October 16, 2020
Happy Friday! We have made it through another week. I hope you
were able to connect with the parents you needed to during our two nights of
conferences. If a parent didn't show up for conferences or has not shown up for
a PASS Plan meeting, please call and see if you can set up a phone conference
with them and the other teachers. We want to make sure we make every effort we
can to communicate with the families. I know it is frustrating, but some of
these students are at-risk for a reason. Avoidance can be a learned
behavior.
Just a quick note about the election. As employees of the school,
you have the right to support your candidate or political party. However, you
may not promote your party, candidate, or beliefs to the students. As a former
government teacher, I made certain that my students had no clue of my political
affiliations. I would say most of you have no clue what my political
affiliation is. This is the way it should be, it is our job to teach our kids
to research issues and form their own opinions. So please make sure you
stay politically neutral in school.
The first quarter ends on the 21st, grades will be due on Friday
at 8:30 am. After that time, you will need to report any grade changes to
myself or Mr. Formanek so we can change it in the stored grades. Report cards
will be distributed in advisory at the end of the day.
We also have our next extra hour meeting on the 21st. This will be
a grade level meeting. Freshmen teachers will meet in Mrs. Ludwig's room,
Sophomore teachers in Mr. Fitzgerald's room, Junior teachers in Mr. Bahr's
room, and Senior teachers in Mrs. Permeswaran's room. If you have multiple
grade levels you will need to decide which level has the most at-risk students.
Please fill out the spreadsheet Mr. Bahr sent out ahead of time, so the meeting
time can be spent discussing strategies and not behaviors. We want to try and
find strategies that will assist these students. There is a column labeled
quarantined (needs help). Please mark this column if the student needs further assistance
in getting caught up. We will look at this column and see if the success center
would be appropriate to help them get organized and come up with a plan to get
caught up on their work. The spreadsheet can be found the 2020-2021
professional development website. https://sites.google.com/lemarscsd.org/2018-2019-lchs/home
I was asked this week about when grades will be due for the
semester. Right now, day one of semester test is on December 18, day 2 is
December 21, and the make up day is December 22. Grades will be due at 2:30 on
the 22nd. This will allow you to enjoy break and not grading projects.
I am also starting to think about next school year and the
registration process. Usually we register the students mid November and have it
done by December. We are going to push it back a little this year as we have to
make some changes. Normally, we bring the 8th graders up to the high school for
a CTE showcase day. However, I do not want to pack our CTE rooms with 35-40 8th
graders. Because of this, the CTE teachers will be creating a video showcasing
their courses and career pathways. These videos will be shown to the 8th
graders in one of their classes. They will also be posted to the school's
website. We will also need to do our parent registration a little different
this year. Again, we will use videos to get our information out to parents
instead of holding mass parent meetings. I anticipate registration will start
in January. If you have any new courses you want to propose, please get these
to me by December 1. I will need time to look them over and see if we have the
ability to add these in.
On another note regarding new courses, for the 2022-2023 school year
we need to start implementing 1/2 credit or semester class in computer science.
If any of you have an interest in getting the computer science endorsement,
please visit with me. There are grant dollars we can access to pay for the 4
classes needed to gain this endorsement through Northwestern.
If you didn't see the board agenda for Monday night, Mr. Dalton
made it official and will be retiring at the end of the school year. Congrats
to him! I look forward to having him sub next school year!
Have a Great Weekend!
Mark
Assistant Principal's Happenings
I hope everyone had a great week! Next week is the end of Quarter #1, thank you for all you have been doing during this year. When talking to teachers on Wednesday, it sounds like we are getting used to the new normal but it is still very challenging as we have unprecedented events happen daily or weekly. We truly appreciate how you are handling the year and helping our students learn everyday!
Ideas from the library/video class/student council
Student council will be adding freshmen during a vote this coming Monday. If you have freshmen, please encourage them to vote for the 8 students who will be representing their class. IF they do not get the google form via email, have another student email them the link and then have the first student send me a message that they did not receive it. I will look into their account to figure out why. Our welcome meeting then will be next Thursday, October 22 during 8th hour. Mr. Formanek will be sending out the list.
Library: please encourage students to use the databases from Facts on File and Iowa AEA to gather information. The majority of these sources are researched and unbiased vs. what they will find available through a web search.
Video Media: If you are doing something interesting in your class, (like you saw Mrs. Sadoski's engineering students do on today's episode of Bulldog Bites), let us know (preferably a few days prior!) so we can feature the great things going on in your class. Here is the link to BulldogBites #8. It will be live at 8 a.m. BulldogBites#8
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