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Wednesday, September 25, 2019

MRVED Update - September 25, 2019

MRVED Business

Upcoming Meetings


September 25, 2019 - Superintendents' Council
September 17, 2019 - Title III Teachers
October 16, 2019 - MRVED Common Inservice (Dawson-Boyd Schools)


October 16, 2019 Information

Registration for the October 16th MRVED Common Inservice was sent out last week to your local superintendents and principals.  You should have received an email from them with the registration link and information regarding the inservice day.  The registration link is below or it can also be found on our website:  www.mrved.net under "Latest News".

MRVED Registration Link 

It will be held in Dawson at the Dawson-Boyd Schools.  Willow Sweeney Flaherty will be the keynote speaker.  The afternoon will be district time focused on Social-Emotional Learning implementation.  Some districts will be staying at the Dawson-Boyd Schools, some will be returning to your home district, as directed by your principal.

Registration needs to be completed by Friday, September 27th at 4:00 p.m.!  An email will be sent out one week prior to the inservice with details outlining the day.  An agenda will also be handed out when you arrive to the inservice, along with your name tag and lunch ticket, if applicable.  We will need to know which DISTRICT and PRINCIPAL you primarily report to.  If you are unsure, please check with a principal.

Trish's Katering will be catering the lunch for the inservice.  The menu will be a chicken breast (mixed with stuffing, carrots, & gravy), baby red potatoes, green beans, mixed greens strawberry salad, bar, and lemonade.  The cost is $10.00 and is to paid to your district.  DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY TO THE MRVED.  The last day to cancel your lunch is Friday, September 27th at 4:00 p.m.  After that date, you will be held responsible for the lunch cost.

The schedule for the day is as followed:

8:00 - 8:35 a.m. - Registration (Agenda, Name Tag, Lunch Ticket)
8:00 - 8:35 a.m. - Coffee, juice, and muffins, compliments of your administrators
8:40 - 11:30 a.m. - SEL Kickoff by Willow Sweeney Flaherty
11:30 - 12:30 p.m. - Lunch by Trish Kruger
12:30 - 2:30 p.m. - District time focused on SEL implementation


New Science Standards Workshop


On November 20th, 2019, Lakeview Schools will be presenting a "New Science Standards Workshop".  It will be facilitated by Jay Meiners and Joan Foley.  The goal for the day is to give science teachers an opportunity to establish plans for how the implementation of the new standards will look in the classrooms and districts.  If you are interested in attending, please email Courtney Frie, Curriculum Director, at courtneyfrie@lakeview2167.com by October 1st.  

The link to the flyer is below:


MELT 2020 Call for Presentations

The MRVED Educators Learning Together (MELT) conference will be held at Lac qui Parle Valley High School on January 20, 2020.  To help make this conference the best ever, we need your help.  The MRVED is looking for enthusiastic people willing to present on something great happening in your classroom.  This can be anything from Google Drive to differentiation techniques in your classroom.  Show us how you Teach Like a Pirate or incorporate Social Emotional Learning into your classroom!  Technology or no technology proposals are welcome.  Presenters will be paid a small stipend for your work.  You may submit as many presentation proposals as you wish.

**We are actively seeking any Pre-K people that would like to present, as well as Social Emotional Learning topics!**

**By filling out this form you are not committing to presenting, just providing the MRVED with your name and topic.**

Link to Proposal Form


Professional Development

Dave Burgess Consulting Pirate Con

If you enjoyed the Dave Burgess and/or George Couros keynotes from the past couple years, then DBC Pirate Con is for you.  It will be held June 12-14, 2020 in San Diego, California.  The lineup for this conference is AMAZING!  You will have the opportunity to hear from the likes of Dave Burgess, Matt Miller, Adam Welcome, Jimmy Casas, etc...

The best part the conference is only $379!  Looking at the value of speakers at this conference, you are getting a great deal at $379.  You can find out more about the conference by visiting the conference webpage.

Book Study

Lead Like a Pirate - Introduction, Passion, & Immersion

We all heard Dave Burgess speak last year on Teach Like a Pirate.  He talked about the acronym of PIRATE and what that means for teaching.  Using the analogy of a pirate ship, the pirates are the hard working people that run the ship on a day to day basis, but all ships need a captain - a person to steer the ship and make decisions about course and destination.  Lead Like a Pirate is about how our leaders can use the PIRATE principles to steer the ship.  Don't assume this book is only for principals, it's applicable for anyone in a leadership role.

Passion
This week, we are going to talk about the P and I in the PIRATE acronym: Passion and Immersion.  Shelley Burgess starts the Passion chapter with a quote by Simon Sinek, "Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion" (Burgess, 3).  I think this quote is so true!  As educators and leaders, we need to reframe our thinking about what we consider "work".  Dave Burgess asked educators the same three questions, but in different terms:

1. Specific to leadership, what are you most passionate about? (Content Passion)
2. Within the profession of education, but not specific to leadership, what are you passionate about? (Professional Passion)
3. Outside of your profession, what are you passionate about? (Personal Passion)

Immersion
The "I" in PIRATE stands for Immersion.  Immerse yourself in whatever you are doing.  This section talks about how to do that, but more importantly talks about how to free up time in order to fully immerse yourself in whatever it is that you are leading.  Burgess uses another acronym here; LEAD:

Leverage Systems
Elevate the Impact
Activate a Team
Delete, Delete, Delete

Leverage Systems - Find what tasks take up most of your time.  Are there systems that can be improved upon, or new systems that can be created to alleviate the time it takes for the task.

Elevate the Impact - Think about low impact tasks that do take up your time.  Can we make these tasks more impactful?  For example; lunch duty - instead of simple supervision, can you use this time to strengthen relationships with kids?  Deal with misbehavior from earlier in the day?  Elevate it's impact.

Activate a Team - Recognize the tasks that can be accomplished by a team and activate a team.

Delete, Delete, Delete - Sometimes you just have to lighten your load.  What are you doing to yourself to suck precious time away from the impactful tasks?

Next time we will cover the rest of the PIRATE acronym (RATE).

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

MRVED Update - September 11, 2019


MRVED Business


Upcoming Meetings


September 11, 2019 - MRVED Board (6:00 p.m.)
September 11, 2019 - Community Ed Directors
September 13, 2019 - Principals' Council
September 17, 2019 - TAC
September 20, 2019 - Title III Paras
September 25, 2019 - Superintendents' Council
September 27, 2019 - Title III Teachers

Important Dates 2019-20 School Year


October 16, 2019 - Common Inservice Day
January 20, 2020 - MELT Conference at LQPV
April 9, 2020 - Common Inservice Day


October 16, 2019 Common Inservice Day


Registration will be sent out next week!  Please watch your email for the registration link😀

The morning will be a presentation by Willow Sweeney Flaherty on
Social Emotional Learning.  The afternoon will be district time focused on Social Emotional Learning implementation.

Welcome Back

Some of you have been back for a month already, while some of you are into your 2nd week.  Welcome back to the 2019-2020 school year.  Each year brings new excitement as new children fill your classroom.  The MRVED wishes that each of you has your best year ever!




What is the MRVED?

For those of you that are new or for those of you have need a recap.  The Minnesota River Valley Education District (MRVED) is a consortium of nine school districts in Southwest/Western Minnesota.  The districts include Benson, Dawson-Boyd, Lac qui Parle Valley, Lakeview, Minneota, Montevideo, Ortonville, Renville County West, and Yellow Medicine East.  Our goal is to help our member districts achieve their goals.  To do this, the MRVED offers a wide variety of services to their member districts, including, but not limited to; professional development, grant writing, strategic planning, online learning, etc...  If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask.


Summer Recap

The MRVED staff was busy all summer between summer school at the ALC, planning for the upcoming school day, providing a workshop for substitutes, among other regular duties.  One of the highlights of the summer was being able to train 10 people interested in becoming a substitute teacher.  Substitute teachers can be so difficult to find, so in an effort to increase the pool, we decided to start offering these trainings.  The MRVED will continue to offer substitute teacher training a couple times a year.  If you know of someone with a 4-year degree and is currently looking for some part-time work, subbing is perfect for them!

The MRVED also debuted a new website.  It is a work in progress, but things are up and running.  In the near future, there will be directions on how to sign-up for announcements via text message from the MRVED.


MRVED 30th Anniversary

The MRVED celebrated 30 years of existence this past summer.  The core of the organization has stayed the same with collaboration playing a large role in the efforts of the MRVED.  However, faces, goals, initiatives, have all changed over the course of the years and will continue to evolve over the next 30 years.





Lead Like a Pirate

Each year we examine a few books in the update.  Typically a chapter or two is covered every two weeks, so it is very easy to follow along.  Brandon provides his thoughts on the chapter along with a quick synopsis of what was written.  Brandon's writing is by no means a substitute for reading the book.  This Fall, Brandon will be taking a look at the book, Lead Like a Pirate by Shelley Burgess and Beth Houf.  If the title sounds familiar, it should!  Last year, we had the opportunity to hear from Shelley's husband, Dave on his book Teach Like a Pirate.

Even if you are not an administrator, this is a great book for any leader.  You could be your PLC leader, lead negotiator, head baseball coach, etc... This book is going to offer simple bits of advice on how to lead a team of people.  In the next update, we will examine the first two chapters on Passion and Immersion.