love her spirit.
• Addison Mangold: (Karcher Character Bucks) 
• Addison is the embodiment of character. She is kind and compassionate to all those around her and a leader in any small group or classroom situation.
• Oliva Traxinger. (Hive)  
• Olivia has had an extraordinary year. She has been top notch academically, consistently producing extraordinary work on rigorous assignments. She is the definition of kind and empathetic. Olivia's positivity towards peers and staff will be missed next year. 
• Hailey Hotvedt : (Diamond - Not in Picture)  
• Hailey is a great example of the Karcher Way because she is always nice to her peers. She goes out of her way to say hi to her teachers and every morning she takes the chairs down in Advisory.  Hailey does the little things that make a difference. 

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Kudos

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• Eric Sulik was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Eric and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Thank you to Rod Stoughton and the Orange Crush band as they completed their last performance today at Chocolate Fest.  The band had a great run and performed at numerous district events and community events.  Thank you Rod and the rest of Orange Crush for your time and for your entertainment over the years.  

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Reminders

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• Tuesday, May 30 - Staff Meeting at 7:00am in the conference room by the Lab.  
• Tuesday, May 30 - 7th grade Character Assembly with a morning assembly schedule.  
• Tuesday, May 30 - STEM Interviews
• We will be conducting interviews tomorrow throughout the day.  
• The 8th grade leadership students have been asked to participate in the interview process and will be missing some of their classes tomorrow.  We will call for the students as we need them throughout the day.  
• Tuesday, May 30  - Band Concert at Karcher Middle School @ 7:00pm.  
• Wednesday, May 31 - 8th grade Character Assembly with a morning assembly schedule. 
• Wednesday, May 31 - SLO PLC - Please use this time to finalize items needed for your SLO, PPG, and MLP.  You do not need to come to the library for this PLC.  
• Friday, June 2 - Karcher/Cooper/Waller Day - LINK
• We will be using an afternoon assembly schedule.  
• Friday, June 2 - Friday Night Live (FNL) 
• From 5:30 - 7:30... thank you to those who have already said they can assist with the last FNL.  We could still use a few more adults to assist!  Please let Mike Jones or Donna Sturdevant know if you are able to help support our students for their last FNL.  
• Monday, June 5 - Final Staff Meeting - Recognition of staff
• Tuesday, June 6 - Afternoon assembly schedule to attend the Pop Concert in the gym.  
• Students who need to finish up their work should stay back with a teacher in their house. Please determine which house teacher will be staying back until they complete their work.  
• Wednesday, June 7 - No PLC 
• District Golf Outing at Brown's Lake!  
• District Retirement Dinner 
• Thursday, June 8 - Field Day Schedule
• Thursday, June 8 
• Celebration for Marilee Hoffman's retirement at Waterfront!!!  Starting at 3:30.  Please RSVP to Barb Berezowitz if you plan to attend!  
• Friday, June 9 - LAST DAY OF SCHOOL - Half Day schedule 
• 8th grade recognition will start at 10:00am.  Doors for parents will open at 9:15am.  
• Please added a few pictures of your advisory to THIS slide show for the ceremony.  Each advisory has 4 slides - please keep to four slides so there is a balance between all advisories.  Thank you!  

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Pictures from the week

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The Kiwanis Club recognized students, this past Monday night, from Catholic Central, BHS, and Karcher for making significant improvements through the school year.  Our 4 BUG award students were:  Savana Schmidt, Thania Martinez, Isabel Dejesus-Reyes, and Kaylee Fell - congrats!!!

Karcher Band in the Memorial Day parade!

Video of the week:  

For our students we have lost... our deepest sympathy goes out to their family and friends...

May 22, 2017

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher 2016-2017 School Calendar


Student's of the week for 
May 15 - May 19 

• Abigail Buss: (Silver) 
• Abigail works hard and produces incredibly impressive work.  We appreciate the informed perspective she brings to class!
• Mia Taylor: (Diamond) 
• Mia is an incredibly kind student who consistently shows the Karcher Way. She treats her peers with respect and kindness and is always willing to help out. Mia always has a smile on her face and her positive attitude is incredibly contagious. Keep up the great work!
• Sammantha Hammiller: (Hive) 
• Samantha displays perseverance in her work as she is always looking to improve and get better. Her responsibility and respect to her school and classmates is on display in the classroom, in the hallway, and on safety patrol.
• Leah Henning: (Applied Academics) 
• Leah is a leader in class and always participates at her PERSONAL BEST! Leah exemplifies the Karcher Way! 
• Beatriz Mondragon-Lopez: (Onyx)  
• Beatriz has been doing a fantastic job. She has been putting a noticeable effort into whatever she is working on, and she is staying caught up in her classes. Keep up the great work Beatriz, and finish your 7th grade year strong!!!
• Sean Diggins: (Karcher Character Bucks - Not in Picture)  
• Sean has a tremendous sense of humor that he uses to enhance our school. He is kind to his classmates and very responsible about completing his schoolwork - Awesome job!

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Kudos

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• Jeri Nettesheim was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Jeri and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Kudos to Andrea Hancock, Barb Berezowitz, and Kurt Rummler for your work with our 7th grade Zoo Field trip and our Safety Patrol field trip.  Both were a success and students enjoyed their experiences.  
• Kudos to Marian Hancock for your continued assistance with catching our absent students needing to take their MAP assessments.  We are almost completely done with MAPs and will be looking at the data this week during PLC.  

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Reminders

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• Monday, May 22 - Character Assembly awards are due by the end of the day!  
• Please bring yours to the main office along with your short reason to be placed on the back of both student's awards so that we have time to laminate each one.  
• Monday, May 22 - BLT at 2:40 in the conference room.
• Tuesday, May 23 - Our Math Meet students will be traveling to Madison to complete in the Math State Meet with advisors Mike Jones and Grace Jorgenson.  Good luck!!!  
• Wednesday, May 24 - MAP Data PLC
• MAP data will be broken down by ELA classes and math classes along with data for each grade in order to analyze our results for the 2017-2018 school year.  
• Thursday, May 25 - TSID sheets are due to Grace Jorgenson.
• Please bring any forms you have to the main office and put them in Grace's mailbox.  
• Thursday, May 25 - Last day of our iTime rotations for the year!  
• Friday, May 26 - Half-Day with afternoon inservice from 1:00 - 3:00. 
• We will be in the library to start in order to complete the CALL Survey and then you will have time to work on your SLOs, MLP, PPGs, Google Certification/Hours, and any of your end of the year needs.  

Other information:

• The STEM posting is for an opening at Karcher due to Jayme Pruszka taking the Business position at the high school.  Due to the move we decided to go to the board asking for the certification of the course change as the evolution of those classes has shifted to more of a technology education focus, which falls within STEM and opens up the certification needed.  The position is posted internally/externally and we hope to fill the position prior to the end of the school year.  
• Those running Compass opposite PE... you are welcome to allow students to use this time for Compass, SSR, and/or work completion as we are approaching the end of the school year.  
• Our Character Assemblies will be taking place right after the Memorial Day weekend on Tuesday and Wednesday next week with morning assembly schedule days.  
• June 2 is an afternoon assembly schedule with time spent with Cooper/Waller students!  
• Room checkout information will be in next week's blog for June 9th!  

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Pictures from the week

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World War II timeline created by students in Ms. Rummler's Social Studies class.  

7th grade students giving running for student council giving their speeches to the whole 7th grade class.

Students in Ms. Waki's STEM class working on their house projects!

Former BASD 2011 graduate, Brandin Kreuder, along with his pianist, Craig Jordan, playing for our 8th grade orchestra class.  They were in town for a few days to perform some shows and then flying out to perform else where!  Was great to have them back to play for our students.  

NJHS (National Junior Honor Society) Highway clean up!

7th grade Zoo field trip!

Article of the week: 

Designing a Community of Shared Learning

Anne M. Beaton

When teachers regularly observe one another, they gain ideas for sharpening instruction—and a conduit for leadership.

Continuation from last week's article... 

Setting the Stage

For the inaugural round, I invited teachers into the experience with four questions: (1) What can we learn from getting into other people's classrooms? (2) What ideas can we gather for ourselves? (3) What does the experience make us think about our own teaching? and (4) What questions are we left with? I anticipated that 15 people would be interested, so I was stunned when more than 50 teachers signed up to participate. I expanded my original plan and set a two-day schedule that provided substitutes to relieve teachers of their supervision duties so they could each visit a classroom.

I sent the entire staff a Google Form to elicit participants and gather information about each teacher's availability and preferences: Did they want to see a particular teacher or course? Someone within their PLC or department—or outside their department? (Many people clicked, "Surprise Me!," which gave me more flexibility.)

For the initial round, I made sure that every teacher who signed up to visit another classroom also had a visitor come to his or her own classroom, to stress that we all had something to learn from one another and that there wasn't one small group of expert teachers. Now, I've relaxed that rule a bit in an effort to draw in younger teachers who are hesitant to have veteran teachers visit their rooms. (They get one round as a visitor only, and after that they must be observed also.) I did my best to accommodate requests like "I want to observe a teacher who is more organized than me." If a teacher requested to see someone who had not signed up to participate, I sent an e-mail asking permission for the teacher to visit that colleague's room.

I made every effort to schedule only one visitor per classroom per period, but occasionally allowed two visitors to accommodate teacher requests. Some teachers had visitors during multiple periods throughout the two days, others only one. The final schedule fit together like pieces in the game Tetris. I wanted every teacher to have the best experience possible so they would participate again.1 

On the day of the visits, I established norms that each participant agreed to follow: arrive on time; stay for the entire period; resist the urge to talk with students; remember that conversations with students and the teacher are at the teacher's discretion; and say thank you. An informal handout for observers reinforced that we were not evaluating, but merely taking the opportunity to observe a peer's practice and reflect on our own. The handout contained two overarching questions for teachers to consider during their visit: What does learning look like in other classrooms? and How are other teachers working to engage students? It also included places for teachers to take notes on three specifics: What do I notice? What does it make me wonder? and How have I benefitted from this experience? (See a sample handout.)

At the end of the inaugural round, I facilitated a 20-minute "brief debrief" after school. More than 40 teachers attended, bringing their handouts with reflective notes, and discussed in small groups what they'd noticed. They made connections with one another about what they saw and how it influenced their thinking about their own classrooms. One teacher reflected, "I want to try to bring real-world articles into my classroom related to the material we are learning like the teacher I observed does." Another recognized, "I need to focus on a goal of quality and less on a goal of completing a checklist."

As hosts, teachers shared that they wanted to make sure their visitor had something good to see; observation seemed to inspire teachers to be more thoughtful about their lesson design for the day, not from fear of evaluation, but out of pride in their practice. One host teacher commented that visitors weren't always aware of the context of the lesson, which "forced me to think about how to explain and facilitate the lesson so they could grasp it as well—which only helped the students understand the concept better, too."

Initially, I'd thought it might pose a problem if teachers saw any instruction that wasn't the best. But as our learning community grew and teachers reflected, we realized that teachers felt supported even when visitors witnessed challenging environments and saw the host teacher struggling. Teachers always found ways to gain from what they experienced.

It wasn't perfect, but it was a start. Ninety-six percent of the participants reported that they were looking forward to another round of classroom visits. Most commented that the experience was valuable. As we complete more rounds of Teachers in Classrooms, teachers are recognizing that, "I can be an instructional leader without taking on an official leadership role."

Letting the Horses Run

"You need to let the horses run." That's how our head principal describes how he leads our talented veteran staff. He sees teachers as professionals and believes teachers initiate the best, most lasting work in our building, reflecting Danielson's (2006) contention:

Leadership in schools need not be hierarchical; communication need not be a one-way proposition. And while schools, like other organizations, need to have someone in charge, there are ways of being in charge that not only honor the expertise of teachers but unleash the power of genuine leadership in them. (pp. 10–11)

Because of our principal's approach, I am free to coach throughout the building and design professional learning experiences for staff. Teachers are encouraged to lead efforts to improve learning from within their classrooms: English teachers redesign courses to dismantle tracking, science teachers digitize learning for students, and music teachers take students around the United States to perform. But often, teachers in various departments aren't aware of the feats colleagues in other departments are accomplishing. Through frequent mutual observation, we see and share all the great work being done around our building, beyond technical descriptions that live within PLCs and individual departments. This amplifies the influence of each success. We realize that all teachers, not just those deemed exemplary, deserve and benefit from a community of shared practice.

Learning and Leadership Revealed

We recently completed our fourth round of Teachers in Classrooms Getting Connected, and nearly 75 percent of Armstrong's staff members have now participated. Teachers continue to provide feedback that reveals the high level of reflection this professional development has inspired. Through surveys and "brief debriefs," teachers note how they've changed their practice after watching a peer.

We've tweaked how we operate the program, often in response to teachers' suggestions. ("Let's figure out how to spend more one-on-one time with the teacher you observed to ask questions.") Recently, I've revised the guiding questions to focus on a new theme each round. (We just finished "Community" and will move to "Innovation" next.) Some teachers are interested in learning about particular strategies, such as teaching writing to a certain age group; others use the experience to become more a part of the school community and talk to colleagues outside their department.

Teachers in Classrooms Getting Connected reminds all of us that just as students thrive in a safe, engaging learning environment, so do teachers.

References

Barth, R. S. (2001). Learning by heart. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Block, P. (2008). Community: The structure of belonging. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.

Danielson, C. (2006). Teacher leadership that strengthens professional practice. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Sinek, S. (2014, March). Simon Sinek: Why good leaders make you feel safe [video]. Retrieved from www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe

May 15, 2017

KARCHER STAFF BLOG

Karcher 2016-2017 School Calendar


Student's of the week for 

• Ethan Vogt: (Onyx)  
• Ethan is a fantastic young man who is always smiling and positive to all around him. Ethan consistently shows the utmost respect to both teachers and students alike and is always willing to lend a helping hand. Thank you Ethan and keep up the great work!
• Caden Taylor: (Diamond) 
• Caden consistently shows the Karcher Way. He is kind, considerate, and respectful to his classmates and teachers. Caden is a hard-working student and excels academically in class.
• Sarah Boarini: (Applied Academics) 
• Sarah continues to work hard in class. She is friendly, helpful , and respectful.  Great work Sarah! Way to go!
• Elizabeth Boarini: (Hive) 
• Elizabeth is so compassionate and kind to her peers. Whenever any assistance is needed, Elizabeth is there to help.
• Elizabeth Leon Cruz: (KCB) 
• Elizabeth has been working hard in class and putting forth her best effort during MAPS testing. She is responsible and always keeps up with her work.
• Lucas Wittkamp: (Silver)  
• Silver House chooses Lucas because of the positive energy and the unique perspective that he brings to all of his classes.

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Kudos

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• Erika Fons was chosen as the KCB STAFF OF THE WEEK!  Congrats Erika and thank you all for continuing to reinforce our 8 character traits. 
• Jayme Pruszka will be joining our Burlington High School Business department for the 2017-2018 school year.  We are very sad you will be leaving Karcher but excited for you as we know your passion is to truly teach business education at the high school level.  You will do great at the high school!  Please congratulate Jayme when you see her!  
• Kudos to Stephanie Rummler, Brad Ferstenou, and the rest of our PBS team (along with our leadership students) for your work developing all of the KCB reward activities from now until the end of the year!  Some great ideas and excitement around our KCBs.  Don't forget to continue recognizing students for demonstrating "The Karcher Way" all the way to the end of the school year!
• Our new PE/Health teacher, Jon Nelson, was approved this past Monday night at the Board Meeting so... please welcome Jon Nelson to our Karcher team!!!  Jon assisted Burlington High School last summer as he taught some our PE courses  and will be again this summer.  Jon lives in Rochester with his wife and their two children:  Milania and newborn Maverick.  Below is a recent picture of Jon and his son Maverick!  Here is Jon's email address if you would like to reach out to him:  nelson.jon10@gmail.com

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Reminders

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• Survey reminders... 
• Certified staff... there are two surveys we would like your input on:
• Karcher Literacy Survey - Molly Ebbers shared the survey with you via Google Forms as we would like all of our teachers to complete the survey no later than noon tomorrow as we will be looking at the survey results at our district literacy PLC on Monday (tomorrow) night.  
• The 2018-2019 BASD calendar committee shared a survey they would like input on as well in order to ensure all voices are heard prior to making the final decision on the 2018-2019 school calendar.
• Monday, May 15 - Last round of Partners 2 presentations in the library for 8th grade!  The following advisory teachers, please bring your advisory to the library after you go through the announcements and take attendance:  
• Mike Jones
• Stephanie Rummler
• Amanda Thate
• Alyssa Riggs
• Monday, May 15 - Staff Meeting in the library @ 2:40.
• The focus of this staff meeting will be around TSID.  Grace Jorgenson is our TSID coordinator and will be sharing the forms with staff and we will answer any questions you may have.  This work will be to prepare for the 2017-2018 school year.  
• Monday-Tuesday, May 15-16 - We will be continuing with MAP testing this week starting with English on Monday & Tuesday with makeups taking place the rest of the week.  
• Please remember to keep the noise level down in the hallways to assist with a quiet testing environment.  
• Wednesday, May 16 - Literacy PLC.  We will continue with literacy presentations from staff!  Our last literacy presentation PLC was awesome and it will be great to hear and see the other strategies that will be shared.  
• Thursday, May 17-18 - Safety Patrol Field trip to the Dells!
• Friday, May 18 - 7th grade field trip to the Milwaukee County Zoo with admission to see Body Worlds!  

• Just an FYI... we do have money in our Scholastic account.  If there are books you would like for iTime or literacy circles for the 2017-2018 school year please let ask Patti Tenhagen for the link to see the resources available through Scholastic!  

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Pictures from the week

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Track meet at BHS this past Monday, May 8!  Both of our 7th grade teams (boys and girls) took 1st place and 8th grade teams both took 2nd!!!  Awesome job and a HUGE shout out to all the staff that assisted with the meet!

   

  

  

Look at that fine finish line crew!  

Board and Brush staff success!

Article of the week: 

Designing a Community of Shared Learning

Anne M. Beaton

When teachers regularly observe one another, they gain ideas for sharpening instruction—and a conduit for leadership.

Being an instructional coach is humbling. On my best days, my time is spent in perpetual reflection with teachers: sponging up emotions, unsticking thinking, affirming ideas, or supporting lessons in real time within the classroom. On other days, I'm the teacher voice at the table where decision makers introduce initiatives that have a serious impact on staff and students. I am not an administrator, which often spurs people to ask me, "When are you going to be a principal?"—as if shifting to administration is the natural next step. The implication is that leadership in schools has to be hierarchical and there is something more or better about leading from the top.

But as Simon Sinek (2014) argues, "Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank." After 17 years in the classroom, I decided to step beyond my classroom and into a role of guiding other teachers—and I realized that teachers themselves can choose leadership by sharing their own wealth to refine instruction, theirs and others'.

Of Craft Knowledge and Learning

No one told me how to do this coaching job, so I've continuously revised my approach to find what works to support all teachers. I have learned far more about instruction as an instructional coach than I ever could from a coach. After I began creating experiences for teachers within one another's classrooms, I realized that not only is studying one another's instructional practices as a community essential in becoming more effective for our students, but it also lifts teachers up as leaders.

When I first began serving as an instructional coach at Robbinsdale Armstrong High School in Plymouth, Minnesota, I set out to improve instruction one teacher at a time. There has always been an expectation for me to coach individual teachers to reflect on their practice and implement strategies that engage students, decrease behavior issues, and increase learning. And it works. In a year-end survey of Armstrong teachers, many reported that they valued how I challenged them to think more deeply about instruction. First-year teacher or veteran, everyone I worked with realized that he or she had something more to learn.

Knowing this caused me to wonder whether I could leverage the system to affect a greater number of teachers, particularly as I realized how much I was learning just by stepping in and out of many classrooms.

As a coach, I was introduced to a mosaic of communities, rituals, and levels of inquiry and engagement. I was witnessing what Barth (2001) calls craft knowledge, the "massive collection of experiences and learnings that those who live and work under the roof of the schoolhouse inevitably accrue during their careers" (p. 56). Some teachers lectured from slides; others had students debate in Philosophical Chairs. Many lined up the desks in rows; others clustered them in small groups or arranged them in a circle. In one room, Chromebooks and phones were viewed as a distraction, whereas in another, technology was an integral part of the lesson. Learning looked different in each space. The experience was eye-opening, and I wanted teachers to have it too.

Letting Teachers In on the Experience

In Jerry Seinfeld's TV show Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, he drives other famous comedians around in classic cars and interviews them. In one episode, Jim Carrey tells Seinfeld, referring to joke writing, "I used to watch you at the Improv when I was starting out and I was like, this guy is a mechanic. He's an amazing mechanic." Watching this episode, I began to see parallels between joke construction and lesson plan writing, and I understood what was missing from the current coaching model: a culture of studying our practice by watching one another teach.

Part of the benefit of visiting other learning environments is watching teachers make real-time decisions in response to students. I noticed when a teacher subtly brushed a hand across her forehead, cuing a student to remove his hat. I saw how students began to problem solve as a group when the teacher stepped back and to the side. While teachers taught or facilitated, I used the time to reflect on how I could have applied what I was seeing to my own classroom—if I still had a classroom.

Other teachers needed to see what I was seeing, and we needed to learn together. I began to see the classroom as a space for professional development. This learning was richer than the kind that transpires while we sit among other adults at professional learning sessions in hotel conference rooms. It included students and was steeped in classroom culture.

At the time, Armstrong teachers collaborated in professional learning communities, but as they shared lesson plans and analyzed data, they were describing and listening to—not experiencing—the work of colleagues. The discussions stayed technical; they lacked inquiry and wonder about improving the craft. Teachers weren't seeing one another teach, and rather than blaming the schedule or the building culture that didn't support it, I had to find a way to get them into one another's classrooms, sharing their practices. So, with a nod to Seinfeld, I set up Teachers in Classrooms Getting Connected, a system to free teachers up to visit classrooms during the school day. Seinfeld had comedians in a car getting coffee—what would we be getting? Connected.

I was clear that teachers should be entering one another's spaces not to critique a colleague, but to study the learning environment that the teacher had created through established rituals, routines, and relationships. We would focus on student engagement and approach the moment as learners, not evaluators, accepting the premise that we have lots to learn from one another. I imagined that the best design would enable teachers to simply share their practice, essentially leading colleagues to improve instruction from within their rooms without any extra preparation or the need to take on any new role.

Approaching the work collectively might help avoid the teacher culture taboo that Barth (2001) describes: the code that says, "Thou shalt not distinguish thyself from the rest—nor even appear to distinguish thyself from the rest" (p. 58). With so many people participating, it would be possible to establish a new norm in which people open up their classrooms and let others in. Rather than feel the stress of teaching their peers a particular strategy or calling attention, in front of a group, to what has worked, teachers could be their best selves with their students—just like any other day—and the burden would be on visiting teachers to explore the space and notice practices that they deemed unique or excellent. If a visiting teacher later told others about the expertise or effective strategies of a teacher she observed, the act of singling that peer out would seem to fall within the parameters of the teacher code.

Marketing the experience would be important because I didn't want teachers to feel threatened. One key was not to use the word observation, which is loaded with evaluative energy. Instead, I used the word visit—like we were stopping in to join the learning community for a moment. Another key was to establish norms to frame how we would each be in the spaces. I determined that I would not join people on their visits, nor would we follow a pre/post model that put me in a position to teach people about what they had experienced.

My leadership role became that of an architect designing an opportunity for teachers to learn from one another. Block (2008) writes about leaders as social architects: "Community building requires a concept of the leader as one who creates experiences for others—experiences that in themselves are examples of our desired future" (p. 86). Teachers' "desired future" is one in which their instruction meets the needs of all students.

The continuation of this article will be in next week's blog...