All Faculty Meeting 9/2/15
Check-in with Teachers – 1 Word to describe the first week
Parent Orientation:
- Cory and Megan will open the Parent orientation. Some of the topics include introduction of the board, After-school options/classes, Capital Campaign, etc. This meeting will last for about 15-20 minutes.
- After the introduction, parents will be dispersed to sign up for various committees.
- Homeroom teachers will go to classrooms. (Adjunct H.S teachers will be dispersed to the classrooms). Mention how best to reach you as a teacher.
- Pre-K Child care Smartboard room. Older students will have their child care in the entry way to the music room. Courtney suggested that they could play a movie since there are no toys.
- The parent orientation starts at 6:30 PM. We say that we go to 8 PM.
- Next week, the Staff meeting will be a brief check-in prior to the orientation.
- Megan suggests that teachers have students help prepare the classroom by cleaning things out and putting learning artifacts/work samples out for parents.
- Teachers are to take a break before the big community event.
Suggestions on orientation from admin and returning teachers
- Daily schedule
- Newsletter/communications/modes of communications,
- List of pathway for concerns
- Roster with correct addresses for correct and newsletters
- Notations about where to find, homework assignments and grades
- Grading philosophy
- Jobs that we need, volunteering, what are they looking forward to in terms of community? All parents are required to do 4 hours volunteer hours per family per month.
- Identify class parents. Megan sent a description to teachers for class parents.
- Classroom Facebook
- These meeting gives parents the opportunity to explore what kind of classroom culture do you want for your children and for yourselves
- Identify what makes our class unique, this to expect, our thematic units, etc. Possible ways of exploring this include: 6 Strands in our classroom, Integral model, Design Thinking
- Introduction of parent names, child’s name, grade level, etc. Courtney suggested that we ask parents of younger children why they chose OCS. Parents of older students might ask the question: What do you hope for your older student (HS, MS) this year?
- Teacher introduction that focuses on personal/professional teaching philosophy, “This is why I am here. What are we going to give to their children?”
- Classroom discipline and management. Identify theory and practice with rationale,
- H.S teachers are encouraged to describe what was done with Journey Week.
- Consider including some mention of food and celebrations as they are celebrated in our classroom. These can include: lunches, snacks, sugar policy, etc.
- Describe grading, parent conferences, narrative reports, schedule for Listening Conferences, etc. HS. parents may be challenged to keep up with e-mails. H.S. teachers are encouraged to have students sign up for their Listening Conference.
- Please talk about the OCS student e-mails for grades2 and up. Remind parents that we expect them to have access to these e-mail accounts. Teachers will have access to it. The basic premise is that there is no student privacy on that Google OCS e-mail.
- Introduce Google Classroom/homework. Gabe is the point person for passwords for upper grades and he has been putting it into the grid. Gabe will walk parents through Renweb and Google Docs.
- Please reference the highlights of the Parent Handbook. Samata and Craig will need to bounce between the classroom.
- Since there are computer components for the upper grades, teachers of older students are to ask MS and HS parents are to bring computer for upper grades
- MS/HS please tell parents about any possible meeting dates for: movie nights, drivers for field trips, etc.
Teachers were excused to work on grade level tasks in preparation for the Parent Orientation.