Sunday, October 6, 2013

October 7, 2013


 
Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
                                                          -Norman Vincent Peale


News/Timelines/Due Dates

Things are settling in and the school year is going well.  I don’t know about you but I don’t remember summer!!  Thankfully you get a three day weekend this week!  This job is not easy and I know that the demands keep piling on! This is not a job that can be accomplished in eight hours a day.  It never has been.   For those of you have been here awhile, it is hard to remember how lucky we are to have such a great school and staff and that we have kids who, for the most part, come to school ready to learn.  Take a minute and talk to some of our new teachers who have come from different settings.  Perspective is everything.  In the next few weeks I will be sharing with you the vision of the future of AMMS as outlined by our strategic plan developed with our new governance council and leadership team.  It is a good plan that unfolds over the next three years.  I look forward to sharing it with you at the next grade level meetings.

Club Yearbook News:  About 2 weeks ago club sponsors received a letter from the yearbook staff.  If there are multiple club sponsors, only one would have received this letter.  Please check with your partner to make sure someone received this information.  If you have not returned this letter to Dana Griffin, please do so ASAP.  A HUGE thanks to those early birds who turned it in right away!

The club section is due at the end of November.  We realize some of you do not have many meeting times in the next 2 months.  This section is a huge undertaking for the staff to complete.  Please help them out by completing this information this week.  Thanks!

A Community tab has been added to engage community stakeholders.
PRIDE -– PRIDE – This Friday, October 11th, we will have an advisement class for all grade levels.   Most of the lessons are part 2 and a continuation from last week.   There was confusion about silent reading last Friday though if you read my blog you would have known!  If you are reading this, please feel free to wear jeans on Tuesday, October 8. 

The theme for the lessons this week will be a 2 part series:

·         8th Grade students will be doing a 2nd student choice lessons.   A variety of topics will be offered for 8th grade students.  If you did not stop by the mailroom and pick up multiple lessons last week, then please choose another lesson topic for this week.  The lessons are in the colored folders in the mailroom.  The lessons include topics such as “Top Ten Middle School Issues”, “Honesty”, “Cyberbullying”, “Making Good Choices”, “Self-Advocacy”, and “Teasing and Harrassment”.

·         7th Grade students will be learning about their learning/characteristic styles.  This is part 2 of the lesson.  There is a packet needed for every student to go along with this week’s lesson.  Those will be in your box.  We reuse the copies of the packet each year so please return the packets to your PRIDE committee peers at the conclusion of the lesson.

·         6th Grade students will be learning about the “Ins” and “Outs” of a Community.  This is a continuation of last week’s lesson.  There is no new lesson to pick up. 

TAG - Thursday 10/10 there will be another short TAG test that will involve a lot of students in all 3 grade levels.  Teachers will receive passes in their mailbox on Tuesday to be handed out on Wednesday morning.  Grade levels will also be sent a list of students involved.  Debra will be notified to take care of attendance.  7th graders will test during 2nd period.  6th and 8th graders will test during 5th period.  The test is short, 30 minutes, so students should not miss the whole period.  Your help reminding them will really help the teacher in charge of testing, because it will be difficult for them to track students down.

A Mighty Roar

You may not know but we have a complicated system known as School Dude (can’t make that up) that is used for reserving the building for things such as feeder teams that want to use the gym.  Carolyn Grimaldi has spent many hours perfecting the process and assuring that she is the school dude queen!  Thanks Carolyn.
Eight grade Language Arts is using information from TKES to truly reflect on their unit and make changes that meet the needs of the students.  They invited me to discuss their concerns and share the changes they are making.

Where is Livingston? 

Todd Shelnutt says “It is near daily that my students inadvertently call me by their former sixth grade science teacher’s name.  I don’t take it as an insult, rather an honor since they always apologize and say something like “he was my favorite teacher”.  It is my honor to pass Livingston on to Rob Tyo.  Rob is an enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and creative teacher who brings nothing but life to his earth science class.  Rob has displayed his energy and sense of humor through the halls of AMMS for 8 wonderful years and taught in the California school system for several years more. 

Rob’s success as a teacher goes well beyond flattering his students.  Rob was recently named Master teacher by the state of Georgia due to his adaptation of his classroom instruction to help improve students’ achievement and progress. 

Rob is the quintessential crazy energetic science teacher that we all remember from our own childhood (likely due to the 12 pack of Pepsi he consumes each day).  He even dresses the look in his nutty professor lab coat.  This energy is what catches the attention of his 6th graders and this energy is what allows them to better learn in his classroom.  Congratulations to Rob Tyo for earning Livingston.

Happy Birthday

Gayla Payne               October 11

 

 

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