TO-KNOW

1. It is a busy week ahead, with at least a little something happening each day!
   1. Monday, 12/19 is the Board Development Session during which Board members will discuss future plans for the language immersion pilot. It begins at 4:30 in RRMS’s auditorium. I will be there. Your attendance is 100% optional.
   2. Tuesday, 12/20 is the spelling bee. 4th and 5th grade students will watch the event and should be seated on the gym floor by 9:00.
   3. Wednesday, 12/21 at 2pm is the in-school performance for the Winter Concert, featuring band, strings, and Encore. Please have students seated in the gym by 2:00.
   4. Thursday, 12/22 we will have our Sparky Board end-of-quarter celebration. It will be a hot chocolate party in the faculty lounge, beginning immediately after the announcements. This document has the list of students who will be invited to attend. Please let me know by Wednesday morning if you see a name of a student who you feel should not participate. 
   5. Thursday, 12/22 is also our Caring and Sharing Celebration Assembly and classroom holiday parties. Please see below for details:
      1. OHHS Varsity Singers will again be joining us for our Caring and Sharing Assembly. Please plan to have students seated in the gym at 1:00. 
      2. Classroom parties will begin immediately following the assembly (from about 1:45 – 2:55). Room parents will be in your classrooms during the assembly to set up for the parties.
2. Teachers return from break (with me!) on Monday, January 2. I will have schedule for where to report by the morning of Thursday, 12/22. All other staff returns on Tuesday, January 3.
3. Teachers: Do you have an itch to travel this summer? Or have a unique experience related to your work with students? Fund for Teachers is currently accepting applications for the summer of 2017. Applications are due by January 31. Let me know if you have an idea or want help with the application!
   1. Fund for Teachers offer grants of up to $5,000 for educators to “pursue self-designed professional learning experiences.” Grants can be used for a wide range of projects. Last summer, our team went to Teachers College through a Fund for Teachers grant. Teachers have also received grants for far more individualized pursuits (for example, traveling to the British Isles’ to see how its geography inspired Byron, Polidori and Stoker’s development of vampire legends!).

TO-DO

1. Please mark your calendar! We will have our January faculty meeting after school on Tuesday, 1/3. I will be sharing more details about our Read-a-Thon at that point. (For planning purposes, though, some initial information is below.)
   1. We will have a Read-a-Thon fundraiser for our student account (including Accelerated Reader) from Tuesday, January 17 – Monday, January 30. We are using the Read-a-Thon company to organize it. There are two main things you will need to do: (1) Hand out information on specific days and (2) plan for and implement reading sessions (of a length of your choosing) on the ten school days between January 17 and January 30.  I will share more details at our January 3 faculty meeting; if you have immediate questions, though, just let me know!

TO-READ

Globally Ready – Or Not?

This month’s issue of Educational Leadership is focused on the topic of “The Global-Ready Student.” This article, written by the president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, focuses on what is required to prepare our students for an increasingly global workplace. I think that this adds another dimension to recent conversations about language immersion. It outlines the multiple skills (such as understanding varied perspectives, being curious, and being able to engage in respectful dialogue) that we ought to be providing all students in order for them to be globally competent.