Summer School Teachers Needed!!!

Are you looking to make some extra cash this summer? If so, then look no further! The School District of Waukesha is now hiring summer school teachers K-12. Summer school runs June 19th-July 14th, with no school on July 3rd and 4th. Competitive pay as compared to our surrounding school districts. If you are interested and would like more information please contact our summer school principals directly all listed below. 

Elementary Summer School Sites & Principal

• Hadfield: Elizabeth Gould egould@waukesha.k12.wi.us
• Hawthorne - Omar Masis omasis@waukesha.k12.wi.us
• Heyer - Mary Garcia-Velez mgarcia-ve@waukesha.k12.wi.us
• Summit View - Garret Sheskey gsheskey@waukesha.k12.wi.us

Secondary Summer School Sites & Principal

• Butler Middle School - Hadassa Robinson yrobinson@waukesha.k12.wi.us
• Waukesha North High School - Christina Ali & Brian Schlei cali@waukesha.k12.wi.us or bschlei@waukesha.k12.wi.us

Literacy Leadership

As we know, there is no more important goal, than making sure all students in the School District of Waukesha are proficient readers! We are excited to be partnering with the CESA 6 Literacy Center on our journey to create and implement strategic plans and decision making designed to build knowledge and systems that bolster the science and balance of early literacy instruction in our schools. This two year partnership will engage us in continuous literacy learning, help us to develop an initial district literacy implementation plan, not just in the early grades but as an entire 4K-12 system.

Waukesha teams will be joining the Early Literacy Academy that they offer as well as their Leading Literacy for Impact to improve literacy instruction and student achievement K-12. One of the academies begins in August so once I have our team membership solidified, I will let you know who that will be and I will make sure to continue to bring you updates along the way. Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly. 

March Madness is here! Enjoy the weekend ahead!

Highs and Lows of Life

Sunday, I said goodbye to my 10 year old yellow lab Miele, who crossed the Rainbow Bridge all too soon. My heart was ripped to pieces and I still don't know how to handle that pain of losing another pet. Those of you that are animal lovers can certainly relate to their unconditional love! I went to my "go to" coping mechanism, the work I am able to do in Waukesha. 

This week was jam packed with so many positive spotlights I truly don't know where to start first. On Tuesday at our Teaching and Learning Board meeting, we highlighted a few things that I want to mention. First, the progress at Hadfield. I know it sometimes feels like it is happening at an inchworm pace, but with the Math pilot in particular we are seeing student achievement data at levels we have never seen before. We are seeing student's excited about being proud writers, all the while our Hedgehog staff continues to bring their patience and excellence to the work that is in front of us and I appreciate all that you are doing!

We also had some of our Music teachers on hand to highlight program enrollment and performance participation. Please check out the landing page of our website to see all the wonderful opportunities we have in the coming months all across our district. Just wonderful!

North was also on hand to highlight some of the ways in which they are securing accountability around our Key Performance Indicator: 80% of students earning a GPA of 2.8 or higher. We know this is a Redefining Ready indicator of not just college success but career and community success as well. North staff are working intentionally and collaboratively to reach their school goals and currently have 73% of their students achieving at this level.

Thursday, as I left West HS with our snow wonderland, I was feeling so thankful to our Math teachers who are in year one and year two of our new Agile Minds Integrated Math curriculum. Staff at West opened their doors to observers not just from Waukesha but from about 10 other districts who came in to observe the teaching and learning happening in these high school math classrooms that is transforming our student’s efficacy and their overall levels of success as mathematicians.

The week started out with the lowest of lows in life and yet I was able to witness so many phenomenal educators this week doing amazing things for our students in the 'Sha. May each day bring you more highs than lows.

Radio Silence

I am going to age myself with this reference right out of the gates, but remember those mixed cassette tapes you made for your first crush as well as your first break up? Well, I feel like this blog could be a mixed tape with maybe my first selection being, Come Back Song by Darius Rucker or maybe Just Give Me a Reason by Pink to read this Connect!

This week I received the gift of feedback and was questioned about why the communication out of Lindholm has seen Better Days by Ant Clemons and Justin Timberlake. I am also encouraged about our new opportunity to move to Blair so that maybe we can retire that noun of Lindholm! 

I am a listener, a servant leader who takes action, and a mixed cassette tape queen, so I commit to getting back to this Leadership and Learning Blog and more importantly to letting each of you out there reading this know that I appreciate all of your hard work on behalf of our students in the Sha!

This week I met with Dr. Piascek to finalize our Teaching and Learning Board agenda for Feb. 7. We are loaded with many agenda items including spotlighting the great work happening in 9-12 with Study Sync, our new ELA curricular resource, our K-12 Music programs, and Hadfield Elementary with their Achievement Gap Reduction progress and their Math Bridges pilot. I also look forward to having our board take action on the last round of Learning Recovery money from the ESSER funding. I am thankful that our board has approved well over the required 20% to spend in this area! I am also looking for them to approve Policy 9130.01 which will help us clarify expectations around complaints concerning educational materials and library materials.

This is mid-year review time for all of us and I have enjoyed meeting with several Principals this week to reflect on their own SLO and PPG processes and school and student impact. I was able to visit Hawthorne, Hadfield and SummitView this week and my school visits are always the BEST part of my week!

Thank you for the feedback around The Sound of Silence. I think Simon Garfunkel summed up the song's meaning in 1966 in referencing the inability of people to communicate with each other. 

Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk to you again......

Winter Institute 2023

The School District of Waukesha strives to provide all professional staff with meaningful, engaging, and purposeful professional development opportunities that align with our district goals and priorities. This year’s Winter Institute is scheduled for Monday, January 16, 2023, and will be hosted at multiple school sites across the district. With the continued onboarding of new curriculum and resources K-12; this year’s Winter Institute will focus on content area/role-specific professional learning, curriculum development, and intentional instructional planning across our system. Therefore, we opted not to use Sched as we’ve done in the past and share the information via our Winter Institute 2023 website. The Winter Institute website is linked here. For more information on your department’s professional development plan for Winter Institute please refer to the Teacher Pathway link on the website and select the appropriate pathway that best fits your position. If you have any questions please contact the district administrator, coach or coordinator that oversees your department. Have a great day of learning, growing, and building a better SDW for 2023!

AVMR Opportunities for Spring 2023

Holiday break is just one week away, and I am sure all of you are ready for it! Before you head to break, I just wanted to give you a heads up to AVMR opportunities that will be offered in the new year since some of you have been asking.

In the School District of Waukesha, we have been training teachers in Add+VantageMR since 2015. During that time, many teachers have experienced the value of learning more about numeracy development in students and how to better facilitate learning. This year we will be offering AVMR Course 1, AVMR Course 2 and AVMR Fractions. Each of these courses may be taken for no credits and a stipend of $350.00, taken for 1 credit and $175 stipend, or for 2 credits and no stipend. These credits do count toward the new teacher credits that are required in your first few years in SDW.

All AVMR courses will be held from 4:15 - 6:45pm.  Please note that in AVMR Course 1 and Course 2, one semester will be face-to-face and one semester will be virtual.  The virtual set up for all of the AVMR classes is both synchronous and asynchronous. AVMR fractions will be a combination - some of the meetings will be virtual and others face-to-face, but the timing will be determined with the participants. 

Please sign up now to indicate your interest on the Google Form. Some of you signed up for the courses at the beginning of the year, but if you do not remember, feel free to sign up again so that we include you!

Below you will also find a list of proposed TDPs centered around AVMR for the 2022-2023 school year.

AVMR Trainings:

AVMR Course 1 involves teachers learning about Add+VantageMR assessments and focusing on a continuum of learning in relation to the Learning Framework in Number.  Teachers learn to use a series of three assessments to develop a profile of number knowledge for children: number words and numerals, structuring, and addition and subtraction.  The profile then assists teachers in making informed instructional decisions to advance students' knowledge and skills.

	Spring - 4:15 - 6:45 AVMR Course 1 (Virtual)
	Wednesday, February 1st
	Wednesday, February 8th
	Wednesday, February 15th
	Wednesday, February 22nd
	Wednesday, March 1st
	Wednesday, March 8th
	Wednesday, March 15th
	Wednesday, March 22nd

AMVR Course 2 is a continuation of the numeracy continuum of learning in regards to the Learning Framework in Number.  You will learn about place value and multiplication/division assessments that can be administered to your neediest students to know exactly where they are in their numeracy development so you can make instructional decisions that will help to move the students along in their learning. To sign up for this course, you need to have completed AVMR Course 1.

 

	Spring 4:15 - 6:45 AVMR Course 2 (In Person)
	Thursday, February 2nd
	Thursday, February 9th
	Wednesday, February 15th
	Thursday, February 23rd
	Thursday, March 2nd
	Thursday, March 9th
	Thursday, March 16th
	Thursday, March 23rd

 

AVMR Fractions Course 

Developing Fractions Knowledge by Amy Hackenberg, Anderson Norton, and Robert Wright serves as the course text and provides a detailed and comprehensive guide to classroom and intervention teaching of fractions. This course combines online learning with team meetings. The teaching approach for this course relies heavily on working with students and then observing and documenting students' mathematical activity and thinking. Instructional sequences take into account detailed information about students' current levels of knowledge, as well as how students reorganize their ways of working with whole numbers in order to meaningfully work with fractions. Anyone can sign up for the Fractions course - it is recommended that you have completed AVMR Course 1 and 2 before signing up for this course, but not required.

	Spring - 4:15 - 6:45 AVMR Fractions Some dates will be in person and others will be virtual
	Thursday, January 19th
	Thursday, January 26th
	Thursday, February 2nd
	Thursday, February 9th
	Thursday, February 16th
	Thursday, February 23rd
	Thursday, March 9th
	Thursday, March 23rd
	Wednesday, April 5th
	Thursday, April 13th

TDP AVMR Courses:

The following TDP course will be offered that connects to AVMR, if there is enough interest.  You can show your interest in the Google Form below, and then you will need to sign up for the TDP course when Sara Orcholski sends out the monthly courses.

If you are interested in participating in any of these learning opportunities, please fill out

this Google Form and indicate your choices now.  

Immersion Week in Elementary Writer's Workshop

Unit 3 begins next week! Students in K-5 will be writing all types of narrative texts, like:

• personal narrative
• realistic fiction
• fan fiction
• memoir

The first week lays the groundwork for the entire unit. Get excited for immersion week!

 Did you miss the last writing post on Goals and Strategies? Check it out here!

Happy writing! ❤️ ✏️