Weekly Update
Monday, March 17-Regular School Day
School Committee, 7pm
Tuesday, March 18-Half day for Students, Half PD day for staff!
Wednesday, March 19-Regular School Day
**The Barr Foundation Here to conduct a site visit with SpringPoint
Thursday, March 20-Regular School Day
**The Barr Foundation Here to conduct a site visit with SpringPoint
Friday, March 21-Wear jeans and your Gator Gear!
Wellness Committee meeting at 1pm
Saturday, March 22-GEF Trivia Night!
Springpoint/Barr Foundation on site this week!
As one of their "Beyond the Grant" supports, the Barr Foundation funds the organization called SpringPoint to facilitate a visit where they review how learning looks at the secondary level. You may recall that the Barr Foundation really only funds high school transformations, but they are open and supportive of Gateway extending our transformation to be district wide.
On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, the Barr Foundation's Educational Administrator, Jess Rose, will be here with staff from SpringPoint to conduct their walk throughs and review at the high school level. We will be conducting our own walk through of the elementary schools after we see how they run their middle/high school visit. Thank you to those staff who are opening your classrooms to the visiting team this week.
If you see the team walking around, please be friendly and say hello! :)
Professional Development on Tuesday!
Here is the information regarding the March 18 half day Professional Development Sessions.
This year, most of our professional development is going to focus on our instructional vision. You will notice that these sessions are a continuation of our work back in November.
The PD committee and leadership team are working together to present meaningful PD designed to support our staff. It was our combined goal that we would engage together in the deep work of looking at our instructional practices as a whole staff. From there, the elements of voice and choice should be present in how we plan for and implement instructional shifts. This led to a much more instructive professional learning offering, with the understanding that we have worked closely with the professional learning providers to ensure that the planning involved teacher voice and choice as well as immediately applicable learning. We look forward to engaging in that work together and appreciate your attention to these training sessions offered so you can fully engage in professional learning. Please log in to Smart PD and register for your professional development sessions. If you need help, here are instructions for Smart PD. If you registered for your session back in November, you do not need to register again.
District
Pre-K Pyramid Model
Presented by: Marlene Robbins
Audience: Pre-K Teachers and Paraprofessionals
Location: Pre-K Classrooms
Time: 1:00-4:30
Staff will continue the work on implementing the Pyramid model. This will include team collaboration, attention to the modules and self-reflection work.
District Nurses- Session TBD- Deanna will send a separate email
Gateway Regional School
Student Ownership of Learning Continuation from November 5, 2024
Presented by Lynch Leadership Academy from Boston College
Audience: Secondary teachers and paraprofessionals
Location: GRS High School Gymnasium
Time: 11:30-3:30
Teachers will engage in a learning experience where they are asked to inquire deeply, get curious, and dig into new material. Through this learning, we hope to uncover what instructional moves support increased discourse, deeper problem-solving, and productive struggle. This learning will then be applied to planning for our own classrooms with support from the Lynch Leadership Group. We will ground the work in the Classroom observation tool and our Instructional Vision (above), then build the connections with productive struggle throughout both the observation tool and the instructional vision.
Littleville Elementary School & Chester Elementary School
Productive Struggle Continuation from November 5, 2024
Presented by The New Teacher Project (TNTP)
Audience: Elementary teachers and paraprofessionals
Location: Gateway Regional Middle School Gymnasium
Time: 1:00-4:30
Staff will engage in a deep learning experience in ELA, and answer:
Are all students responsible for doing the thinking in this classroom?
Students do the majority of the work of the lesson: speaking/listening, reading, and/or writing.
Students reason and make meaning of texts to persevere through difficulty. When teachers provide support, students still own the complex thinking.
Students talk and ask questions about each other’s thinking in order to improve their understanding about the text or topic.
Students provide text evidence to support their ideas and use topic or text-specific language in their oral and/or written responses.
They will then have some supported planning time to engage in applying their learning from the session.
Please come to the PD with access to the ELA unit/lessons that will be teaching the week following the PD session. You don’t have to determine the exact lesson until they engage in the PD, but we want you to have the opportunity to apply the learning with your upcoming materials.
Gator Bites Published
Please take a peek at the latest family newsletter from the district:
March Instructional Vision Challenge! (THREE Prizes this month!)
We will continue into March with inviting staff to share how YOU are implementing a part of our instructional vision.
This month's focus are the fifth two bullets in the instructional vision are:
Students will push through challenge tasks with a positive attitude.
Staff will trust students to succeed after productive struggle.
Staff are invited to fill out a brief (2-3 sentences!) summary of how you are implementing this part of our vision. It can be specific or general, and it should clearly describe how your actions are moving this part of our instructional vision forward.
Here is the link to share!
https://padlet.com/ksmidy1/march-instructional-vision-challenge-7xmxexo3ycau0pe5
To add to the board, click the plus sign in the bottom right corner and write in your submission. Finally, hit Publish and voila! You're done!
Staff who share how they are implementing or supporting implementation of December's focus area of the instructional vision by March 31 will be entered to win a $50 gift card to one of the following locations: Carms, Common Table, Moltenbreys, Amazon, Big Y, Dunkin or at a place of your choice that I can get a gift card with relative ease 😂
District Data for your review
I am going to try to share some data with you each week that may be of interest to you.
I'm sharing the budget presentation from the school committee meeting with you at this link.
Because there were not enough school committee members to have a 2/3 vote, the budget vote will take place on Monday night.
Here are a couple key slides for your review:
This slide details the budget amount allocated to each cost center:
Reminder! Spring field trips
If you are planning a spring field trip, please be sure that the nurse has ample notice to check medication and medical needs prior to proceeding fully. If all students don't have full access, then the trip cannot legally proceed. Once the trip is planned, please also tell our cafeteria staff so they can plan lunch accordingly. Thank you!
