Department Chair Meeting Update

Hi all!

Here is an update from the department chair meeting on Tuesday, September 24.

• Count week will be October 7 - 11.  This is an important week as our funding for the year is tied to attendance this week.  Please do anything you can to encourage student attendance this week.
• ERW #1:  This week will be our final week of work on our SLOs.  Both of your SLOs and all supporting documents (i.e. pre/post test, performance rubric, etc) are due to Judy no later than OCTOBER 1st.  Alli is asking all materials to be turned in as hard copies to best facilitate this process.  
• ERW #2:  If you are following the schedule for the ERW, the first two weeks in October are going to change.  For Wednesday,  October 2, all of the dens will be meeting separately to share and discuss the work done during the September meetings.  On Wednesday, October 9, the entire staff will meet together and hear presentations from each of the dens.  
• On Thursday, September 26, the entire school, faculty and staff are being asked to participate in a project.  We will be creating a video during I/E to enter into a contest to win a Katy Perry concert here at our school.  Please check your email to keep up with these evolving plans.
• The scantron machine in the main office has passed on to greener pastures.  So, I am working on investigating what options are available to us.  I know many of us utilize this for exams.
• Field Trips:  (Please take a deep breath before you read this . . . . . . )  Okay, now that you are calm, cool and collected . . . . . Alli has been informed by the transportation department that field trips can be approved BUT they must be "cost neutral".  Alli followed that up by saying we are not allowed to charge the students for transportation costs (i.e. building the cost into the cost of the field trip).  So, at this time, things are pretty up in the air with field trips and I am not sure how this impacts us.  I am talking with Alli about this situation and will let you know as updates develop.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  

What's Up?

Hi all!

Because of the den meetings this week, there was no department chair meeting today.  We will resume our regular Tuesday meetings during third period next week.

We should all continue to develop our SLOs.  This Wednesday, our time will focus on developing growth targets for our students.

As always, please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any questions or concerns. :-)

Department Chair Meeting Update

Good morning!

Here are the highlights of the department chair meeting on Tuesday, 9/10/13.

• This Early Release Wednesday, we will be continuing the work on our SLOs.  The focus of our time will be on writing about the standards and content portion for each of our SLOs.  Teachers are asked to stay on target with this work so we can address questions and concerns as they arise.
• Alli is requesting a list of current technology for every department.  Therefore, I will be putting this together and asking each of you to proof read it for accuracy.  Additionally, I will submit a request for our technology needs.  Please be on the lookout for this email later in the week.  Your assistance is very much appreciated.
• There was a discussion about Open House.  Alli would like to make this event as inviting, positive and worthwhile as possible for our school families.  Some suggestions for improving open house included creating an event out of it (i.e. science classrooms doing labs for parents to try, etc), creating something separate for the freshmen, or holding open house before a football game to encourage school spirit and attendance.  Alli will also be discussing this issue with the BLT.  Please let her know if you have any thoughts about this topic.   
• Department chair meetings will be held every Tuesday.  The agenda is very flexible and open, so please let me know if you have any questions or concerns to bring to this group.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  Have a great day! :-)

Department Chair Meeting Update

Yep, it's back - the department blog!

 I will again be using this as a tool to share and store information about the weekly department chair meetings and what is going on in the building from that perspective.  Here are the highlights of today's meeting!

• The administrative team is expecting department chairs and their colleagues to hold monthly meetings.  Principals and Amy Hayward are to be invited to be a part of these conversations.  The goal is to create better communication in the building and foster a professional community among staff.  Early Release Wednesday times may or may not be available for this purpose, so we may need to be creative with setting these up.  I will let you know what the plan is as soon as I figure one out.  :-)
• The department chairs decided today to discontinue the use of quarterly assessments in the core as a means of communicating student growth to the district administration and board of education.  Remember, the district has a goal of showing one years growth for every student in reading and math.  Alli would like to see us move to something more encompassing for measuring growth that includes all the courses a student is taking.  The concept she shared today was something along the lines of "Bachelor of Science" curriculum and "Bachelor of Arts" curriculum and reporting growth along these lines.  I am not sure I understand how exactly this works or where precisely we are going with this, but I will keep you posted.  I suspect we are going to become more involved in this process.
• We are going to continue to have students of the month here at the high school.  Please let me know if you have anyone deserving of this honor and I can submit their name.  Additionally, if you would like to nominate someone for Top Tiger, I can pass that along as well.  (Remember, Top Tiger can only be awarded once in a student's career here in Cuyahoga Falls.)

In addition to the above topics, we had a lengthy discussion about where we are in each department with OTES.  I am proud to say we are one of the few departments that has already administered both assessments and are on our way to analyzing student data.  If you have any questions or concerns about any of the OTES stuff, please let me know.  The district OTES committee is meeting tomorrow and there are many questions on the agenda.  Specifically for us, we need to notate any problems/concerns we have with our materials so we can update them for next year.  

So what should you be doing right now?  Here are some things to keep moving forward with!

• Keep working on those SLOs!  Remember you need to create two separate documents, one for the pre/post and one for the performance assessment.  The information about students and interval of instruction should be exactly the same.  The details about the baseline and trend data should be different.  Next week, we are going to focus on writing the SLO area covered by the standards the assessments cover and what the assessments are.  If you can stay on top of this, you should be able to write your entire SLO in the ERW time.  Please let me know if you need any help or have any questions!
• As we move through the SLO process (and once our SLOs are complete), we will again revisit the work of mapping and assessments.  At this time, the thought process is we will be expanding OTES to cover additional courses. More details about what that specifically means for use to come.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns! :-)