Happy Friday Everyone-- We made it through our first week!

I want to thank everyone for making our first week of school so phenomenal and for being so patient about sharing your rooms before school started with the District Office management. I have found myself thinking about how fortunate I am to be a part of such a great school, and to get to work with so many talented, unique, and generous-hearted individuals. In an attempt to hold on to this feeling and energy, and make it last throughout the year and pervade the school culture, I've created this weekly communication for us to use!

What are the goals of a weekly TGIF? My hope is that it will give us a chance to:

• See connections
• Share openly--celebrations about kids and successes in the classroom
• Be thoughtful--about what is, what could be, how things connect to other things
• Be reflective--as part of the plan-to-do-reflect cycle of continuous learning
• Raise questions--in the spirit of getting better
• Inspire and support each other--keep the good vibe going on

If you would like to voluntarily share a personal story of success in your class, a connection you made with students, or something that you saw one of your colleagues accomplish, please include your perspective in our TGIF blog. I strongly encourage you to use this blog to invite other staff into your classroom to see a specific activity or guest speaker. 

Please refer to the Nuts N Bolts Tab (on top) for protocols about contributing to the blog. Nuts N Bolts is an important section for all staff to view every Friday afternoon (or Monday morning at the latest) so that we all our kept abreast of important procedural elements of our school!

Celebrations for this Week

Peter and Christie~ very nicely run collaboration. Now that I know how to use Kudos, I can put appropriate celebrations and recognitions into our official Echo place-holder!  What a wonderful thing.  Two follow up items that I noted from Collaboration are:

• Make sure we provide instruction and support to our students newly using Kudos so that they understand its value and use it correctly
• Make sure we discuss and have clear progressive discipline systems in place around the Discipline entries in Echo, so that we are consistent and able to change (improve) student behavior with this useful tool

Margaret and Karen~ what a wonderful thing to walk by a table of freshman talking at lunch and to hear them going on and on about how much fun their first class was with you. There is genuine enthusiasm for learning!

Ariel and Lacey~ I loved dropping in on your Spatial Studies class this week and seeing the students talk about their own strengths and what they think they have to offer to group work! Growing strengths, and helping students understand their own strengths, is empowering and arguably it leads to greater success with learning than targeting weaknesses. It was a wonderfully balanced activity, that kept the freshman engaged by also utilizing physical movement (the students shared their strengths and weaknesses by tossing a ball at each other to determine who went next). 

Everywhere I looked this week I saw shining examples of each of you connecting to students and going above and beyond to make New Tech an inspiring place to be. Thank you ALL for your hard work and dedication. I feel privileged to work with such a top-notch staff.