Department Chair and Other Necessary Evils

Here is an update from the department chair meeting today.

• All staff members are encouraged to take a look at the Course of Studies that students are currently using for scheduling.  (Click here to view the document.)  Courses are now identified in "career clusters" to aid students in determining their own career paths.  Take a look, it is pretty interesting.
• Students are currently in the process of selecting their courses for next year.  They are going to turn their green scheduling sheets into their I/E teachers by Friday, February 1.  I am hopeful that we will have preliminary enrollment numbers by the end of the month.  We should all be encouraging students to enroll in the music courses and keep them full! :-)  I will get the materials to work on our department schedule and need to complete that before spring break.  I will keep you all posted as we move through this process.
• Dr. Nichols has removed the credit requirement to pass from grade to grade.  So, you will no longer need to earn 5 1/2 credits to be considered a sophomore.  It is unclear what impact this will have on our students.
• There is great concern over where we are at with PBIS at this point in time.  Please remember that if you are going to give someone an office referral, you need to have documentation of your previous interventions with the student (i.e. parent phone call, detention in your room, etc).  Of course there are circumstances requiring immediate attention from an administrator (i.e. cutting class, insubordination, etc).  Please remember to use the Tiger Stripes to recognize positive behavior or improvement.
• During OGT week, only the sophomore class will come in for testing.  In the past, there had been a pre OGT assessment given to the ninth graders.  However, since the OGT is going away, we will not be administering a test to the freshmen.  Our staff meeting in February will focus on OGT process and procedures.
• Early Release Wednesday will be group meetings for the next two weeks.  January 31 will feature a presentation about OTES and February 6 will focus on Student Learning Objectives (SLOs).  We will meet as best we can as time allows.  We MUST continue to make progress on our assessments.

There was oh so very much more, but that is what I believe to be most pressing to us at this moment.

Please take a moment to look at the Google docs calendar.  I have updated that with all of the information that we discussed this past Wednesday.  There are many, MANY things coming up and I am hopeful that this document can be used to help alleviate some of the congestion that February and March bring.

Questions?  You know where to find me! :-)