Elementary Division Level meeting

Yesterday we held an elementary division meeting. Here's what happened.

1) Review of our ground rules:

-everyone participates

-different opinions are welcome

-limit side conversations

-respect time

-maintain your sense of humor

2) Cheer-leading - I reviewed the many things that we have excelled at recently:

-working closely with students to increase their knowledge, skills, and understandings

-the depth of mid-year progress reports

-the completion of all progress reports on time

-the social/emotional work with students that we have been doing, both in the teachers implementing ideas from Positive Discipline and Responsive Classroom, and also the integration of the Social Rules and social facilitation work that Kate Klaire has been leading

-the increasingly consistent and accurate implementation of the Words Their Way word study program

-managing the Admissions season (tour panels, classroom visits, preparing for Child Visit Day at the K/1 level, etc)

-the implementation of our new approach to all-school assemblies

-working on the items in each person's personal Professional Development plan

3) Check-in - I asked teachers to take some time to reflect on how they are taking care of themselves and each other, by completing a form covering ten actions: take time for yourself, be proactive about your health, keep family time sacred, share the positives, laugh every day (for self-care); be giving, practice empathy, compromise, inquire about others, and consider your impact (for care of others). We then shared ways in which we were being successful with these, and areas to which we want to give more attention.

4) Calendar review:

a) We looked at the draft calendar that the administration has created for the 2012-13 school year (which was done after gathering faculty input via a survey), and discussed aspects and issues with it.

b) We looked at the year-end calendar and issues related to managing the transition for Steve + Kate's camp to move in to our rooms.

5) Teacher-generated items:

a) Mike Sinclaire lead a discussion about progress reports - the pros and cons of our current system, and generative ideas for how we can improve them.

b) Sima Misra had teachers fill out a survey and discuss what would be useful in creating an online archive of math resources (which is one of the goals of her personal PD plan).

c) K/1 teachers lead a conversation about "rough play" on the playground, and how we can incorporate this developmentally appropriate need in a way that creates a safe space for children.

6) Service Learning - Kate Klaire lead a discussion about the work of the Student Council, which is trying to organize a school-wide event for later this spring.

As you can imagine, it was an action-packed 75 minutes!