December 5th EditionLeading for Student Success by Shaping Cultureby Joe Schroeder, Associate Executive Director, AWSA To improve things is to change things. Specifically, it means to transform a culture over time, as culture sets the foundation for all leadership effort in a school. Therefore, if your school’s current continuous improvement plan doesn’t address some aspect of growing a healthier organizational culture, perhaps it’s time to take a step back and assess where matters stand, so that a more productive soil for impactful strategies to grab hold can take root. This article is designed to help you do just that. Cell Phone Policiesby Rick Smith, Company Founder of Conscious Teaching, Teacher Trainer, Author, National Keynote Speaker (This article was reprinted with the permission of Conscious Teaching) Cell phone addiction is a modern teacher’s torment. What to do about it is a hotly debated topic. Let’s say, however, that you do not want your students to look at or touch their cell phones during classroom instruction. But, inevitably, some do. What is your plan when that happens? Below are 4 ways to deal with cell phones and some advice for how to make these ideas work. Is Your Contract Up For Renewal? Key Deadlines Are On The Horizonby Malina Piontek, Attorney, LLC Three hours after an embarrassing Packers home loss, Packers Head Coach Mike McCarthy was unceremoniously fired on Sunday evening after 12 seasons in Green Bay. Black Monday came early in Green Bay. By the next morning, media reported five possible replacements for McCarthy, all coaches holding contracts with other NFL or college teams. The NFL coaching carousel has definitely started its precarious spin. For administrators in Wisconsin, December is similarly a time of spinning administrative personnel moves. The carousel-like activity is largely driven by the statutory contract renewal/nonrenewal process, as the first statutory deadline for that process is January 31, 2019. But by December, many school boards are already well into discussing whose contracts will be renewed or nonrenewed so that they can be sure to meet the statutory deadlines. December 19th EditionSupports for Continuous School and System Improvement -- and Preliminary ESSA/IDEA Identificationsby Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Staff A new vision is driving how we at the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) work with schools around federal laws. Administrators in a related project see great promise as they experience this vision made real. “Super exciting” were the words of Laurie Burgos, director of bilingual programs and equity at the Verona Area School District. Verona, along with the Middleton-Cross Plains School District, is working with the DPI, the local cooperative educational service agency (CESA 2), and the Wisconsin RTI Center on a project in which “linked teams” are improving the districts’ equitable multi-level systems of support. Social Emotional Learning and Safety Initiativesby Caleb Hundt, Assistant Principal, Menomonie High School Student Safety and the Mental Health Crisis are at the forefront of education. Today’s school leaders, teachers, and counselors are tasked to provide more social and emotional balance than ever before. This challenge isn’t going away, and likely, it will remain towards the front of district focal points for the next several years. The Menomonie School District has piloted and created many concepts to combat this crisis. Specifically, the Menomonie High School has implemented large-scale efforts to make students feel welcomed and safe, and has provided students with the ability to grow in healthy ways, despite outside influences, factors, and environments. We continually attempt to amplify and extend the opportunities for all of our students. As a result, our administration, school psychologist, teachers, and counseling team have been able to put several initiatives in place to ensure that our highest need students have a collaborative team, are able to talk often, can tell their story, feel safe, and are supported in times of crisis. Just released. Mental/Behavioral Health Screening Guide & New WebpageDPI has just released a screening guide to support schools in selecting and implementing mental and behavioral health screeners. “The goal of screening is to generate new and useful information so that students can be better served in interventions that prevent or mitigate mental health challenges and promote resiliency. Thoughtful selection and implementation of a screening measure are critical to meeting this goal.” WI Department of Public Instruction, 2018. Additionally, DPI has developed an action planning checklist that school teams can use to organize their planning process. Resources can be found: https://dpi.wi.gov/sspw/mental-health/mental/behavioral-health-screening December 19th EditionSupports for Continuous School and System Improvement -- and Preliminary ESSA/IDEA Identificationsby Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Staff A new vision is driving how we at the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) work with schools around federal laws. Administrators in a related project see great promise as they experience this vision made real. “Super exciting” were the words of Laurie Burgos, director of bilingual programs and equity at the Verona Area School District. Verona, along with the Middleton-Cross Plains School District, is working with the DPI, the local cooperative educational service agency (CESA 2), and the Wisconsin RTI Center on a project in which “linked teams” are improving the districts’ equitable multi-level systems of support. Social Emotional Learning and Safety Initiativesby Caleb Hundt, Assistant Principal, Menomonie High School Student Safety and the Mental Health Crisis are at the forefront of education. Today’s school leaders, teachers, and counselors are tasked to provide more social and emotional balance than ever before. This challenge isn’t going away, and likely, it will remain towards the front of district focal points for the next several years. The Menomonie School District has piloted and created many concepts to combat this crisis. Specifically, the Menomonie High School has implemented large-scale efforts to make students feel welcomed and safe, and has provided students with the ability to grow in healthy ways, despite outside influences, factors, and environments. We continually attempt to amplify and extend the opportunities for all of our students. As a result, our administration, school psychologist, teachers, and counseling team have been able to put several initiatives in place to ensure that our highest need students have a collaborative team, are able to talk often, can tell their story, feel safe, and are supported in times of crisis. Just released. Mental/Behavioral Health Screening Guide & New WebpageDPI has just released a screening guide to support schools in selecting and implementing mental and behavioral health screeners. “The goal of screening is to generate new and useful information so that students can be better served in interventions that prevent or mitigate mental health challenges and promote resiliency. Thoughtful selection and implementation of a screening measure are critical to meeting this goal.” WI Department of Public Instruction, 2018. Additionally, DPI has developed an action planning checklist that school teams can use to organize their planning process. Resources can be found: https://dpi.wi.gov/sspw/mental-health/mental/behavioral-health-screening |