ONE MAN ONE FAMILY

PRINCIPAL’S WEKLY MEMO8/30/2010

Week 2 is down and PBS is here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!You are doing a phenomenal job with establishing the culture in your buildings. This work is hard, but well worth the payoff as the year goes on. I hope your college conversations went well on Friday. I really would like for all of us to reinforce the message of college on Fridays with our shirts as a collective unit. It’s a way of reinforcing the mission of our school and showcasing different collegiate options for them. Each chance you get within your classes, continue to talk with students about their college aspirations. Highlight the four-year institutions, but don’t exclude the junior college options.

My focus for this week regarding observations is instructional strategies and how they are supporting the objectives. I would like for you to create a “Parking Lot” area in your class that students can post any lingering questions related to the lesson of the day. You can address those questions as part of your “Do Now”.

Culture:Let’s remember our cultural priorities are to:

1. Create a culture that focuses on college readiness.2. Greet students when they enter your room.3. Continue to add to your college corner!

Logistics:1. Be aware of the new times on the schedule and get classes out on time.2. No concessions for 11th grade until I change that.3. No student is allowed out of the cafeteria during breakfast or lunch without an

adult. We want to keep them from roaming around campus.4. Document tardies on a piece of paper and place in your box to be put in TISBIS.

Instruction:1. Ensure that the activities that you do are truly supporting the objectives.2. Be sure to use the data from the Exit Tickets for spiraling and Do Now’s.3. Some instructional strategies that are effective are:

a. Cooperative Groups: Instruction where students are grouped to share information, perspectives, and strategies.

b. 5 + 1 (Five Plus One): Direct instruction variation where the teacher presents for five minutes, students share and reflect for one minute, then the cycle repeats.

c. Activating Prior Knowledge: Helping learners connect to concepts about to be taught by using activities that relate to or determine the level of their existing knowledge.

ONE MAN ONE FAMILY

Focus Areas/Students: (let’s me especially diligent in classroom management with these scholars. Be careful in your pairings during cooperative learning activities and give them an extra reminder when transitioning to lunch.)

1. Kenneth Peters2. Roland Peters3. Joshua Cooper4. Jordan Montreal5. Kobin Wright

Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold. (Herbert Spencer)

FROM THE DESK OF THE DEAN

Culture: Remain optimistic and confident while dealing with students throughout the day. Every teacher must hold every student to a consistent high expectation of how school should run, with the focus of college preparation.

Logistics:Find and correlate who will bring 10th and 11th to concession. There should be one person per team. MOST IMPORTANTLY BE ON TIME!!!!!!

Instruction: Quality instruction engages our students at their level, which should relate to some real world occurrences, while driving home the specific content desired to be learned for that day.

Focus Areas: Move constantly throughout breakfast to make sure students are seated and orderly. If you are working lunch and morning duty, it is imperative that you be on time. Elevate communication between teacher and students, catch and manage behaviors that are small before they become big!!!!!!