Here is an overview of the key activities we worked on in relation to teaching and learning this month.
Monday’s: We have been using Mondays for department collaboration work and have found some excellent progress in our various departments as we align our teaching practices, evaluate student work and try to address a myriad of issues including our grading practices. We have a group of teachers who are really trying to change their grading/instructional practices to help students focus more on learning rather than the grade they earn in a class. It is exciting work. One last note on Mondays; we did use about 20 minutes on Monday, November 21st to talk about the election and how it has impacted some of the treatment of our students. The purpose of our discussion was to have some talking points to use with students in advisory as well as asking our staff to have their awareness raised to squelch inappropriate comments or actions from our students.
Other information: The Drama department hosted the play, “Our Town.” It was very well done and our new director, Branden McFarland, along with support from Heather Gordon did an outstanding job. We also conducted SBAC (Smarter Balance) testing for our juniors and seniors who have yet to meet state graduation standards. The testing went reasonably well and I appreciated the help of Mrs. Preston during the testing window. A special shout out to Mrs. Kim Miller who organized the school-wide food drive which supports the Woodland Rotary and Woodland Action Center. This was by far our best year in over the last 10 years. We did hold conferences in the beginning of the month and the attendance again was not very good with a total of only 200 conference/meetings held by all of my teachers. This works out to roughly 4 or 5 conferences per teacher.
All in all it was a good productive month at Woodland High School.