August 4, 2015
Dear PPS Teachers and Staff,
I hope this letter finds you
well and enjoying a wonderful summer.
I’ve been appreciating the change of pace since school ended in June and
hope you have, too. While I’ve caught up
with a few of you at school recently, I am looking forward to reconnecting with
all of you to swap stories about summer adventures and travels.
With this being the second
summer for both Sheila and I at Porters, you can imagine how much fun it was for
us to reminisce about this time last year.
We were recalling how Sheila started working here on August 4th
with no furniture in the office. It had
all been moved out for new carpeting to be installed. It stayed out for a good
week because the carpet installers were not on schedule (surprise!). We had a good laugh over that one! Compared to last year, everything has been
going along without a hitch. I can’t
even complain over choosing the second hottest day in July to clean Shed
#2. That one was my own fault…
Our August inservice schedule
this year has us meeting as a building for the first time on Monday, August 24th. Top priority for me that morning is to share
with you our summative student learning data from last year. Without giving too much away, our collective
hard work and focus on instruction paid off big time for our students. Our data shows dramatic increases in student proficiency, especially for
students in our subsidized meal cohort and for students with disabilities. We’re going to celebrate these results because
what we did made a difference. We will use our work last year as the
foundation for the difference we will make for students in the year ahead.
The in-service schedule for
Thursday, August 20 – Tuesday, August 25 is included in this mailing. All
sessions over these four days are required for teachers. Support staff should check the daily schedule
for the sessions you are required to attend.
Details about inservice:
On Thursday, 8/20, Katie
Novak, author of “UDL Now!” will be presenting for both the morning and
afternoon sessions. I’ve been reading
Katie’s book this summer to become familiar with the UDL framework. Simply defined, UDL is a set of principles
for developing a flexible learning environment in the classroom that can
accommodate the individual learning differences for all students. One of the things I appreciate about UDL is
that it is compatible with many other research-based approaches to instruction,
so you don’t have to throw out everything you’ve been doing in order to “do”
UDL.
If you want some background
knowledge about UDL before Katie’s presentation, check out these resources:
· UDL Q & A for Educators flier in this mailing
On Monday morning I will
spend some time working with you on concepts from Carol Dweck’s research on
“mindset” and how mindset influences motivation and achievement. Please view this short presentation about
growth mindsets and fixed mindsets so you come to the Monday morning session
with a working knowledge of that they are.
The goal is to spend most of our time thinking about how we can make a
difference for students by developing a growth mindset culture at PPS and less
time building our knowledge about the concept of mindset.
(Note: There are links within the presentation that
allow you to dig more deeply into mindsets, but I’m not expecting that you
click on them. If you’re curious and
want more information, then click away!).
Bring a photo of yourself to
inservice on Monday, 8/24. I will be
putting our photos up on the bulletin board at the front of the building so
everyone who visits gets to know us. I
will have 3” circles that you will mount your photo on, so make sure it’s a
photo you’re willing to part with for the year.
Updates from the summer:
The school is looking
beautiful. The library and adjoining
offices have brand new carpet. Several
rooms have been painted, including the main office. There is a new shed for recess equipment and
(hopefully) a new rock climbing wall, glider, suspension bridge, and vine
climber installed on our play structure.
The most stunning change is the hallways. Mike and Steve have been working with Rick,
Robin, Mary Rose, and Karen to completely strip the old yellowed wax from our
floors. We now have sparkling white and
blue tiles that will be ready for waxing this weekend.
We’ve been busy hiring for
support staff positions since mid-July. We are excited to welcome the following
folks to Porters Point School this year:
· Instructional assistants in special education: Julie Brigante, Colleen Charnley, Corrine
Cote, Sara Downes, Gabrielle Gould, and Erin McIntyre
· Autism interventionists: Casey Fredenberg
· SLP aide:
Caitlyn Rathgeb
· Teachers: Kelly
Bourgea (K), Sandy Bochanski (Library), Annie Brady (Special Ed)
We have a small “garage sale”
area this year. If you see something you
want, please make sure to use the inventory transfer form (look for the
clipboard) to record the item number so Central Office can keep track of this equipment. If there is no number, you are welcome to
just take the item to your room. Equipment
that is not claimed will either be stored in the shed or sent to the dump on
Friday, 8/21.
There have been just a few
changes to class lists over the summer.
As of 8/4, our enrollment stands at 82 in Kindergarten, 71 in Grade 1,
and 93 in Grade 2. I’ve placed everyone
who enrolled as of 7/31. Teacher letters are going out on Thursday, 8/6. Class lists and the master schedule will be
posted on SharePoint by the end of the week.
In closing, I hope you take a
few quiet minutes before everything gets “crazy busy” to imagine the difference
we will make for our students this year.
Imagine all of the promise and possibility the next ten months holds for
each child’s academic and personal growth.
Imagine, too, all of the ways we will work together as a professional
learning community to make this promise a reality. This is important, meaningful work that we are
about to undertake together and I cannot think of a better group of people to
be doing it with than all of you. Thank
you in advance for everything you will do to make this year the best year at Porters
Point School.
Have a great August. Make sure to stop by and say hello if you’re
in the building. Otherwise, I’m looking
forward to seeing everyone at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 20st at
CHS!
All the best,
Carolyn
P.S. If you’d like to just click through the links
on this letter, look for a digital copy on my blog on the PPS website.
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