sábado, 11 de mayo de 2019

May 13, 2019

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Kudos
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  • Thank you to all of our teachers for all of the work you do day in and day out for our students, school, and the community!  Our hope was that having some lunches and breakfast provided you with a few less things to have to worry about and time to just talk together!  Thank you for all you do, truly, for our students, school, district, and community!  
  • Thank you to Donna Sturdevant, Amanda Thate, Kailee Smith, and Steve Berezowitz for your participation with the first round of interviews for the Dean of Students position this past week.  The same team will be conducting final interviews this coming Tuesday with 4 candidates.  Thank again to the interview committee for your time!  And to Jane Peterson and Kris Thomsen for being the first person candidates see in the main office and talking with candidates throughout the process!  
  • Thank you to our 8th grade team for taking all of our 8th grade students to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee this past Friday!  The goal is to get all of our 7th grade students on a technical school campus and all of 8th grade onto a 4-year college campus!  The goal was accomplished!  And thank you to Steve Berezowitz for setting all three trips up for our staff and students and to Jon Nelson and Dawn Salbreiter for assisting with the trip as well!  

The below article is what our staff does!

One to Grow On / Being a Guiding Light Teens Need

Carol Ann Tomlinson
Adolescence is a sea of uncertainty, but teachers can help navigate it.
Adolescents stand astride the worlds of childhood and adulthood. Their legs are wobbly, and the space below is an abyss. They are cocky—and terrified. They know everything and, for all practical purposes, nothing. They long to be accorded the privileges of adulthood while yearning (if they are lucky) to crawl back into a parent's lap. They are becoming many things, and the becoming is awkwardly incomplete. They often see themselves as wonderful when adults see them as maddening, and as maddeningly inadequate when adults see them as wonderful.
So what do they need in school? The simple answer is, "Everything." Adolescents in school need help navigating a terrain littered with sinkholes and sharp-edged rocks. They need teachers who see teaching as much more inclusive and encompassing than just providing and measuring content.

On my best days as a teacher, I have seen the world through the eyes of my adolescent students and have been a more adequate teacher for them. I have also been mentored by wise authors whose words have extended my vision of teaching. One of those mentors-through-writing is Max van Manen, an educator with Dutch and Canadian roots whose thoughts I've found particularly applicable to teaching adolescents. He suggests five elements that seem a reasonable answer to the question of what teenagers need in school. They need teachers who embrace, invite, lead, trust, and embody.

Embrace

When the teacher enters the classroom, he sees children who are big and small, coarse and finely featured; he sees sullen faces and noble appearances, ill-shaped and well-proportioned bodies—as if they were the representation of creation. And his glance, the glance of the educator, embraces them all and takes them all in. (van Manen, 1991, p. 66)
Adolescents need adults in their lives who "embrace" them, who seek to know them, who have abiding respect for who they are and who they will become. Adolescents need adults who dignify them and who make clear that they, as teachers and fellow human beings, are themselves dignified by virtue of their ongoing apprenticeships with the students. Students who have teachers who see them in this light, are, I believe, far more likely to traverse adolescence—and beyond—successfully.

Invite

Schools need to offer young people a caring and supportive environment, not only because caring teachers and caring schools tend to reproduce a caring orientation in the students, but also because a caring school climate sponsors the conditions for personal growth itself. (van Manen, 1991, p. 66)
In order to grow cognitively and academically, adolescents need what John Hattie (2012) calls an invitational learning environment—a place where they feel seen, known, appreciated, challenged, and supported. In that place, they see themselves and their peers being contributing members of teams. Not only does each team of learners provide reliable support for academic success, but it also creates opportunities for meaningful peer connections—a pivotal need for adolescents who are transitioning away from parents and other key adults as anchors for their world. Teachers who "invite" teenagers to learn understand that when a student's social-emotional needs go unmet, the likelihood of academic success is significantly, if not fatally, diminished for that student.

Lead

Leading means going first, and in going first, you can trust me, for I have tested the ice. (van Manen, 1991, p. 38)
Strong leaders take care of their students. Strong teachers are effective leaders of their students. They ask them to go on a journey that is both rigorous and rewarding. Their vision for students individually and for the class as a whole is compelling. It raises learning to a higher plane and lifts up the learner. A strong leader listens more than speaks, learns more than tells, has a sharp sense of direction, and communicates that direction clearly. These teachers honor the experience and judgment of their students by regularly seeking their counsel on ways in which the class is working well and ways in which, together, they can make it more effective.

Trust

Young people who experience our trust are thereby encouraged to have trust in themselves. Trust enables. (van Manen, 1991, p. 68)
Adolescents need teachers who trust both their capacity to learn and their intent to do the right thing. Those teachers also know that adolescence is prime time for learning the pathways to success and making sound choices. The most effective teachers provide teens with the opportunity to do aspirational work and to exercise their judgment in significant matters. At the same time, these teachers are keenly aware that most teens are relative novices in the art of learning and reasoned judgement, and so they mentor the students in developing the skills, attitudes, and habits of mind most likely to lead to learning success and to right-minded decision making. These teachers provide parameters and principles for growing independence. They eschew cages.

Embody

In some sense, (a great) teacher is what he or she teaches. A mathematics teacher is not just someone who happens to teach math. A real math teacher is one who embodies math, who lives math, who in a strong sense is math. (van Manen, 1991, p. 77)
Adolescence should be a time for dreaming and giving shape to dreams. Excellent teachers don't cover content and prepare students for tests on which they will be asked to select "truth" from a brief set of snippets. Rather, they help students see the poetry and drama in their lives, show them the long parade of human triumph and folly, enable them to lend their voices to the human song, and guide them to wonder at the reliability and flux in the natural world. Great teachers for adolescents say every day, through words and actions, "To learn is to be fully human. Let's share the joy and the struggle of finding meaning in our lives and in the places where we live."
What adolescents need in school is teachers who not only care about them, but who care for them (Gay, 2018). They need teachers who enjoy their company, but who go well beyond that to ensure that they build foundations for strong, sturdy, contributing, and satisfying lives. That seems an appropriate mission for teachers who commit to teaching young people during the most complex, promising years of their lives.
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Information/Reminders
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  • May 13 through 17 - iReady math diagnostic week.  
    • Please be mindful that all students will be completing the math spring diagnostic so we need to assist with a quiet testing environment for our students throughout the week!  
  • Monday, May 13 - BLT Meeting 
    • We will be talking about Chapters 4 in both Better Learning and On Your Mark.  
    • I also hope to get a presentation from PRA of the exterior of the new middle school prior to Monday to show the team.  I have not received it yet but I am hopeful that it is shared with me so the team can see it.  
    • Also discuss end of the year needs, etc.  
  • Tuesday, May 14 - Last day of the 2nd iTime rotation.  
  • Wednesday, May 15 - Start of the last iTime rotation.
    • Please make sure your advisory students know where to go prior to the start of Wednesday's iTime.  
  • Wednesday, May 15 - Your YAR students will be meeting in room 107 at 9:45 - 10:45!  
  • Wednesday, May 15 - PLC in the library.  Working in your content/grade level teams looking at the formative data collected from the formative assessment given since the last PLC.  So please bring your student data to the PLC!  
    • This is our LAST PLC of the school year!  
  • Thursday, May 16 & Friday, May 17 - Safety Patrol students will be traveling to the Dells with Kurt Rummler.  Please thank all of our safety patrol students for all of their hard work and dedication to our school by assisting with all morning and after school cross walk, flag pole, and barricade needs each and every day (rain or shine)!  They deserve a great trip for all of their time giving back to the students and our school!  
  • Thursday, May 16 - Strings Concert in our Karcher gym @ 7:00pm.  
  • Friday, May 17 - YAR students will be meeting again at 7:26 - 8:26 
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Pictures from the week
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