Stay the Course

Thank you for your participation in Monday's faculty meeting.  I appreciate your participation and the intentional way you bring your attention to the learning.  I know that some (or much) of The Art and Science of Teaching may be familiar and may be a part of your teaching practice already.  Still, I think it is valuable to review, particularly since the coming new evaluation instrument is likely to be explicitly connected to the text and to the information in these presentations.
As I said at the beginning of the meeting on Monday, I believe that we are having a very successful year.  One of the many reasons is that, as a faculty, we are responding diligently to what is new, different, and challenging.  This is hard work. Sometimes, what is new, different, and challenging can become frustrating and rather daunting.  At these times, I ask that you stay the course, that you believe in the value of your work, that you seek help and support if you need it, and that you trust the process of learning by doing.
Keeping Our School Safe: Being Proactive
I also mentioned on Monday that I would be publishing a way for us to gather information on students who demonstrate bully, victim, ally, and/or bystander behaviors.  This is so that we can be proactive and gather information we may not have known otherwise. This is in response to legislation that school staff members can be named personally if they "knew or should have known" of bullying behaviors and did not report them.
When you are ready click, on the link below to share your observations.  I have characteristics of bully, vicitm, ally, and bystander behaviors listed.  Listing a student's name prompts a follow up that is, most likely, non-punitive; rather it gives counselors and principals an opportunity to follow up, to teach, and to support so that our school can remain safe. Also, listing a student's name does not imply judgment or labeling as you are listing based on behaviors you have observed.
Although I ask for your name, it will remain anonymous to students and parents.  Each of you must respond by Friday (so please do not respond as teams or departments).  If you have not observed any of the behaviors or anything like the behaviors listed, enter your name and click submit.  If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.
Click here to access the Google form.
Other Notes

• October's Thinking Strategy is posted on the Quick PD blog.
• We have a department chair meeting on Monday after school.
• Tuesday, I will be out of the building to work with our district TLA.

September 24, 2012

I hope you were able to enjoy the beautiful weekend.  It's already second term! Have an excellent week.
Faculty Meeting
We will meet in the cafeteria after school for our monthly Art and Science of Teaching faculty meeting.  I apologize for not getting the PowerPoint to you any earlier; I will remedy this for next time.

• Click here to review the PowerPoint.
• Click here for the handout. We will use this during the faculty meeting, so you may either download, print and bring this to the meeting or you may download and make use of it on your own device.

You may always consult the schedule of meeting topics published in the brief case to know where we are in The Art and Science of Teaching.

Parent Conferences
I published the link for parent conferences on Friday.  Our consistently high conferences numbers are a point of pride of Hixson Middle School.  Please remember, that during conference "season", conversations by phone, comprehensive updates via e-mail, team and other meetings meet the standard for having held a parent conference.  Click here for the link to the conference scheduler.

Thinking Strategy for October
All students can benefit from asking questins before, during, and after their reading.  Questions help clarify ambiguity and deepen understanding.  Although the update in the Quick PD section is mainly focused on instruction for Discovery, all students can benefit from asking quality questions in any subject area.  Please take some time to read this update and consider how you will implement this in your teaching.

Out of the Building
It is always difficult to be out of the building, and although I will be out of the building on Wednesday (for Yom Kippur) and Thursday most of the day (for professional development), I do not have the same number of out-of-building commitments this year as I did last year.
Other Dates
Join the Hixson Middle School Community on

• Friday, September 28, Hixson Middle School band students will play at half time during the football game against Parkway West, and
• Friday, September 28, the same date as above, is Hixson Middle School Family Night at the Webster Groves Dairy Queen

. . . so have dinner, grab dessert, and stop by the football game to cheer on current students (in the band) and past students (on the field)!

Discovery Projects

Happy Monday!

I read a blog post last week of a teacher I follow and it made me think of our Discovery Projects.  This middle school teacher is dedicating one class period a week to what we have built in to our schedule every other day.  Click the link here to read his post.  Also check out his link on "Innovation Day".  I like his model and from his perspective it seems to work.  

Patrick Dempsey

8th Grade Science

Hixson Middle School

"You probably want to do something interesting, let me get out of the way."
-Daniel Pink
Phone: 314.963.6450
Class Website
Twitter: @midschoolsci

September 17, 2012

On Thursday and Friday I had time to visit each classroom and stay longer than my usual walk through time.  This was a luxury.  Being able to spend 3-7 minutes in each classroom was a rewarding experience.  It was a great reminder of how excellent we are as a staff.  Thank you for all of the interesting and strategic ways you are teaching our students.
Collegial Learning Walks
If you are ever interested in visiting the classrooms of your peers, I encourage you to participate in a collegial learning walk with me.  This week, four teachers and I visited three classrooms and debriefed each short visit.  We were all impressed by and were able to learn from what we observed in each classroom.  Collegial Learning Walks are about positive observations only.  If you would like to read more about these, click here.
Edline.net
From now on, you will be able to access my Principal's Update from the calendar on edline.net.  You will be able to do this from the staff calendar on the Hixson Network Beta site and on the combined calendar as well.  Both are available from the My Edline button in edline.net.
I will keep the School Center Hixson Network up and running until the end of the school year.  Both the Hixson Network and the Hixson Network Beta feature the dock at the top of the page.  In addition, once you click into the Principal's Update link from the calendar, you can navigate to the other Network blogs: Learning Designs and Quick PD.  Unfortunately, the Hixson Network Beta site is still glitchy and inconsistent, but we are working to stabilize the feeds.
Conferences
Conference sign up will be online again this year.  I will send the link to parents on 9/21.  In the meantime, team teachers are scheduling meeting with parents with whom they have not met or with parents with whom they (may) need to meet again.  We are doing this so that parents have more equitable access to our limited conference times.
Out of the Building
Next week, the assistants and I will be out of the building for several reasons:

• Monday: Dr. Heisserer, all day, for Rosh Hashana
• Tuesday: Dr. Roberts, all day, for restraint training; Drs. Miller and Heisserer, afternoon, for restraint training
• Wednesday: Dr. Roberts, all day, for restraint training; Dr. Heisserer, afternoon, for work with a district committee
• Thursday: Dr. Heisserer, morning, for a administrators meeting

DQ
Friday, 9/28, is Hixson Night at the Webster Dairy Queen.  This is a small fundraiser that this DQ is excited to host for us.  Please consider taking some time to enjoy DQ . . . that's not associated with Marzano!

Have an excellent week!

Learning Goals

Good afternoon,
Today, I visited 46 learning spaces and ready 72 posted learning goals.  Several teachers have begun posting 1-3 learning goals.  The pie graphs below summarize what I learned from my walk. Click here to see the proficiency scale for learning goals.  These data only account for how the goal is written and posted, not for whether or not I observed the teacher connecting activities and assignments to the goal (although I did in some cases).  If you are ever interested in where a goal you are using might fall on the scale, send it to me or invite me into your classroom and we can discuss it. 
Sincerely,
Jason Heisserer, Ed.D.
Principal, Hixson Middle School
314.963.6450
schools.webster.k12.mo.us/hixson
hixsonprincipal.wordpress.com

See the full gallery on Posterous

Adaptations and Modificatoins PowerPoint and List of Output Possibilities

Pat Vanderiet shared her powerpoint and a list of output possibilities.  She is available to meet with teams/departments to help plan for accommodations for an individual student.

Access to Curriculum & Academic Progress.pptx Download this file

Output Possibilities.docx Download this file

Social Studies Interventions

Thank you, Mrs. Pettid.
Here is a link to some of the Social Studies interventions I collected this summer.  They can be used for any non-fiction reading.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XKlpKyWXDS08ky4W9-413sIFYa9tnMfyHLyh3X91S4Q/edit

Mrs. Lisa L. Pettid
Hixson Middle School
Dynamic Social Studies
pettid.lisa@wgmail.org
314-918-4602

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you." ~ Oscar Wilde

September 10, 2012

Monday's faculty meeting will focus on adapations for all students.  This meeting is in response to several requests I have received from the faculty for support in this area.  This is the first faculty meeting in a series designed to increase our instructional repertoire with a variety of students.  It will support deparmental work on units as well as we think about ways of differentiating for our students. Click any of the following documents for more information:

• Accommodations, Interventions, and Modifications (A document I have shared in the past with some slight revisions)
• DESE's Definition of Accommodations and Modifcations
• Adaptations

Sharing Student Computers
In order to allow for more student access to computers in the building, I am asking that core and elective teachers share devices.  This will require some advance planning for scheduling and moving equipment.  Please work together on this.  click here to see with whom you have been paired. The pairings are complementary so that electives can borrow when team teachers are not teaching core classes.
The Hixson Network Goes Edline! (on 9/17)
All faculty will be using the edline.net calendar by Monday, 9/17.  This includes me as well, so beginning on 9/17 will be moving to a Hixson Network Beta (because it's still in development) site.  You will access this site from your edline.net account.  Log in, go to My Edline, and click Hixson Network Beta.  When you do this on 9/17, you will notice the following:

• The dock at the top of the screen should be familiar,
• My principal update will appear on each Monday as "Principal Update",
  • Go to either the staff or the combined calendar,
  • Click on Principal Update each Monday morning,
  • I will still send an e-mail reminder,
• The Learning Designs and Quick PD blogs will still be accessible from the site,
• Jason is working on including the Tech feed and another feed as well.

On another note, the Hixson Middle School Main Page will get a new look when the district-required template is implemented for that site.
District Committee Invitation
Dr. Simpson has asked that I extend an invitation to our staff to serve one either or both of the following committees:

• Acheivement Gap (meets 4/5 teams a year at 5:30pm)
• Curriculum Coordinating Council meets 4 times a year at 5:30pm).

Let me know if you are interested.

Discovery Project--Narrowing the topic

Hi all--

I've talked to a number of teachers who had said that narrowing the topic for a research project can be difficult for many students. It's been lots of years since I taught English, but I certainly remember that to be true then.

This is a link to a pdf which address this task pretty well, I think. It's provides a good example of narrowing a topic. Even if you don't run these off, it would be pretty easy to illustrate on the board.

http://rpc.elm4you.org//guide/docs/step1/narrowing_a_topic.pdf

The  pdf comes from the list of resources that is in the link Patrick sent last week.  Other good stuff is there, also, to use as needed.

http://rpc.elm4you.org/guide/support_materials.php

I'm teaching students in English classes this week and next how to access the new library catalog throught the new library website, so I hope that will help, also. We'll need to stress that even if the library doesn't have a book completely on Siamese cats, we do have books on cat breeds, so a chapter or even pages in that book could be used as a resource. We're doing research projects, not just book reports.

Thanks for the positive reaction I've heard from so many of you. Any feedback is appreciated!

JoAnne

JoAnne Williams

Hixson Middle School LMS

williams.joanne@wgmail.org

314-918-4568  ext. 14918

September 4, 2012

Thank you, all, for your contributions to Open House.  Parents had many positive things to say about teams, about teachers, about the format, about their student's excitement . . . some parents said they had "so much fun" walking the building.  Many shared how impressed they are with you, our faculty.  All totaly, I have received 15 e-mails, all positive.  Our parents believe in your dedication and passion.  Thank you for sharing this.  If you have feedbak or suggestions on Open House, click here.
Based on the feedback I have received from our PD day, it seems that all of us will be ready by 9/17 to be using the calendar function in edline.net.  Wherever you are posting your homework, just make sure there's a link on the edline.net calendar to that place. I will do my best to provide more time for development on our new web software.
September is here, and I am looking forward to students benefitting from regular reading time in Discovery and the other benefits support for implementing Discovery expectations bring.
A few more notes follow:
Learning Goals
I have updated Learning Designs with a proficiency scale for this year's expectations for posting learning goals.  Hopefully, this will be helpful to our learning.  I am always available for questions and feedback.
Your Input
This summer a small group of teachers met to discuss to discuss how we might better implement RtI (response to intervention) and a Care Team in the building.  Having shared data and expectations with the team, we need to discuss next steps for the building. If you are interested in continuing to be a part of these discussions or becoming a part of these discussions, please let me know by clicking here. You may use the same link if you have any comments or questions. I will schedule a meeting in September.
The above builds expectation and process for students academically, we can also apply this process in somewhat adjusted ways to behaviors. Due to some changes in district expectations, we are able to do our PBIS work somewhat differently.  Therefore, I am also interested in how some of the data aspects of PBIS might become a part of this RtI work and discussion.
Upcoming Dates: Don't forget you can always view upcoming Faculty Meetings and Release Dates and Topics by bookmarking this link.

• PDPs and Required Staff Training Tracker Due:  Monday, 9/10
• Faculty Meeting: 9/10
• AST-Focused Faculty Meeting: 9/24