The Long and Short of the Week

Didn't I say that short weeks are usually painfully long? I feel like this has been two full weeks and am nearly emotionally drained. I want to honor the fantastic contributions and love that Kelly Melton has given us throughout the years. Her service is tomorrow (Saturday) at First Christian Church on 1st Street. As you know, the reception will follow, from 12:15 until 3:00 here at New Tech. Thank you to all who have helped out so extensively, and who have gathered students to help. Thank you for all the supportive, private conversations that you had with our students, alumni, and parents as they were hearing the news. 

I've started meeting with individuals one on one to pick their brains around master schedule ideas. As you know from the decision-making matrix, I determine the master schedule, but it's always very important to me to consider big ideas, especially as they relate to your PLC work and the ideas you have for supporting our students. If you would like to share your insights and ideas about the master schedule, please arrange a time to meet with me as an individual or as a PLC team. We will be creating the Course Request Cards (CRC) next week so that they are ready to roll out to the students. Here's the timeline:

• Week of February 11th~ Lupe will be coordinating dates / times to spend with your classes during that week. We will allow the students to have close to a week to fill out their CRCs, instead of just one night like we did last year. 
• Week of February 19th~ Lupe and Jeanette go into classes and assist with online registration
• Week of February 25th~ Michelle and Jeanette crunch numbers to determine which courses are most needed and begin the tenuous process of drafting two versions of the master schedule (one version based on NVC cooperation, and one version based on limited NVC access).

Follow up from last week's voluntary staff meeting and discussion about the changes to the Friday bell schedule. In a nutshell, the leadership team will take the reflections shared by staff at that meeting and the Saturday working retreat with Jenny, as well as looking at the input from Leadership students. We will select (or modify) one of the five drafts crafted by you to implement for next year. Please remember that this implementation of a different bell schedule is a temporary measure; it will be in place as a temporary one year measure. We will continue with in-depth examinations of our bell schedule / master schedule as a part of our WASC self study~ so that a revamped scheduled rolls out as part of our action plan implementation. 

Start thinking about your most successful projects from this school year. The NTAC team should have more information about this summer's awards / recognition of teacher projects shortly and will send out a network wide email. I strongly encourage you to submit your projects (and will let you know all the details once they share them with me). 

Thanks to those of you who filled out the survey embedded in the January 21st TGIF (about "New Tech Celebrates Success"). We have gotten RSVPs from 80 students and their families, for a total attendance of 250 people. It is going to be quite a fun night. I am genuinely grateful to those of you who volunteered to help out; I'll be notifying you by Monday of what "job" I'm hoping you can help me with! If you'd like to see the list of students who qualified for this recognition, I've uploaded it as a Google Doc called, "NT Celebrates Success 2013 Awardees"

Continue to talk up that CAHSEE with the tenth graders. I'll see many of you at Kelly's service tomorrow. Take care of yourselves, and hug your loved-ones. Have a good weekend! 

Sincerely, Michelle