Here is an overview of the key activities we worked on in relation to teaching and learning this month.
Staff development and Mondays: We have now used two of our six district directed days for professional development. We spent good time working on three major topics this fall. We are working on making our department collaboration time more effective, establishing a better system for our advisory time and tying all of that in with the district vision statement. Therefore on Mondays our departments were able established team norms and established SMART goals. I held my first meeting with our department leaders today (Oct. 3rd) to help support our teams in their work. We have really changed our focus this year and will be mirroring the other schools in our district to use our Monday’s almost exclusively for department collaboration work.
Other information: Homecoming week went quite well again. Thanks to Dan and his work with our leadership students to help make it a fun and enjoyable week. Our master schedule is working out ok after a few little tweaks to balance out some classes. We are seeing the large influx of our juniors who signed up and are participating in running start this year. However, we are happy to report we did receive a grant from OSPI that allows us to pay for up to 10 college credits (either through CWU or LCC) for our students who stay on campus and participate in our College in the HS program. I am also pleased to report that Dan and I have been able to spend almost 50% of our working time in classrooms working with staff and students. This is in large part due to support we receive from our secretarial staff in scheduling our meetings and keeping us on track with the paperwork of the office.