US+Meeting+2017+01+09


 * 1) Proposed Staffing for 17/18
 * 2) Proposed new courses for next year: America as a Global Power, AP US Government
 * 3) CARP At-A-Glance (I hope to have time for individual work on this)—If I’m still waiting on individual courses, I sent you an email right before this. We should have all our At-A-Glance descriptions completed by 1/30—so we still have plenty of time.
 * 4) If you’re on the observation cycle, you are going to be preparing a Form H that will serve as the bones for our summative meeting in February, and you prepare your Form H before I meet with Elaine and Stuart about your summative. I’ll remind you again later in the month.
 * 5) I want to do informal observations of those of you not on the cycle this year: Sam, Henry, Joe, Stephen. If there’s a cool class coming up that you would like me to observe, let me know!

Does anyone else have other topics you would like to address? I think this is a good meeting to reflect on how the year has gone as well as what we would like to see going forward. We’ll put together a list of “What’s going well, What needs improvement”.


 * CARP time to have conversation with MS on Assessment, Reading, Research expectations.
 * What are assessments? What are kids learning/hearing
 * Reading--"they don't do it" Volume of reading?
 * Kids lack reading stamina
 * What does an average assignment look like?
 * what's an easy assignment. what's a hard assignment
 * They don't read books, so attention span is very short. Kids are not prepared for amount of reading OR homework.
 * Smart, thoughtful kids say there's a leveling up of homework that they're not prepared for. High performing students are feeling like they're wildly under-prepared.
 * May become contentious. ...
 * MEETING 8/9 grade teams. Include English and SS
 * Elaine?
 * We need data. We almost have to poll our students and ask them a lot of questions.
 * where did you attend middle school
 * did you feel prepared?
 * "This is what our students are saying, this is not what we're saying."
 * We're not here to tell you how to teach, but we need to know what we have to teach the kids
 * We have pressure to prepare kids for college acceptances. We can't get "less". We should not be catering to the other divisions.
 * Let's focus on student outcomes and move away from institutional prerogative and individual conveniences. Is the course ultimately serving the students' best interests.
 * Focus on STUDENT OUTCOMES
 * We want to do right by our kids. It's not about what we teach but who we serve. We're trying to address stress, anxiety, worry.
 * We need to have data. The solution is not us lowering our standards once again.
 * We are an AND school--that means we have to prepare high flyers and low flyers. We have to prepare students to take standardized tests whether MS approves or not.
 * Survey of students--we're dealing with pressure on both ends. 9th graders don't know if they're ready for college...
 * This is potentially an aggressive mood. "We've done research... our kids hate you." We need to be direct and express our concerns. Be open and honest and say
 * meet with Emily and Kate Gay and have them be part of the discussion.
 * Rishi: Profile of a 9th Grader.
 * Joe and I identify what we expect kids to be able to do?
 * What do Juniors expect? Sophomores expect?
 * How much can they read?
 * Emily's data about number of pages they read in 9th grade vs 8th grade.
 * Can they produce a multi-paragraph essay?
 * they read slowly.
 * I have this stuff... Don't we have a description of a USM graduate?
 * ANOTHER CONCERN: Homeworkverbot. The entire milieu of the school.
 * "Ultimate Trap" The homework thing just can't come up...