Staff Bulletin for the Week of August 30

Professional Time 

This Wednesday is a 100 minute data team meeting.  Many of you accomplished great work on your unit plans and assessments last Wednesday. Since one of our school goals this year will be to complete a the "formative assessment/mini-tasks" for one of your instructional units, we thought we'd start the year sharing a number of ways to formatively assess students.  Please get back to me asap if you'd like to present a strategy that you've used. Here is a list of 60 ways to assess students in a non-threatening way. If you've used any one of these, we'd like you to share with our faculty.  http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/60-non-threatening-formative-assessment-techniques/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem&utm_content=554cef5b04d30107bd000002&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter    Email me so that we can plan for you!  Note that Art, PE, and Music will meet Citywide.  CATE should check with their department supervisor.

Bristol Eastern Student and Faculty activities

  

Bristol Eastern Athletics 

News and Announcements

Homerooms:  Students seem happy to be going to the same place each morning.  Some reminders:  You do need to take attendance for homeroom.  Thank you for being patient with us as we try to find the best time for the pledge during that homeroom block.

Block 1 Attendance:   Please, please, please remember to take Block 1 attendance at the end of first block. This attendance is what triggers phone calls home to families.  If you do not submit your attendance correctly, calls are automatically sent home to AUV students that will give families the idea that we do not know where their children are when they are really in our building.  Our administrative team handles these calls, and it does not paint a positive picture of our school.  Let's be sure that we're accurate with first block attendance.

Blue and Grey Fridays!  We will continue with blue and grey Fridays.  Please remember that these are days to show our school spirit.  Since they are not officially dress down days, we must dress professionally but we can wear our Bristol Eastern colors (no sweatpants or 70's track suits please)!

School Goal Presentation:  If you wanted access to our school goal presentation, particularly the link to the TED video about the "golden circle", you can access it here:
https://docs.google.com/a/bristolk12.org/presentation/d/18BBwhu8dWfaDAWe-MHUL3ncbPB3poQ107pgMdB2zW04/edit?usp=sharing 

Unit Planning Improvement Targets:  https://docs.google.com/a/bristolk12.org/document/d/1YFx_zNyWEvyTxKG_QdCZEvVisGKp-1sDgskTekDDIVE/edit?usp=sharing

Instructional Improvement Targets:  https://docs.google.com/a/bristolk12.org/document/d/1E4UexjcMXUFBpGuR0HJAGbsYp_1x9AemNw7CHLQKGIQ/edit?usp=sharing

To Do . . .

One word:  If you  hadn't had the opportunity to share your "one word" for the year yet, please do so!  It is quite the list of powerful mantras!  You can go here to add your word:   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xg9_5ZAWfuB4kJpSHu61_F35HbGY1ycYoX3HywiCLhE/edit 

Note that in your student planners, on page 121, there is a character trait in focus ("one word") each month, in case you wanted to use that as a guiding activity with your students.

Feedback:  Now that the first week has gone by, please share your feedback regarding our professional development sessions on Tuesday, August 25th.  Survey available here:  https://docs.google.com/a/bristolk12.org/forms/d/1lgb7e9J6HIdMmOcyIZ9raL2znMvP5HbiEdtB6p-4LMA/viewform 

Accommodations folders:  We're trying a new process this year to help all of you have all accommodation and educational plans right at the start of the year.    Folders with IEPs, IAPs and SRBI plans are by teacher in our admin conference rooms.  There are also sign off sheets that you'll need to sign for each student for the IEPs.  It could take some time to find all of your students in the binders, so if you can't sign them right away, please still pick up your folder, and come on down by next Friday to complete the sign offs.  In no way should this discourage conversations with students' case managers; please, if you have any questions, our special education teachers want to talk with you.  Also, since some schedules may have changed, it is possible that you have students' plans in your folder that no longer belong to you.  If that is the case, please return those pages to the students' case manager (listed at the top)--we want to be sure that the correct teacher receives that paperwork.  This is a new process, so we'd appreciate your thoughts about how we can continue to improve this communication.


Destiny and textbooks:  Now that all of your textbooks have been checked out to students, please contact Gary Fleming or Janet Kenney to discuss what to do with the books that are remaining and are not checked out to students.  We are going to do attempt to do an inventory of books on shelves throughout the school year, and we can begin with the books you have left in your classrooms.

Staff News

Congratulations to Chris D'Amato.  Chris will be inducted into the Bristol Sports Hall of Fame this fall.  He has worked tirelessly to bring our Bristol Eastern athletes the opportunity to feel the home team spirit here at our school and it is his passion for supporting Bristol student-athletes and MANY other reasons, Chris is being recognized.