Calendar+&+Minutes+of+JSD+IST+Meetings

Attached is the schedule for ELL/EL/LL/IST meetings in PDF. It is still subject to changes as we meet and the different specialists revisit this schedule.

JSD-IST are usually on the first Friday morning of each month, with the exception of January 2009. The meeting dates for the 2008-2009 school year are: Oct. 3, Nov. 7, Dec. 5, Jan. 23, Feb. 6, March 6, April 3 and May 1.

Other Useful JSD Calendars:
 * [|JSD Staff Development Calendar] (go to [|JSD Portal] for password)
 * [|JSD Events Calendar]
 * [|JSD 2008-2009 Calendar at a Glance]

Minutes from JSD-IST meetings 2008-2009: **DISTRICT-WIDE IST** **November 7, 2008** -How can the district provide new teachers (year 1 especially) extra time for new learning?
 * Sue Baxter: Fastwrite: How are things going with our beginning teachers?** Why do you stay in this business? An environment where you can be creative and really make a difference Teacher Induction Guide and the IST Manual are now complete. Haifa met with the JSD cabinet – presented these documents, which are still in the draft form but have been revised and approved by the cabinet.  Sue and Brenda will introduce us to the Teacher Induction Guide and will address mentoring today.  Ad Hoc Committees will meet today, develop mission statement for the committee. What is the committee supposed to do? Staff development committee: Rachel Brown is available to do a progress monitoring webinar for our next meeting. Assessment to reveal the success of our interventions and our work with students. Final evaluation takes place at the end of the third year. Need to set baselines in place.  Last June, Cheryl, Haifa, Brenda, Karen, Amy Jo met – split up tasks. Amy Jo and Cheryl set up the Wikki guide to provide us with information on the web.  Brenda and Sue were looking at the district’s expectations for beginning teachers. Sue realized that the district assumes that new teachers know a great deal – that is unstated. The guide is organized in such a way that it presents everything you need to know in your first year, with the assumption that the new teacher will engage in training to improve one’s own professional practice and contributing to developing a learning community.  **First year** revolves around initial orientation. **Second year:** you are still in the learning curve! Working on improving your professional practice **Third year:** involvement in the school and district’s learning communities, continuing to work on our professional practice. Mentors guide new teachers toward tenure. Administrators are the ones who have the power to make the decision; the state ultimately awards the status.  Coursework is embedded in the document. The good news is that no longer are the professional reviews (the videotapes) or the Alaska State Reading course required. Alaska History and Multicultural Education are both required. Not ALL Multicultural classes meet the standards so teachers must check on the EED website. Teachers can check on individual status on the website. In Juneau we can visit DEED face-to-face to check on our records – this is a very good idea. Standards developed and adopted last spring: suggestions for districts to look for in hiring beginning teachers. Level of competence has been toned down. In Alaska you can be hired even if you don’t have a degree. Initial teaching certificate can be awarded if you have a BA or a BS – you must be enrolled in a teacher education program. Great shortage of teachers. JTE: Juneau Teaching Expectations (from the JSD board). Not wrapped around the Juneau evaluation policies because those are currently under revision The document hasn’t been approved yet by the Admin Council – it’s not an evaluation document but rather a “best practice” document. Expecting best practices of ourselves and our colleagues. Professional practices: administrator is expected to evaluate the teachers’ practices throughout their time in the building.  **Questions:** • Initial JSD orientation is quick and full of information. A great deal of pressure on a first-ear teacher in a new position. A one-credit course covering all of this information would be very helpful. Can be extremely overwhelming.  • Could the school district give a professional leave day (with university credit) for the new teachers to meet and go over this document, now that the new teachers have an idea of what their greatest needs are at this time? Provide the teachers with support.  • The document could help with pacing of the orientation.  • Could we provide support to teachers, rather than piling it all on them at once? • MATs tend to be included in some of the day-to-day aspects of school but may not be aware of all of the professional requirements of teachers in the district. • Document provides a framework for organizing support for teachers • Lack of prep time in which to address concerns with classroom teachers

-Hire an enrichment guest teacher who can walk into the classroom and do quick lessons without impacting the teacher’s personal time. “Lesson in a box” such as the art kits might be appropriate so that students’ activities are linked to classroom instruction.

-JEA should negotiate additional release time for new classroom teachers • We need to be able to provide release time for the specialists who are working with new teachers as well. • Need more information about equity audits and JSD framework • The Teacher Induction document provides an opportunity for staff to talk with one another about issues that affect all of us. **COLLABORATIVE ASSESSMENT LOG:** Remember to use this when coaching new classroom teachers **What’s Working** Foundation to build confidenceYou may have to promptRecent, concrete examplesAlways do first **Current focus, concerns, challenges** Classroom ManagementInstructional planningNeeds of one student – prioritize!Mentor language until focusedParaphraseGuide focus to something they can do something about **Teacher’s next steps** SpecificShort termIn teacher’s controlAchievable  **Mentor’s next steps** If you promise something, DELIVER! **CRITICAL ISSUES:**  **Theme:** supporting new teachers and mentoring Brainstorm essential components for effective mentoring – in terms of action. (3 minutes) DISTRICT-WIDE IST MEETING
 * concrete resources
 * flexibility
 * time to be in the classroom and to debrief
 * positive supportive trusting relationships
 * confidentiality
 * experience & skills
 * compassion and willingness
 * appropriate use of log
 * full release district-level mentors, hired – out of the classroom. Meet weekly, give the new teacher support. Non-negotiable. Built into their schedule
 * WHOLE GROUP:**
 * 1) **Time:** new teacher – extra prep
 * 2) Collaboration/reflection
 * 3) Administrative support: How to divide time for all of aour different hats (IST, Lit, SPED)
 * 4) Strong background knowledge
 * 5) Materials/resources
 * 6) Full-time paid mentors (4 or 5) in district who meet weekly with first and second year teachers (including special education teachers). Non-evaluative, scheduled time, connecting new teachers with resource materials and personnel who can assist the new teachers. Focus of IST might look different if we take the mentoring responsibilities out of the IST position. Resource. //Explore funding – perhaps through grants//
 * 7) Stipends/professional leave for meetings
 * 8) More allocated contract time
 * 9) TIG Training: for everyone in all schools to be on the same page. Additional contract time for new teachers
 * 10) Full-time certified technology Integration Teacher at each school to teach both skills and to provide release for mentoring
 * 11) “Invitational” mentoring – application process
 * Ad-Hoc Mission Statement:** Preparation of staff development plan for the rest of the school year. Look at Wikki and the function of the rest of the committees
 * Staff Development Committee purpose:** Bring staff development ideas or recommendations to the JSD IST group related to the JSD IST group or for IST work within the district’s schools. Preparation of staff development plan for the rest of the school year.
 * Staff development projects:** Create a spreadsheet listing training opportunities that have been provided to IST members as well as potential training opportunities AND a list of who has had what. **Haifa:** Try to find that list from spring ’08 of training ideas for “tenure track teachers,” JSD IST members, and anyone back at the schools involved with ISTs
 * October 3, 2008**

Regular district-wide IST meetings: 8:30 – 11:30 Elementary ISTs will be meeting separately from secondary this year because we’re in a different phase of implementation

Together we clarified and revised our weekly time-keeping forms. Added three columns to the original one: assessment, training, and IST Collaboration Meetings. Deleted the “minutes” from the form. Mendenhall River has defined the different column headings and will be sharing those.

Need ad-hoc committees: organization/process, staff development, communication Attitude survey needed from organization/process committee

Communication group: Tom, Sheryl, Lorrie Staff Development: Organization/process

Glacier Valley: Primary and Intermediate grade-level meetings: IST reps attend those on Wednesdays before and after school. IST team meets on every other Friday for 45 minutes. IST members have been assessing already. Specialists are fully embedded in the classrooms through Project Kids. GV IST is interested in getting enrichment teachers to release specialists to meet with IST.

Riverbend: Built the schedule so that, on Friday afternoons at 12:50 there’s an 80-minute meeting for intermediates. Yoga teacher secured through Haifa. Kids assigned to different groups. All hands on deck. 60 minutes for first and second grade teachers to meet. Kids get an enrichment class. Classroom teachers stay after school 20 minutes on Friday to allow a total of 80 minutes.

IST not meeting with every grade every time. Teachers meet in PLCs at that time. Rotating from one grade to the next each week. Teachers are working on backward-designed units when not meeting in IST. What to do in the IST Collaboration meetings? Each group needs something different. Interpreting assessments to decide what students need. Facilitating backwards design. Roles: timekeeper, copy-maker, norm-watcher, parking-lot attendant. Facilitator keeps track of other issues that arise in a meeting.

Backwards-design of units: Sheryl takes the note and posts them on the wikki so that everyone has access to them. They’ve met in this way four times now and it’s working well. It has all been about reading so well, will move to writing and marking the continuum in the near future. Will also move to discussions about progress monitoring. Planning meeting on Wednesdays for 45 minutes. Sheryl is providing a link to all of the classroom teachers. Enrichment model is part of an enrichment team a la Renzulli’s model.

Mendenhall River: Intervention team meetings take place every five weeks. Anyone who provides additional intervention attends. Team looks at data and discusses kids. IST team meets from 7:45-8:30 on Thursday every week. Point person assigned to each grade level. Assisting with unit differentiation in the classroom via IST meeting. Teachers share units with each other. One teacher per week. Starting slow: getting the word out. One teacher, one unit, one grade level. Goal is to support all grade levels. Attempting to provide a true RtI model.

Launching Literacy continues to provide staff development for all classroom teachers, through ongoing training. Pre-committed due to the early-release agreement with the state DEED.

Auke Bay: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: 1-hour meeting: IST team and grade level teachers. Lit leader, principal, ESL teacher, sometimes the Core teacher meet together. Before-school prep time, ½ hour into contact time. . Other specialists are working with kids in order to release the teachers: 9:15 – 9:45. Rotating grade-levels from one week to the next. So far, looking at data, considering who will serve whom. Thinking about preparation for inservice; devising formative assessments in order to provide uniformity. K-1-2 writing assessment prompts. Presenting ideas, not specifically working on one unit to differentiate.

Intervention block time: each grade level has a separate block. That’s their literacy block – consistent so that specialists can come in to provide interventions within the classroom, pull kids out. Guided reading.

Gastineau: Schedule set for primary – all specialists were to be included. Team was meeting every Tuesday and Friday throughout September. Planned for our first meeting to take place on September 23 but didn’t have enough enrichment teachers. Now, with our specialists covering some classes, we have enough enrichment teachers to cover our classes. Instead, began on September 30. Two 35-minute blocks for each class. They’re assigned to their classes. Shift after nine weeks. IST Team meets one Friday per month. Enrichment teacher releases kids to recess.

IST team, librarian, spec ed teacher meeting from 9:30 to 11:00. Team members are all assigned to one or more primary classroom teacher for collaborative work.

RtI and CIM: staff development/ collaboration between specialists and classroom teachers. Access to webinars

Harborview: IST team meeting on Wednesday afternoons for an hour and a half. Talking about the purpose of the team. RtI and interventions, staff development. During the IST meeting time, specialists are together to do coverage. Met with second and third grade teachers to consider reading needs, brainstorm what might be helpful to try. Collecting data. Focusing on K-1 this year: monitoring progress with interventions. Met with K, 1 teachers to consider the data collected. Considering if there’s flexibility within the building to support meetings.

What assessments are we all doing? PALS, etc.

Need to consider development of progress monitoring tools.

Next meeting: November 7, 2008. Rachel Brown will do a one-hour presentation on progress monitoring. She will help us to create formative assessments.

Early release: Need to talk with our colleagues so that it is negotiated into the contract.

DISTRICT IMPROVEMENT PLAN: Kimberly Homme: We are in “corrective action,” level 4 of NCLB. School climate is really key. How to improve in math, language arts, and reading? How did it all start?

School improvement plans are the basis of the district improvement plan. District is in a crunch because the district improvement plan is still in progress. Power School implementation: lag in data. Plan may not focus on the areas of data where it is needed. Involved public, administrators in looking at the plan. Trying to identify how to meet students’ needs and improve student achievement. Action steps are in the district improvement plan. All associated with costs. IST work is a function of the required set-aside for professional development focused on student achievement. 10% of Title I funds to be set aside for staff development. Is there a method of determining student progress throughout the year? Formative assessments? Collaboration? Structures for collaboration are in place, described on wikispaces.

Science achievement? Schools that focus on reading and writing do better in science as well because the kids can read the science portion of the tests.

Laury Scandling is looking at a 5-year plan for staff development, to be informed by the sites. Next year, the district will have identified staff development activities, inservice plan. Curriculum alignment.

Building check-in.

Three driving questions: How is the function of the IST reflected in the District Improvement Plan?

IST library: Data=Driven Dialogue: Collaborative Inquiry: Wellman and Lipton

Sheryl Wittig: IST Wikkispaces: how to edit? Where to put documents? How to add information? How to attach documents?

You have to be a member. To join, follow the Wikki invitation from Sheryl. No need for pre-approval in that way. 38 people are already members.

“Edit this Page:” on the top menu. Put the cursor where you want the document to be. Tree on top menu – click on the tree. Then under “Upload New File,” Select the document you want to upload onto the wikkispaces, push “Upload”, and it takes a little time. If you have a huge document, you might want to post it somewhere else, then just post the link.

There’s an alphabet strip under “Insert a File:” Select the first letter of the document; double-click on the document, then SAVE.

Please be prompt from now on. “Coffee and chat” begins at 8:00 but we need everyone to be at the meeting, ready to go, by 8:30.

Previous Page (Technology Integration) | Next Page (Expected Outcomes)