January 24, 2020

You may or may not know this, however, my youngest daughter does All-Star cheer in Livermore with a gym called The California All Stars.  We travel A LOT.  We cheer and scream and clap A LOT.  We recently spent the long weekend in the lovely town of Bakersfield where her team, J2 Crew, won a paid bid to Summit (like the Super Bowl for cheer) in Florida.  It got me thinking about taking a risk and how she took the risk to join this prestigious, competitive, highly sought after, and amazing gym.  This lead me to taking a risk as an EDUCATOR...

How do you encourage your colleagues to take a risk in the classroom with technology, engagement strategy, lesson delivery, etc?  How do YOU take a risk and be okay with it NOT working the first time?  Take a look at THIS ARTICLE about some EASY ways to take a risk from co-teaching it, to modeling for another teacher, to simply planning it together and discussing the results. 

All of this chances should be used to help, encourage, support and learn from one another to reach ALL of our students!

Here are some pics from Kendall's risks in cheer (and how they have paid off!) and check out the Netflix docuseries "Cheer" if you get the chance!

Did you know?

• We have an overall class GPA range from the report cards of a 3.86 to 2.04.  
• We have 101 students with one or more Fs.  101 is not okay....
• We have 25 students with 3 or more Fs.  
• We 18 6th graders, 37 7th graders, and 46 8th graders with one or more F's.

Some things to think about and questions to ask yourself:

• Have we reached out to parents/guardian, personally, to see what's going on?
• Have we pulled the student(s) during tutorial to work with them at all?
• Have we met with parents/guardians and student to go over what is going on?
• Have we sent home a permission slip to get tutoring for Math and History (currently the ones being offered at GVMS)?
• Is the grading really reflective of the standards being taught and mastered?
• Is there any "out of the box thinking" that we can do to reach all students?
• Is an SST a logical next step and have you considered scheduling one, asking Carla and Christina to help you get the process started?  Click HERE to get started.

#kindnessmatters Did you know that a smile, a kind word, a helping hand or a simple note of thanks on a sticky note can truly make someone's day?  These are SIMPLE acts of kindness that can be LIFE CHANGING for many on our staff/students.  Happiness researcher (yes, it's a real thing), found that if you perform random acts of kindness for two minutes a day for twenty-one days, you can actually retrain your brain to be more positive. 

The Great Kindness Challenge is next week and Elizabeth will be passing out the check off sheet to students! 

Staff Kindness Challenge for next week:

Monday: enjoy breakfast treats and coffee from KC and CL!

Tuesday: Go check on a teacher that you rarely get to see!

Wednesday: Write a happy note to a staff member and leave it in their box!

Thursday: Compliment 5 students who are NOT in your classroom!

Friday: Write 5 Good News Referrals for students in any of your classes and the Traveling Treat Trolly (football edition!) will be coming by before lunch!

Love it or not, MAP testing is one more piece of data that we can use to inform our instruction, make school-wide decisions, use to support students with IEPs or 504s, shows what standards that students need SUPPORT and small group instruction with, and inform parents as to how they are progressing throughout the school year.  It can also be used to help show how our students will do on the CAASPP test (if they take their time and take MAP seriously).

Each English and Math teacher will be receiving the PDF version of each class period/student's growth as soon as all testing is completed!  THEY ARE AWESOME!  I have already printed them for Nunez, Laffey, Phillips and Koehler! PLEASE feel free to print to show students and then send home!  HERE is a sample of one...

Check out this very quick and short video from a fellow teacher!

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• SUPER awesome shout out to ALANNA for being an awesome Department Chair for Math! ~Lynn
• SUPER awesome shout out to ENGLISH and MATH for taking care of most of their MAP make up tests!!
• SUPER awesome shout out to MIMI, BRENDA, RUDINA, and MICHELE for jumping on the registration stuff already for 2020-2021!
• SUPER awesome shout out to KC for being so responsive and punctual on emails in spite of the large numbers she gets! ~Ryan
• SUPER awesome shout out to CHRISTINA for sharing the best beef jerky at our Department Meeting! ~Julie 
• SUPER awesome shout out to ELIZABETH for scheduling Challenge Day for 2020-2021 already!  Yes, it's on your calendar already too! 
• SUPER awesome shout out to RYAN, CHRISTINA G., and SANDY for working together to make No One Eats Alone come to LIFE!  Excited for this to happen!!