October 15 Update

Happy Friday!

Another great week of learning, relationships, and happiness! 

In case you forgot...

Keep showing up.  Keep loving, trying, and being there.  And, be there for each other, too.  

I'm blessed to work with such a great team who cares so much for students, families, and each other.  YOU MATTER.  

Unity Day - October 20 (from Val Seath):

Thank you for your support in getting Student Council up and running. We appreciate you!  

For our first Student Council event, McKinley will be participating in Unity Day. 

It is a day to promote a United community against Bullying.

WEAR ORANGE ON WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20th to Unite Against Bullying. 

This website is a fantastic resource for your classroom and also to share with parents if there are issues to work through. It has so many layers, videos, printouts, lessons and for multiple different learning levels to help reach many different forms of bullying. 

https://www.pacer.org/bullying/

You will start to see Student Council posters up and we have students already hard at work to create fliers and possibly a video to share. 

This is a great video to share in your classrooms too. 

https://www.pacer.org/bullying/video/player.asp?video=206

You are encouraged to dig deeper into this topic, use your SEL curriculum, use the website above. Share your stance with families. Provide the website as a resource.  

This is a great place to grow your classroom community. So many of us have stories about bullying, young and old, be a listener and remind our students they are SAFE. 

Also, take this chance to encourage students (especially those who ran for SC, and expressed interest in helping our school, but aren't in it this year) to do things in your classrooms to help include all. You could make orange paper hats, bracelets, a class paper chain, orange photobooth etc. 

Transition Day - October 25:

We have our first "transition day" on October 25.   About 3 years ago, we found that students came back from longer breaks with no stamina and having a hard time transitioning back to school.  In fact, those were the weeks we saw the most office referrals.  Because of this, we created transition days.  These are days that we focus on - 

• Rebuilding relationships
• Regulating students
• Re-establishing routines

We had a team come together to create possible activities for you and your class on this transition day.  Feel free to use these ideas on Monday, October 25.   

Asset-Lens Thinking (Guest Blogger - Sami Nelson):

The Equity and Inclusion Team is studying the book “Start Here Start Now: A Guide to Antibias and Antiracist Work in Your School Community” by Liz Kleinrock. We recently read a section on practicing viewing students, families, and communities through an asset lens. This reminded me of the work we have done with student-first language, but takes it a step further. We have become very good at using student-first language when talking about our students and student groups. However, this section stopped me in my tracks and made me wonder how often this language is still deficit based. The excerpt below details a couple examples of this language. 

(excerpt taken from page 6)

“Looking back at my own journey, I cringe when I think about how I used to proudly share that I taught in a Title-I school. There are so many words used to describe students and schools, like urban and disadvantaged, that carry so much negative weight, yet educators use them to convey defining characteristics of their environments. Think about the language you use when you refer to your students and ask yourself whether you use phrases that focus on what they can do as opposed to what they can’t. For example, the label English Language Learner views the student through a deficit lens because they are not fully fluent in English, while an asset lens may view the student as an emerging bilingual, which celebrates their access to two languages. Education researcher and teacher Gloria Ladson-Billings wrote about the “education debt,” which focuses on inequitable systems, as opposed to the “achievement gap,” which blames students for their perceived lack of success.” 

This really made me think about how I may sometimes subconsciously view our students, even when using student-first language. The Equity & Inclusion Team encourages you all to continue to challenge yourselves and each other by viewing our students, their families, and our communities through an asset lens.

Visitors in the Building:

Starting on Monday, October 18, we will allow visitors for educational reasons. This includes pre-approved volunteers in classrooms, Grandparents for Education, Junior Achievement, or guest speaker (please talk to me before scheduling). This does not include families visiting classrooms or having lunch with children. If you have questions about this, please see Steph or Justin.

Data Requests:

If you get any data requests, please forward this request to Chris Picha (and let me know, too). We are having outside community groups requesting data and information about curriculum, professional development, etc. These requests need to go through Chris Picha. Please let me know if you get one and I can help assist you.

Building Weekly Newsletter:
Click here to access the building weekly newsletter

Have a great weekend!  Make sure you do something that you love!

-Justin