Instead of writing a post today, I am including some visual motivation today. Less time to read a post, means more time for you to focus on whatever you need to do this week. I also wanted to share that you should check out the Coach's Corner under the 'More' heading. Maria added info about the Book Room.
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![]() It's hard to believe we have already passed the six week mark for the school year. I have seen teachers working hard to create community within their classrooms. You have been establishing routines, getting to know your students individually and as a group, and helping them to feel a sense of belonging. We are also getting ready to talk about the results of our beginning of year data and make plans for how that data will guide our instruction. Your students needed these first six weeks to get into their groove. Without a focus on students' well-being and without focusing on creating a familiar structure and building community, we would not be able to push them to problem solve or help them to utilize higher order thinking skills. But now that we have established that classroom community, what now? Do we stop focusing on belonging? Do we get rid of the structures we have put in place? Do we stop teaching expectations? Of course the answer is no. While the focus of the first six weeks has been about connecting and establishing a classroom culture of community, that work never goes away. It may not be as prominent, but it's always there. We know that academic achievement happens not just because we plan and implement lessons in math, writing, reading, science, social studies. Our students will show growth this year because we do more than just plan and implement lessons. As our work with S3 is showing us, our students will show growth this year because we are focusing on all of the domains, not just academic. And they will show growth because we are going to help each other focus on every student in our class, not just the ones that present as needing the most support. And they will show growth because we are going to help each other think about our kids' strengths and how we can tap into those strengths to help them be successful and find joy, both in and out of school. As I mentioned at the beginning of the year, we are going to have family meetings throughout the year. Memorial implemented this plan last year and teachers shared how beneficial it was to be able to meet with a small group of kids from across the grade levels. It's doing different things like family meetings that will help us continue that first six weeks work throughout the school year. I would like to plan our first family meeting for this Friday at 9:30. I know we have chorus and type to learn scheduled, but I just want us to have our first initial family meeting and then we will look at picking future dates and times once a month that hopefully won't disrupt the schedule too much. I will share with you the groupings that we have already created. Classroom teachers will use their own classrooms to meet and then we have assigned other staff to different spaces to meet. This first family meeting will be a way to meet each other, learn who is in your family, and create a sign that visually represents your family. We will display these so that the kids can see that everyone is in a family. This first meeting will be about 20 minutes. I know the hardest part will be getting everyone to their correct meeting space this first time. Julia has created a list for each classroom where you can see where all of your students are going and who is the head of their family. We will utilize paras and 4th graders to help guide our younger students to their families. I am excited about this new opportunity for all of us to connect with our kids and continue to help all of them feel seen, heard, valued and celebrated. I have received some new picture books, and I am excited to hopefully come into some classrooms to do some read alouds. One book I was gifted as a thank you for helping pilot her lesson. Kathy Renfrew (who is also presenting this week at Memorial Wednesday after school!) gave me the book The Fantastic Bureau of Imagination. Such a creative story about creativity! Another great book I got is called A Smart, Smart School by Sharon Creech. Her other book, A Fine, Fine School used to be one of my all time favorites to read aloud, but this one might just be even better! I was also gifted a beautiful book called Beneath. This book celebrates our similarities and differences and that there is always more under the surface. When we were standing in the lobby of the church after my mom's celebration of life, a man who was unfamiliar to me came up to speak to me. He was crying and he said, "You probably don't know who I am." But as soon as he said that, I knew exactly who he was. I smiled and said, "You're Mike." I gave him the biggest hug, thanked him for coming, and told him how much my mom loved him.
Mike was one of my mom's favorites. And he was probably her biggest project. I think he was actually her most difficult student for many different reasons. He was placed in her Latin class during one of her first years at the private school she taught at. I think Mike's grandparents placed him at the school as a last ditch effort. Mike was in a gang and basically was a student that everyone had given up on. But not my mom. She took him under her wing. She pushed him. She told it to him straight. She set high expectations for him. She connected with him. She loved him. And he in turn loved her. He started showing up to school because my mom let him know she wanted him there. He was the only one allowed to give my mom a nickname, "Mern-dog." He even had a baseball cap made that had her nickname on it. Mike was famous in our house for a long time because we all knew what a tough case he was and how much he meant to my mom. The nickname and the stories related to him stuck long after he was no longer at the school. Fast forward to last week and here was this former "trouble student" standing in front of me crying and telling me how special my mom was to him. He is all grown up, employed, successful, and well, still alive. I wasn't sure if he was going to make it because of the crowd he ran with. There are a lot of names in the guest book from the service that my siblings and I looked over and appreciated them all taking the time to come and celebrate our mom. But Mike's name on that list means the most. He told me that my mom was his favorite person; her love and support was the reason he was standing in front of me today. I am sure you all have had that student. Or maybe you will have that student this year. Or maybe next year. Know that your love and support does make all the difference and can have a lasting impact, long after they leave your classroom. This week's post will be mostly visual. Take a look at the graphics that the district created last year related to data inquiry. Hopefully many parts will sound familiar since we started trying out parts of a data inquiry cycle last year. If you remember, we met every six weeks to notice and investigate, then as teams or individually we set "small goals" related to the data we reviewed. In two weeks, we will begin having our data inquiry cycle meetings by grade level. I look forward to noticing, investigating, planning, acting, and reflecting with you! The first two steps of the data inquiry cycle... Did you know it's Banned Book Week? I really don't understand why people ever think about banning books. Books make us better. Books help us heal. Two books that I just purchased are certainly helping me this week. One is called Ten Beautiful Things and it's about a little girl who lost her mother and has to go live with her grandmother. On the drive to grandma's house, while the little girl is feeling empty and sad, her grandmother has her try to find 10 beautiful things and it helps her with her grief. The other one is called Calling the Wind. In this book a family loses a loved one and they all go through the grieving process in different ways. They find a telephone booth and begin to call the lost loved one to keep talking to her and begin to heal.
Some of you might remember that this time last year I shared with you all about TeachWriteober. I have been writing off and on for many years with a group called Teach Write, a group of educators who know that to be a better teacher of writing, you need to write yourself. During the month of October, we challenge ourselves to write for 31 days in a row. I plan on taking the challenge again. I know some of you did it with me last year. If you are looking for some motivation and an accountability group to help you write, join us! Check out this page to read more about it. You can sign up here and they will send you more information, add you to the accountability tracker, etc. I love the theme this year: Write to play! The idea is that we are encouraged to spend the month playing with our writing. Wouldn't it be great if we could use that same mantra with our students...help them see that they can play with their writing too?! Even if you don't join me for TeachWriteober, I do hope you will continue to think of yourself as writers. Writing, noticing, practicing, editing, scribbling out, thinking, staring at a blank page, jotting down...these are all things we want our students to be doing this year so we should be experiencing the joys and struggles of writing alongside them this year. We will become better teachers and they will become better writers if we do. (I am excited that the Oct. 6 PD afternoon will be focused on writing. Sorry I can't be with you, but I look forward to hearing all about it when I return.) Now stop reading this and start writing! A friend of mine sent me a special picture book that I definitely hope to share with some of your classes. The book is called Beneath and it is a beautiful book that celebrates that there is always more under the surface that we can't see. I am also reading a book that probably wasn't the best timing on my part since it is about a child who loses a parent. But maybe it will be cathartic for me. The book is called The Probability of Everything. I had a chance to participate in a free webinar with the author through Bookelicious and it was interesting to hear her talk about how she wrote the book. I am also hoping to dive into a book I got at the end of last year called Feeling Seen: Reconnecting in a Disconnected World. It's by Dr. Jody Carrington who I have read before and who was a keynote speaker at the Elevate Your Classroom Conference this summer. From Dr. Cohen's post: Elementary teachers all across the district will soon be conducting early literacy universal screening for students in grades K-3, and communicating the results with parents. Although MURSD has been using the same universal screener for years, new regulations from DESE require that, similar to vision screening, each young student participate in this screening to assist in the detection of possible reading difficulties. Universal screening will only be conducted by elementary educators, but it impacts everyone who has or supports early readers. Leah Hagen and Brianna Zalusky presented at the last School Committee meeting and their presentation which includes DESE resources can be accessed here. Last week, Maria and Brianna came to many of your grade level team meetings to talk about the early literacy screenings. Sorry 3rd grade...I wasn't able to get to meet with you on Thursday. But Maria and Brianna can update you. While DESE's new guidelines went into effect this summer, the good news is we were already doing a lot of what the guidelines suggest. We will continue to use DIBELs and will begin those assessments in the next few weeks. Brianna has offered to give some tutorials on administering the DIBELs. While tutors will also be available to administer the DIBELs, it's important for teachers to have an understanding of this screening tool and to know what it is telling you about your readers. Especially because a change that is coming from the guidelines is that every parent will be notified as to the results of their child's early literacy screening. We will be talking more about what those conversations look like with parents and supporting you to have those discussions either during parent conferences or over the phone. A big thank you to Brianna, Maria, and Leah for the work they did this summer organizing resources and planning! They will be our go to people for all things early literacy screening. I have had a hard time focusing on anything at the moment, so I haven't really been able to read. But a good friend shared this quote with me from an author that I love. And reading it has been helping me.
The foundation of a house is the part that is built below the ground and is the load-bearing portion of the structure. The foundation is responsible for three important things: supporting the structure above, keeping out groundwater, and acting as a barrier to water and soil vapor. And we all know what can happen if a house doesn't have a strong foundation. I have always felt like the families we work with help us as educators and serve as part of our foundation. If we want a strong foundation, then we need to make sure we build a strong foundation from the start. We have already begun that work this year. Actually, we started even before school started. Many of you sent out letters to students introducing yourselves. That was the beginning of building that foundation. We had playground events and kindergarten meet and greets. More foundation building for our families. For some of our friends, we even arranged for them to meet you and see the class before school started. For our new families, we hosted a new family welcome. Our 4th grade leaders did a great job of telling them all about Clough! We were able to host a Welcome Back Picnic for our families to attend and simply visit and connect with each other. More foundation building for our families. We started our staff collaboration time with a table discussion about how you had already started or what you were planning to do to connect with the families in your class or on your caseload. I heard people talking about phone calls they had made or surveys they had sent to families. I heard people talking about sending emails to caregivers. Many great ideas were shared. I challenge you to make sure that you make that connection, strengthen that foundation during this first month of school. There will come a time when you might have to make a difficult phone call home. Those calls are so much easier when you have started the year with a strong connection to the family. I want to share the different ways that my own kids' teachers have begun to build a foundation at their school. My son's teacher sent out an email to all of the families introducing herself and then had us fill out a survey. I shared in the survey that for him I like to be able to have a phone conversation to start the year because there is a lot to update the teacher about in regards to him. Before school even started, we had a great phone chat and I felt really good about the start of the year. My daughter's teacher mailed a letter to her and we read it together and she even gave the kids a mini quiz to see what they might already know about her. She didn't have us fill out a survey. After the first week of school, she sent me an a personal email asking how I thought Emerson's start to third grade had been going. She shared some positives from her first week. She also said she was excited to see me in person at the curriculum night that is happening this week. I was impressed with her approach of a short personal email checking in with me about my thoughts on the first week. Two very different approaches, but both made me feel connected to my kids' teachers. Together, we have begun to build a strong foundation for this school year. How will you build your family foundation for this year? Take the time now to make those personal connections with each parent/caregiver on your class list or on. your caseload. I guarantee it will pay off in the long run. I started reading a book that I saw many people recommending on Twitter. It's called The Probability of Everything. The main character is an 11-year-old girl named Kemi who loves statistics and numbers. I just started it so I will let you know how it is once I finish it. I am in two writing courses this semester. One of them is all about writing about family. I am reading a book called Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family. Definitely interesting to think about how family members react to memoirs. I posted my new ID badge and tagged the author of This is a Story and guess what?! He is sending us 10 copies of his book! We could definitely construct some stories about the first week of school! And I felt connected to several people...although having a common positive test result for COVID was not exactly the connection I was looking to start with this year. I have had many interesting first weeks of school, but last week might have been one for the record books! For a split second, as I was gathering my things, putting a mask on and sending an email to all of you, I thought...how is this going to work today? When everyone in the main office was being sent home, preschool parents were starting to arrive for open house, it was the first day for our kindergarteners, and we had dealt with some leaking ceilings and collapsed ceiling tiles the day before...to name just a few things going through my quickly fogging mind. But I knew the Clough Crew would come through! Little did I know that things were just starting to "heat up." I drove home, climbed into the bed in my guest bedroom, and drifted off to sleep knowing that you all had everything under control. Nothing like being woken up to a phone call from your superintendent where the first thing you hear is: "I don't want you to worry but..." I was quarantined with my Barbie Dream Medicine Cabinet, feeling extra helpless and weak. It seemed like there was nothing I could do but watch my phone, waiting for updates. But then something awesome started to happen. I started to get Voxer notifications. The Clough Crew was communicating with each other, working together, making decisions, sharing information, keeping our kids and each other safe. Even though we just started diving into our theme of constructing stories, building connections...you knew that we already had begun building that foundation last year. You shared how important communication was for all of you, and we made sure to start putting things in place so that your ability to communicate, even in a crazy 2nd day of school emergency, was established. Thank you Tara and Evan for stepping in and helping lead the building. Thank you all of you for helping to keep kids calm through the whole situation. Thank you to Maureen, Colleen and Kim for coming over from Central Office to help Clough. I was upset that I couldn't be there for you all, but I was super proud that you used the tools in your tool belts and Nailed It once again. The Clough Crew came through! We certainly have started the year off constructing some memorable stories and building connections! My unexpected "time off" gave me plenty of time to do some reading! In between popping Tylenol, taking naps, and drinking lots of water, I read several books this weekend. One was just published and was written by a friend of mine. She is a teacher I got to know several years ago through some teacher writing groups I was part of. It was pretty cool to watch her be working on this book in some of our sessions and then now have it be published. It's an upper elementary novel told in verse about a main character who is the only Jewish kid in his school and someone does anti-semitic graffiti on the walls of the school. The main character is pretty brave and works with other friends to more The Do More Club to help spread kindness instead of hate. After I finished reading it, I was pleasantly surprised to read my name in the acknowledgments section, Dana thanked many of us that were part of her original teacher writing group. I bet I could get her to do a virtual chat with a class if anyone ends up reading this with their class! I also was approved to get an advanced digital copy of Coyote Lost and Found, the sequel to my favorite book The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. The sequel is just as amazing and heart-wrenching and beautiful as the first book! Unfortunately, we have to wait until February for it to be available. No need to panic...it's still summer! But somehow August arrived so I thought it would be good to give you a quick update. Hopefully you all have been relaxing, enjoying time with friends and family, and soaking up the summer sunny days (when not getting soaked by the ridiculous amount of rain we have had this summer!). I have been trying to mix relaxing/family time (is relaxing family time a thing?!) with professional learning this summer. The week after school got out I took my kids and my niece to Santa's Village which was fun for all. Sadly, we had to put our dog to sleep unexpectedly so the Garden house has been a little sad this summer and we have apparently become "cat people" since now we only have our 3 cats. The kids have been campaigning hard for another dog, but the grownups are holding strong that we need some more time before we replace our beloved Cleo. I drove down to DC in July to present at the NAESP Conference and then flew my family down to VA and picked them up on the drive down to Virginia Beach. We spent a week visiting with my family and got in some beach time, our annual trip to Busch Gardens, and a visit to the Aquarium. It had been 8 years since we were last at the aquarium so we did a picture retake to show how much Emerson has changed! She has clearly changed so much. Me...some added wrinkles and a few more bags under my eyes...ugh. We drove back to MA and then I had a weekend to unpack and repack for the MSAA Conference in Plimoth that was my final responsibility as MSAA President. My dad drove up and came with us to serve as our babysitter. Which meant I was having to follow him around in between conference sessions and remind him that he was here to help with the kids! During one lunch break, I caught him sitting at a table with the whole admin crew from Nantucket...apparently they love him and want to hire him and bring him to the island! :) The MSAA Conference was exhausting, but also was amazing. The highlight for me was that I brought students to introduce the keynote speakers. My own daughter introduced Adam Welcome, our amazing Emmaline introduced Allyson Apsey, and one of my former students who just graduated from high school and spent her school career in the foster care system introduced the Commissioner. All three of these young ladies crushed it! I can't wait to hear about your summer adventures. In fact, I would love for each of you to send me one photo from your summer. Please email me one photo of you with family and/or friends by Aug. 25th.
I want to give a big shout out to our rockstar custodians: John, Steve, Keith, and Jack! They have been sweating it out to get the building looking awesome. Floors are shiny, carpets are cleaned, and they have helped several staff move in, move out, or change locations. We are using all of our spaces this year, and I am working on a storage map so people will know where we have stored different curriculum materials since there will be no "extra classrooms" this year. The custodians wanted me to say a big thank you to those of you who left maps for them to set up your rooms the way you wanted them set up. Also a big shout out to Julia and Tracee who spent the first days of summer merging files and making it so we only need to go to one spot to find student information. No more scavenger hunts to find student records! We have brand new copiers in the building that work just like the old ones, using your employee code. Some people (myself included) have had difficulty with the first use. If that's you, get in touch with tech support or see Julia to help you problem solve. I am sending out a parent update to let families know that next Thursday, Aug. 10 class placements will be available in PowerSchool. Please wait until after that date to send out letters to your students. If you need labels made, envelopes stuffed, and/or stamps applied, Julia is happy to help you! I will share more in an update that I will send out closer to our first day together, but I did want to remind you about some new and exciting things at Clough this year and tell you about some new staff. First, we are excited that the before and after school program will be housed at Clough this year! They will be utilizing the previous Spanish Immersion 1st grade classroom, as well as the cafeteria and gym. We are excited to welcome Lana and Sabrina, along with several other staff that will be supporting this program. Thanks to their suggestion, we are adding a sandbox to the back playground. I am also going to talk with facilities to see if we could add one to the front playground as well. We are adding a district-wide therapeutic program that will be housed at Clough. I am so excited to share that Amy Henderson, previously a special education teacher at Memorial, will be coming to Clough to be the special educator for this new therapeutic program. She will be joined by a full time social worker, Nicole Casasanta. Some of you may remember Nicole as she was a 1:1 para at Clough several years ago. We will have two Spanish Immersion classrooms this year. One will be in kindergarten. Lola Martinez and her para Ana Aguilar will be moving from Memorial to Clough to teach in K. We will also have a 2nd grade SI classroom. We have Nazaret Molina coming from Spain to join the 2nd grade team. Finally, as the unofficial president of the Kyle Sears fan club, no one was more upset than me to learn that Kyle moved and will no longer be with us this year. We have several strong candidates that we will be interviewing next week, and while we know that no one can replace Kyle, I am confident that we will find a strong elementary BCBA for this year. Many of you filled out my "getting to know you" survey last year. If any of your info has changed or you never filled it out, be sure and take a few minutes to complete it. Trust me, this is one survey you definitely want to complete because it could mean surprises for you throughout the year! Thank you to all who shared your t-shirt size with Julia...that's important info for our first day together. Also, I will be adding some helpful sections to the Clough Connector. Let's just say this site will be "under construction." And that might just be a hint about our theme for the year! Now time to return to your regularly scheduled summer break! :)
It's hard to believe that we are in our final full week of the school year! It feels like just yesterday that I was meeting each of you, learning about Clough School, and moving into my new office. It has been an amazing first year together, and I look forward to what the future holds at Clough. Thank you for reflecting on all of our "glows" and "grows" at our last staff collaboration time. I had Julia type them all up and put them on one document for us. (Glows and Grows)
I also wanted to include all of the Reasons to Be Proud of Clough that we listed earlier in the year...
We have a lot to celebrate and a lot to be proud of this year. We continuously worked to improve our teaching practices. We collaborated as teams. We hosted several new events. Besides celebrating, we also have been reflective throughout the year, recognizing that we can always grow and improve. I have been sharing a survey with parents and caregivers asking for their thoughts on what we need to AMPLIFY, what we need to SUNSET, and what we need to CREATE. I would love to hear from all of you your thoughts about what we did that we can improve upon, what we should stop doing, and what new ideas you have. Please take some time to add your thoughts to this survey.
I have also done this type of end of the year survey with students. They have lots of ideas about what they liked and didn't like, and also great new ideas that sometimes we as adults have not thought of. If you end up surveying your class using this format or a different format, be sure and share the results with me so I can add it into the mix as I spend time planning for next year over the summer.
I just started listening to a new book, What We Carry: A Memoir. Probably going to be a tough one for me to listen to because it's about a mother and daughter and their bond and what happens to that bond as the mother is living with Alzheimer's. I also got a new book PD book that I started reading this weekend...Write Here and Now: The Mindful Writing Teacher's Guide to Finding the Zen in Their Pen. Looking forward to reading this book as I work on my own writing and as several of us work on a writing curriculum plan this summer.
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