MRVED Update - January 26, 2022

MRVED Business

MRVED Meetings

Thursday, February 3, 2022 - Teachers' Advisory Council

Friday, February 4, 2022 - Principals' Advisory Council (Postponed)

Friday, February 11, 2022 - Title III Teachers

Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - MRVED Board Meeting

Wednesday, February 23, 2022 - Superintendents' Council

MELT Feedback & Reflection

MELT 2022 is in the books! The weather was great & it was fun to see everyone collaborating together in-person again. A huge shoutout to all our presenters and facilitators for sharing your talents and expertise with us. Without these willing people, MELT simply cannot happen. Once again, LqPV was a gracious and welcoming host. A special thank you to the janitorial staff for getting the parking lot and sidewalks cleaned after a dumping of snow the Friday prior.

Our Teacher Advisory Council(TAC) and Principal Advisory Council(PAC) will be reviewing the feedback from the evaluations and be making recommendations for future common inservice days. Thanks to all that participated. It was a great day of learning!

Resources

Don't Forget About Google Drawings

I was helping a teacher last week brainstorm ideas about activities for an upcoming lesson. We were looking for a type of digital whiteboard. While there are many options out there, we really didn't find one we liked. Then it hit me...Google Drawings! We often times forget about this long lost app from Google. You can do some awesome things with Drawings. Shake Up Learning has a great article on 20 Ways to Use Google Drawings. She has some really neat ideas on how to use Google Drawings in your classroom.

Teaching With the Winter Olympics

The Winter Olympics start next week. This is a great opportunity to bring current events into your classroom. Pretty much all content areas can work the Olympics into their classrooms in some way. The students can really get connected to the Olympics as there is so much variety and it is covered widely on television. Here are some resources for teaching the Olympics.

We Are Teachers

The Teachers' Corner

Home School Olympic Resources

Professional Learning

FETC Conference

The Future of Education Technology Conference (FETC) is currently being held in Orlando, Florida. If you, like me, weren't one of the lucky ones to get out of negative temperatures to enjoy this great conference, you can still follow along on Twitter. Follow the hashtag #FETC for all the great behind the scenes chatter and resource sharing. FETC is a great conference and one of my favorites to follow along with on Twitter. The cool thing about Twitter, is you can scroll back through previous tweets to see everything that was talked about in days prior.

Book Study

Row the Boat

If you haven't purchased the book Row the Boat by P.J. Fleck and Jon Gordon, you still have time. This week we will get through chapter 3. Please know that my analysis and thoughts about the chapters is by no means a replacement for buying the book and reading it. When you read it for yourself, you always can grab a few nuggets for yourself.

Chapter 2 is Jon Gordon talking about how the book is set up, basically a Q & A with P.J. Fleck. His first question for Coach Fleck was how he came up with Row the Boat.

Most times, if you look hard enough, you can see some sort of silver-lining through tragedy and adversity. Row the Boat was built out of the tragic loss of Coach Fleck's first son minutes after birth. Through the grieving process he needed something to help him through the process. He liked water, he like boats, he was an elementary teacher at heart and Row, Row, Row, Your Boat came to mind. Row the Boat.

The interesting part about Row the Boat, was that his first head coaching job was in Western Michigan. Western Michigan is in Kalamazoo, Michigan and their nickname is the Broncos, nothing to do with boats or water. It takes a really big leap of faith to put out a slogan that would need a lot of PR to get people to understand. The line that struck me from this chapter was, "I learned that if you are going to brand and make public something so personal, you had better be confident enough and ready for the critics to attack it and not take it personally" (Fleck, 26).

This quote made me think about projects we are part of in our own lives. Sometimes we get really caught up in our projects, so much so that we fully understand them, but sometimes forget that others are not as invested as you and may criticize what you are doing. 

As a school district, we know what we are doing. We know our mission and vision statement? But does the community? Does the community care? If not, how do we make them care? If you were to stop a member of your community, or even a parent in your district, and asked them what the mission statement is of your school, could they tell you?

MRVED Update - January 17, 2018

MELT

Another year, another MELT!  We hope you enjoyed the day and learned lots.  A big THANK YOU to Lac qui Parle Valley High School for allowing the use of their building.  The whole LQPV staff does an excellent job at hosting and making sure the building is ready for 600+ adults and 100+ sessions.

Be sure to fill out the 2018 MELT Evaluation.  The evaluations are critical to planning future events.  All comments and ratings are compiled and reviewed by the Superintendents, Principals, and Teacher Advisory Council.  Please take a moment to provide your honest feedback about the day.

A special thank you goes to Mary Brown.  Mary has helped plan umpteen MELT's over her career and does a flawless job at it.  Mary puts more time and effort into this day than anyone knows and realizes.  She makes the day go!  With that being said, this was Mary's last MELT!  Mary will be retiring in April of this year.  If you see her, please tell her "Thank You" for all the hard work she has put into making this day a success for so many years.  Thank you Mary - From the MELT Committee :-)

4th Annual New Teacher Support Summit - Minnesota ASCD

Date: Thursday, February 15, 2018
Time: 8:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Location: TIES Conference Center
Who: Principals, Superintendents, Mentors, Instructional Coaches

What:
Join Dr. Tina Boogren, Marzano Research Associate and author of Support Beginning Teachers, for the 4th Annual New Teacher Support Summit.

Give new teachers the time and professional guidance they need to become expert teachers.  Investigate key research and examine the four types of support - physical, emotional, instructional and institutional - that are crucial during a teacher's first year in the classroom.  Explore the unique needs of new teachers of color.  Discover essential strategies for K-12 mentors, coaches and school leaders to develop an effective mentoring program school wide.

Learning Outcomes:

• Gain an understanding of how to establish a solid foundation for mentoring relationships.
• Acquire specific strategies to provide essential physical, emotional, instructional, and institutional support for beginning teachers.
• Frame essential instructional support strategies within a common language of instruction, including how to engage in goal-setting, focused practice, focused feedback, observations, and discussions of teaching in order to immediately and continually improve instructional practice for the beginning teacher.

Register Here

Innovator's Mindset - Strengths-Based Leadership

Chapter 8 in Innovator's Mindset by George Couros is on strength-based leadership.  Although much of the chapter focuses on leadership at the administrative level, there are still many takeaways for teachers.

He starts the chapter off with the example of how we currently deal with a student who struggles in school, in this example math.  The typical response to a student that struggles in math is to give them more math work or recommend an extra math class.  Which often times does not lead to improvements in math, but rather a hatred of math.  Couros uses the "what if's" from the previous chapter.  What if we did school from a strength-based model?  What if we allowed kids to explore their passions and strengths instead of focus on weaknesses?  Couros does not advocate ignoring the weaknesses, but rather claims it can actually encourage students to improve at their weaknesses.

What if we did the same thing with teachers?  What if teachers were allowed to teach in the grade level and content areas they were most passionate and strong at?  Many teachers would say they are teaching in the grade level and content area they are passionate about, but there is probably that one grade level or content area the teacher doesn't particularly like.  Couros asks the question of his staff, "What is your dream job?"  He uses the example of having a 4th grade teacher say they would really love to teach kindergarten, and he had a kindergarten teacher say they would love to teach older kids.  He made the swap and both excelled and loved what they were doing.  Imagine doing that in your school?  Think of the opportunities we could create for kids?

Couros ends the chapter with this quote, "By focusing on strengths first and building from there, as opposed to working from a deficit model that focuses only on where we need improvements, we create an environment where people feel they have a purpose in their classrooms and for the entire school."

Winter Olympics Teaching Resources

The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea start on February 9th.  The Olympics provide many teachable moments from history of the games, counting medals, geography of the host city, geography of countries, history as to why certain countries do better than others, art projects, etc...  The list could go on and on!  The Teachers Corner has provided a great list of resources to help teach the Winter Olympics in your classroom.  Check it out today!

Tech Tip of the Week - Insert Learning

Insert Learning is a newer tool on the edtech block that has the potential to make some big waves in the near future.  Insert Learning allows you to "insert" sticky notes, questions, discussions, highlighting, etc... on any website.  You, the teacher, can then assign that website to your students.  So if you have an online article you want your students to read, but have a few questions to go with it.  Use Insert Learning to add those aspects to the website and assign it to your students.  It really is pretty intuitive.  Give it a try today, you won't be disappointed.

MRVED MEETING SCHEDULE

January 24, 2018         Superintendent's Council
January 26, 2018         Principal's Council
January 29, 2018         Technology Coordinator Networking Meeting

February 2, 2018         Title III Teachers
February 7, 2018         MRVED Board (7 pm)
February 22, 2018       TAC