This summer, I was only able to be on campus with Ann about two days a week. I assisted with as many projects as I could, but two days a week is never enough to build an infrastructure for an entire elementary school. But I assisted as much as my USF schedule would allow.
Moving into the school year was great. Ann had built a system whereby the students would go to morning clubs. We have a 21st Century before and after-school program, so the teachers are paid for giving up their planning time to facilitate these clubs. The clubs rotate often and at the bell, 8:30, teachers pick up their students to begin their instructional day. Kids are welcome to be on campus as early as 7:45 for breakfast and clubs begin at 8:00 a.m. It's an additional 30 minutes of instruction for many of our students. The morning went off with only a few glitches.
Dismissal, however, is another story ... The state of Florida "gifted" us with an extra hour of instruction daily for our students because we fit the criteria for the lowest 100 performing schools in the state of Florida. The challenge with this initiative came with the fact that not every teacher could be funded to stay and we have a large number of teachers that are not qualified to teach this extended hour because they don't have a track record of moving students yet. That presented the challenge of having all the students and only some of the teachers to teach the program and to dismiss the kids. There were far reaching implications of holding students for an additional hour. We had to coordinate with cafeteria to provide additional snacks, custodian to provide additional and later clean up, as well as front office to be available for dismissal. We still have the Comprehension Toolkit order that has not yet arrived so we are utilizing other resources to teach this extended hour.
The first day, there were 2 classrooms that did not have teachers, one of which was a Kindergarten class. I stepped in at the last minute to provide coverage. this was interesting. I had no resources, not because they weren't there, but because I was not part of the planning procedure to know what was expected this first day. Coupled with the fact that I had nothing planned to teach them, I had also never taught Kindergarten. I always taught Intermediate in my experience as an educator. I grossly underestimated the amount of work Kindergarten children could be, especially on their first day of class when foundational expectations have not been set. It was probably the longest hour of my life. My stepping into this classroom also presented challenges because I was not able to be ready for dismissal. SNOWBALL ... Kids were dismissed into the halls and I had not clearly communicated the dismissal procedures as well as I should. It was a little chaotic because we were on a bit of a skeleton staff. The good news is that every child got home.
Each day, the dismissal process got a little better and by Thursday, dismissal was down to 15 minutes. VICTORY!!
Projects that I worked on this week or am working on:
Management:
- Attendance Procedures
- PBS Eco Dollar RollOut
- Developing my discipline procedures as an AP
- Streamlining MTSS with support of Amy our behavioral specialist
- Developing an academic calendar to drive the year and keeping it updated
Leadership:
- Power of Talk-thinking about what I say and how I say it
- PBS with students and staff
- TRIBES language and support-staff development
- Check In Check Out: Conversations had with Behavioral Support and with Admin about removing many students that are currently residing in Check In Check Out. Concern is that students may have been placed due to ineffective classroom management, they have grown over the summer and we should just not assume that what they needed last year is consistent with that they needed this year. This was a successful conversation. My administrator agreed that many student's needs may have changed. She chose 5 students that had a significant need and the other 25 students that had been placed into Check In Check Out were disbanded. Given a fresh start.
Goals for this week:
- Visit with new teachers- I will spend about ten minutes with them each week ensuring their needs are being met and supporting them as much as possible.
- My Principal suggested that I answer email and work on projects from within classrooms. I will find 30 minutes twice daily to sit in classrooms. Just having administrative presence will improve the quality of the learning that is taking place in the classroom.
- Meet with Literacy Coaches to establish a framework for Data Chats and conversation.
- Find ways to grow in Leadership capacity ...
