First Five Week One

We're hoping to pose various challenges to homerooms this year to encourage opportunities for students to get to know one another in ways outside of the typical classroom experience.  The first challenge to our homerooms will be to list their varied strengths to be displayed either inside or outside the homeroom.  Too often students focus solely on their short-comings so taking a few minutes at the start of the school year to think independently about their strengths and then perhaps sharing them collectively can be get them off to a great start.

Additionally, Rachel's Challenge provides us with activities to do with students during the first five minutes of the day to encourage students to think and act with kindness.  They follow a Monday-Friday format with a different type of activity for each day.  We'll be sharing these ideas with you weekly. They are optional for you to use with your advisory homeroom.    Since we do not have homeroom on Wednesdays, you do not have to follow the order and can pick and choose from these ideas.

You can find our activities in Google Drive:  BEHS-Shared/Five Minutes located here: https://docs.google.com/a/bristolk12.org/document/d/1EO_zlnb_K_oq3Vs_J0IF0htgsD4AZ1B367vfDbyzO48/edit?usp=sharing 

Staff Bulletin for September 1-9

Professional Time

This Wednesday (9/7), we will hold our first faculty meeting of the year.  The agenda can be found here (as well as the full year Wednesday calendar).  You will also have 30 minutes of advisory planning time.

Bristol Eastern Events for Staff and Students

Bristol Eastern Varsity Home Events

Please Welcome!

Courtney Decker, Special Education
Michael DiDiminzio, Special Education
Jesse Gumpert, Special Education
Larissa Hogan, School Pychologist
Peter Malsheske, Head Custodian
Zoe Mendel, Science
Robert Metz, School Psychologist

News, Notes, Reminders

Blue and Grey Fridays:  A reminder that we'd like to show our school spirit on Fridays.  Wear your BLUE and GREY!

PearDeck:  We have purchased PearDeck for teachers to use again this year.  For those of you who are already familiar with that Google add-on, you can feel free to begin using it.  For those of you who'd love to learn more, we're arranging a brief training after school in the next couple of weeks.

Computer Lab/Classroom:  As you know, our English Learner population is increasing.  We are so fortunate this year to have a full-time certified EL teacher, Klaudia Sienko.  In addition to co-teaching, she'll be teaching her own EL classes in Room 201, which will impact the lab availability.  At this point, each department has dedicated Chromebooks to help alleviate the need for moving to computer labs.

Headphones:  For the benefit of those who weren't able to attend the PBIS segment Wednesday, more than two-thirds of the faculty decided that students wearing headphones in the hallway did not pose a significant safety risk and therefore, we will not have that rule.

BEEP Videos:  In an effort to engage parents who may not be able to come into the school, we're trying a new approach.  We're creating very short videos about policies, procedures, useful information for parents called BEEP videos (Bristol Eastern Empowering Parents).  They'll be able to select the topics they need to know more about and watch the video at their own convenience.  Like the BEEP of an alarm clock or cell phone, we hope they serve as important reminders of topics to discuss with their teens.  Right now, there are two posted to our BEHS webpage, and we're looking for guest "hosts".  If you have a topic that parents should know about and would like to create one, please email Carly.  If you have suggestions for topics, email me those as well.

Conference Requests:  We cannot approve conference requests to exceed the two allotted days, per an email from OTL.  When submitting conference forms this year, please be sure to attach the dates of conferences you have already attended this school year or plan on attending this school year.  We won't be able to approve until we have that information.

Field Trip Requests:  Requests are already coming in!  I'll remind everyone what Governance agreed to last year in terms of field trips in an upcoming Lancer Lowdown (since this is getting long)!  In the meantime, please remember all approvals will be pending a medical review by our nurses prior to final approval.  Please submit that documentation as soon as possible.

Mum Festival Volunteers:  A parent reached out to me looking for volunteers for the Mum Festival on  September 24 and 25th. They need as many volunteers throughout the festival as are available – for a variety of needs including information booth, directing people to activities, set-up, clean-up, parade monitors, etc. Club advisors and/or faculty can contact Maria Salice directly. Please see me for the phone number.

Digital work orders (sent from Dr. Brisson)

Tech coordinators are the first point of contact. The protocol should be followed moving forward with teachers returning. If they have a technology-related issue, they should contact the buildings tech coordinator, who should be investigating  the issue and move forward with submitting a work order if necessary.  The Tech Center should not receive phone calls from teachers looking for techs or reporting that their computer is not plugged in (Past protocol- custodians unplug- they plug back in ), the SmartBoard does not work, or they can't log in. The Tech Center should be getting immediate needs such as network /phone issues.

Groupwise access (sent from Dr. Brisson)

To compliment the district’s digital direct deposit system, access to Groupwise will be made available for staff who previously did not have access. This includes paraprofessionals, custodians, cafeteria workers, etc. The plan is for them to receive training – which is likely to take up to 15 minutes – before September 30. More details to follow.   

School Improvement Plan

The school improvement plan that we reviewed on Wednesday is available for your viewing in BEHS-Shared/School Improvement. There is more specified data embedded in the plan if you were interested in taking a closer look.