8/29 Agenda
First Faculty Meeting of the 2018-2019 school year!
Kitchen Tasks: In order to take care of keeping shared spaces clean, we will continue with our successful program of Kitchen Crews! Each group cleans the kitchen only 2-3 times per semester.
Skipping Specials? If you plan to miss a specials class, please let teachers know ahead of time.
Closing up the building procedures.
Morning/After School Supervision Reminder
- K-2nd go immediately to aftercare if there’s no pickup.
- 3rd and up can wait outside until 3:45.
Parent Orientation Planning (copied from the handbook):
Our first Community Meeting is Parent Orientation Night. This evening is a chance for teachers to communicate more of the academic, procedural, and detail-oriented information. Please see the list below for information to cover:
- Teacher introduction that focuses on personal/professional teaching philosophy, “This is why I am here. What are we going to give to their children?”
- Introduction of parent names, child’s name, grade level, etc. We may ask parents of younger children why they chose Odyssey School. Parents of older students might ask the question: What do you hope for your older student (5th-12th grade) this year?
- Identify what makes our class unique, what to expect, thematic units, etc. Possible ways of exploring this include: 6 Strands in our classroom, Essential Learning Skills, and Design Thinking. Please use curricular-philosophical language.
- Include at least one learning artifact about The Integral Model from your first week of teaching with the kids.
- Classroom discipline and management. Identify theory and practice with rationale. This is your chance to cultivate buy-in for support.
- Daily schedule
- Newsletter/communications/modes of communications
- Take an inventory of parents who use Facebook. Update your secret Facebook classroom group from your roster after the meeting
- List pathways for expressing concerns and grievances
- Pass around a sign-up roster to ensure correct/preferred email addresses for newsletters
- Directions about where to find homework assignments, check (5th-12th) grades / receive (K-4th) narrative reports
- This meeting gives parents the opportunity to explore what kind of classroom culture you want for your children and for yourselves: Volunteer Jobs that your class needs, what are they looking forward to in terms of community? All parents are required to do 4 hours volunteer hours per family per month.
- Take volunteers for class parents. Print and share this document of responsibilities with them!
- Have all parents review and sign the Door Code Agreement
- Classroom & The Parliament, all school, Facebook groups
- Consider including some mention of food and celebrations as they are celebrated in your classroom. These can include: lunches, snacks, sugar policy, etc.
- Describe parent conferences, pass around sign up schedule for Listening Conferences.
- Ask parents to note conference times throughout the year and to mark their calendars (plea for keep to this pre-arranged time for conferences, rather than rescheduling outside this time).
- Please talk about the Odyssey School student emails for grades 3 and up. Remind parents that we expect them to have access to these email accounts. Teachers will have access to it. The basic premise is that there is no student privacy on that Google Odyssey School email.
- Please reference the Parent Handbook.
Intermediate & High School Specific Notes
- Grading Philosophy
- College Readiness Support (HS)
- Restorative Justice & Mediation
- Experiential Seminar (HS) / Outdoor/Service Learning (IS)
- Absences/Tardiness Policy