Tim's Weekly Notes: January 2018

Thursday, January 25

Budget news
Most budget requests are in. I will be reviewing those in the next week to two weeks, and I will meet with each of you individually. I'm fairly confident that I'll be allowed a similar total as our current budget.

Thanks to our wonderful long term substitutes

I would like to thank Todd Wyckoff and Michele Reeves. Todd is stepping in for technology classes and Michele for high school English. I appreciate their great efforts in our time of need.

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Quick Review of Monday to Wednesday special schedule

It appears that the events where students were being graded were the most effective as far as student interest and attendance are concerned. See Fran's report here. Class projects like CAD also had good attendance because the project was required. The best fits were those events where the teacher played a major part in the planning. Maybe that's what we could do in the future: include only those events where people welcome the longer time frames and they're required as a midterm would be.

Thanks for all your efforts in those special workshops, and thanks to those people who helped to fill in some gaps. It was crazy with all the sickness going around.

Thanks again to Nina for planning all of the special locations. That's a big job.

BOCES weekly bulletin from Barry Derfel, Jan. 16

2018 Scholarships for Academic Excellence (SAE)

The Scholarships for Academic Excellence affords financial support to top students graduating in June 2018 from New York State high schools. We anticipate having 2,000 scholarships available valued at $1,500 and 6,000 scholarships available valued at $500.
The Scholarships for Academic Excellence information was forwarded to all registered New York State high schools (over 1,800) in September -http://www.highered.nysed.gov/kiap/scholarships/sae.htm
Unfortunately, every year over 1,000 scholarships go unused due to nominations not being submitted, submitted incorrectly, or submitted past the deadline. This year we want to cut this number in half.
The SAE deadline date is fast approaching – Thursday, February 15, 2018.
Questions may be directed to the Scholarships Unit at (518) 474-3719 or via email at scholar@nysed.gov.

Monthly ASCD Update
We have an ASCD institutional membership. Feel free to check their quality offerings.

New book: Doing Poorly on Purpose

ADK Seasonal Job Openings
I thought a few of you might be interested in seeing this. Maybe good for a few of our older HS kids?

Monday, January 15

Wow, look at that room!

Since room 108 was not needed, we opened up Joe's room divider and made one large room. It made a really big difference.

If you have any room organization ideas, let me know. Great job Joe!
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Transportation requests for testing

Kim is leaving a transportation request form in mailboxes this week.
A copy will also be in the guidance office. The only kids that should be signing up in the Guidance Office are kids who are retaking exams. If an entire class is taking a test, the kids should be signing up with that teacher for transportation.

Weather notes for testing: It looks like another warm spell is coming next week. Not great for my cross country skiing habit, but chances are we won't have a snow day on ELA Regents day!

BOCES needs assessment

Please consider completing the short survey from Barry Derfel:

If you have already taken a few minutes to give us at TST BOCES your input on our winter and spring needs assessment survey, thank you. If not, I would greatly appreciate your help in completing this brief survey.

Like the classroom visit data we are collecting, this survey focuses on what you notice students doing as they learn. Your input will help us plan Professional Development that is timely, relevant, and responsive.

We currently have 46 responses from across the region, and our goal is to collect 200. This will make us confident that we have received enough input to make valid decisions about the best ways to support the region this winter and fall. Again, thank you for your help.

Barry

Lightspeed Systems
About a week ago, a rep from Lightspeed Systems spoke with me.
You can see the presentation along with our conversation here.
Lightspeed makes audio systems for classrooms. Depending on the room, there are always a few rooms where hearing can be a challenge. Feel free to check it out. Their website is linked in the title. Please let me know if you would have any interest in a system.

Here are some data sheets from 2 of their popular products:
Redcat data sheet
Activate data sheet

Linguistics Olympiad

This is pretty late notice, but if anyone is interested in this, I would try to help organize it.

The Department of Linguistics at Cornell is hosting the Linguistics Olympiad (North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad NACLO http://www.nacloweb.org/) January 25 and will offer an information training session on Saturday January 13, 11am-12:30 (local info http://linguistics.cornell.edu/outreach. We will also be offering an info session at IHS, Tuesday, January 16, 3:45, K17 hosted by Suzanne Nussbaum.

NACLO is a pencil and paper contest in which students use analytical skills to solve puzzles in languages that they do not know. Through solving the puzzles, students learn something about the structure of human languages and how computers can process them. The contest introduces students to possible careers in linguistics, languages, and computer science. The target audience for NACLO is high schoolers (9-12^th grades), but middle schoolers (6-8^th grades) are also welcome to participate. NACLO has no prerequisites and no registration fee.

The NACLO open round is on January 25, 9:30am-1pm. Details can be found on the web site. (This is followed by an invitational round on March 8 and the International Linguistics Olympiad in Prague, Czech Republic in July.)

Registration is now open at http://www.nacloweb.org/. Select Cornell University as contest location.

To Prepare for NACLO: Students can practice with past exams from the NACLO web site and are encouraged to attend an info training session.

We'd be happy to answer any questions (linguisticsOutreach@cornell.edu)

Abby Cohn & Miloje Despic, NACLO @ Cornell co-chairs

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Abigail C. Cohn, Professor, acc4@cornell.edu

Miloje Despic, Assistant Professor, md682@cornell.edu

Department of Linguistics, Morrill Hall, Cornell University

http://linguistics.cornell.edu/outreach

Save a Life Tour - Date change
There is a new date for the Save a Life tour - Monday April 23. I will be working on an assembly schedule for that day.

School safety notes:
We recently had a couple of chronically truant kids show up to school through a side door. As a result, it was tough to track them. For the majority of instances (emergencies excluded), please help to make sure that students enter the building at the main entrance. Thanks.

Monday, January 8

Latest BOCES News (Jan. 2)
Check out the info concerning demonstration classrooms. If you're interested, contact Tim or Missy.

Budget news

Purchase cut off Feb. 1

In order to better project this year's fund balance and our needs going forward, we will need to cut off purchasing. Effective 2/1/2018, all unplanned, unnecessary purchasing will be cut off and accounts will be frozen for 2017-18. In the future, the cutoff will be January 1st. The idea is that we will have made or encumbered all the planned purchases in the first 4 months of the school year.

We realize that some activities such as testing and graduation will still need funding, so we will plan for such expenses. Some codes will not be frozen (instrument repairs, etc.). Athletics will continue for the expected costs, but no new purchases after February 1.

Be assured that any emergencies after 2/1/2018 will be supported. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Requisitions for 18-19

Here is the plan for requisitions:

All requisitions are due on January 22.
For any expenses where you're not sure of the amount, make a reasonable estimate.
For any conferences that you'd like to attend, calculate an estimate and submit a requisition even if you're not sure of the exact total.
I will put some extra money into conferences for those events that become available (ex: upcoming NYSCATE conference that I shared). Get yours in if you have an idea. There will be no guarantees if you don't submit a requisition.
Once all requisitions are tallied, I will meet with each teacher. We will sign a form stating that we've discussed and agreed upon all expenditures and totals. You will receive a copy.

PD schedule for Wednesday
We have some meetings scheduled for Wednesday's early release day. Check them out in the link. If you have any questions, please contact me or Missy.

Testing week
The schedule is finished (click here). There are still some special ed placements to finish, and Nina is graciously helping me with that (thanks Nina). The special locations files are linked from the proctor sheet. Each monitor will get a print out of their pertinent sheets. We'll have those locations done in a few days. Students and parents will be notified of the schedule this week.

Interested in our Building Level Emergency
Response Team (BLERT)?
If you would like to join this group, we are meeting this coming Wednesday the 10th at 1:00. We'll meet in the palatial confines of the guidance conference room. Thanks.

Good news on writing sample submissions

Below is a report from John Robertson. John has been requiring his sixth grade students to submit regular writing samples, and he's happy with the outcome so far. I'll do my best to make the process work more efficiently. The end result can be to get all of our students to write more frequently. Thanks John!

January 4, 2018

At the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year I was instructed to have students in my English classes complete weekly writing samples with the idea that these samples would be shared with administrators as a way to monitor student progress in the area of writing. This has required a bit of personal flexibility and shuffling of my typical scope and sequence, but already as we near the midpoint of the school year I am seeing positive results. My 6th grade students are writing nearly twice as much as they did last year. While some of the writing is loosely structured, the basic act of writing is helping these students improve. These students are more comfortable writing, less resistant to written tasks, better at revising and editing their work than past 6th graders I have had, and overall I am seeing better fluency and expression in student writing. Students have also been compiling these writing samples in their own digital folders using Google Drive. This is helpful as it allows students to easily archive their work and reference it later on in order to reflect, make changes and improvements.

Writing is a skill that requires practice. While the pace of progress may vary from student to student, presenting students with more opportunities to practice writing will certainly lead to progress. I feel pretty strongly that the developing writers in my 6th grade English Language Arts classes have benefited from completing weekly writing samples.

-John Robertson

Not all skills are STEM skills

Karen Sanchez shared the article linked above. Thanks Karen.

Tuesday, January 2

Hi folks,
I hope you enjoyed your break. It sure is nice to get some time off at this time of year. It's hard to believe that we only have a few weeks left in the semester. Please see the notes below. Thanks.

9th and 10th grade meetings this week
I would like to meet with 9th and 10th graders this week to explain the testing week schedule. Thursday will be 9th graders and Friday 10th. Please release them at 8:50. We'll meet in the lower caf.

Check your schedule for testing week
Please check the testing week schedule (click on the title). If you see any issues, please let me know. I am still working on proctoring schedules and special ed, but it's getting very close to being complete. Concerning special student classes like ELA or Math camps, I'll be meeting with folks who are working on those next week.

NYSCATE tech conference
Turn It up conference on Jan. 26. This is taking place at the Corning/Painted Post Middle School. Check it out. It's pretty affordable, so I should be able to help if a few people would like to go.

NYS Teacher Retirement Seminars
Click the title for this notice.

Brad Hurtig - Possible speaker
Check this speaker. There's a demo video, and he looks very engaging. I've contacted his agent for a possible booking next fall.

Finger Lakes Parent Network
See the document linked above. I received this over the break.

Go Guardian trial extended
Our free trial of the Go Guardian Teacher software has been extended to mid January. Give it a try!

Here is the original message from Denny:
Go Guardian is the monitoring and filtering system that we use for Chromebooks used by students. It is effective both on campus and away. GoGuardian for Teachers has various features, and I am not well versed in it, but one thing it allows is for the Teacher to observe the CHromebook desktops of selected students during sessions lasting up to two hours.

About a dozen people so far have been invited to test the software,and at least five of them have done so, and comments I've received are favorable. If you would like to try GoGuardian for teachers during the week ending Dec. 22, please send me a reply e-mail. More product information is available here: https://www.goguardian.com/

Denny Wolfe