Wednesday, February 16, 2022 - MRVED Board Meeting
Wednesday, February 23, 2022 - Superintendents' Council
Friday, March 4, 2022 - Principals' Advisory Council
Resources
Valentine Day Math Resources
Valentine's Day is approaching. If you are a teacher of math and looking for a way to incorporate the big day into your lessons, Sara VanDerWerf provides some excellent ideas from her blog. Sara was a presenter at MELT a couple years ago and is now the Math Specialist for the Minnesota Department of Education. She is full of knowledge and ideas, not to mention an awesome person. If you have any math related questions, need ideas, or are wondering about the new math standards, don't hesitate to shoot her an email. (Sara.VanDerWerf@state.mn.us).
Teaching With the Winter Olympics
The Winter Olympics are in full swing. 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.
The Minnesota Department of Education created a website specifically for MCA testing called Testing 1,2,3. This resource is very rich in all information related to the MCA's. I particularly like the "Assess" tab. It covers everything from how the tests are formulated to offering retired questions. It is really worth the time and effort to dig through this material to give you a better understanding of the MCA process. The Testing 1,2,3 website would be a great tool to bring into any PLC. There are also webinars to go along with most of the pages. Check it out today!
Book Study
Row the Boat - Chapter 4&5
I hope you are following along with the Row the Boat book study. By no means is my interpretation or writing about the chapters a replacement for buying the book and reading it. There are so many tidbits one can take away from reading the PJ Fleck book. If you don't have a copy, go get one today! It's a cheap read, not to mention very quick!
This week we will look at chapters 4 & 5. Chapter 4 talks about the Row The Boat philosophy and chapter 5 talks about the beginning & launching of Row the Boat at Western Michigan.
"Row the Boat" is a never-give-up mantra and an approach to life and work that anyone can adopt and implement. (Fleck, 29). Take note that this is "Row the Boat" not "Paddle the Boat". When you row, your back is to the front of the boat and you can't see what's coming. This represents your future. You don't know what's coming and you have to react to it as it happens. When you row the boat, you are in the present, and the only thing you can control is the oar in your hands. The past is represented by what is behind you. Since you a rowing, you can see your past. Learn from it and move on. Fleck does a much better job of outlining his philosophy in chapter 4, but for sake of conversation, we'll leave it short.
Chapter 5 goes into detail about the first 4 years Coach Fleck instilled Row The Boat at Western Michigan. He talks about the 4 different stages. I won't go into detail on the stages, but simply outline them here. He likens RTB to building a house. The first stage is digging the hole. The second stage is pouring the foundation. Stage 3 is putting up the framing, and the last stage was putting in the windows. Coach Fleck mentions how the first couple years his team barely won any games and how doubt crept into his mind. But he used his own RTB philosophy and kept rowing through the storm. By year 4 his team finish 13-1 and playing on a New Years' Day bowl game
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.
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?
