Wiki needs more entries

Today was the first deadline for our next newspaper and many articles were due. Unfortunately, there were quite a few missing articles. As usual, a few kids are gung-ho and posted their articles well and early. Sometimes it's surprising that the gung-ho kids are the ones I'd predict to be. I was hoping that the students would really like using the wiki and would get on the band wagon. I must remember that these kids are children who aren't necessarily self-starters, and who didn't really know what was expected when they volunteered for the News Team. I must be more creative with my incentives, and possibly make them more competitive with each other. I still think the wiki is a big improvement over all other former article submission methods.

Technology marches on

This morning was MOD-MSA online training at Dr. Henry Wise High School, and then I went on to John Jennings's zone tech liaison's meeting at Tulip Grove. Everything was hands-on, which is always a good thing if managed well. It's easy for the presenter to lose his/her audience if they start pursuing their own interests, checking email, etc. However, it's so much better to try out what is being presented while the leader is available to help with any confusion or other difficulties. It takes very careful planning of the PD session to carry this off. The morning session was led by Teresa O'Connor and Joan Rothgeb. Both were excellent - highly knowledgeable, approachable, and efficient, so it was a very useful session. John is always very well prepared for his sessions and sprinkles in a good dose of humor and humility, so the meetings are very worthwhile. He seems to have a good handle on what's going on in the county and how to effectively balance our directives with our workload

New departments for News Team

The News Team has put out 2 issues with the original department assignments, so we chose new departments today for the next 2 issues. It worked out unusually well, with few students disappointed with the end result. Thank goodness for the random number generator. We were able to refer to the old department assignments in the wiki for reference, so that was helpful once again.

PreK-8 Transition Meeting Last Night

Last night was the meeting at BES to present the current plans to change our school into PreK-7 next year; preK-8 the following. The meeting was mainly a question-and-answer session with Steve (and Leslie) answering questions raised by parents in the cafeteria. The meeting was fairly well attended by both English and Spanish-speaking parents, although the attendance was small compared to the total number of parents for our school. I guess the parents of preimary students either think things will change by the time their student gets to that grade (maybe) or they'll have moved to a different town by then. Who knows? The meeting was very civil -- no one was confrontational or asked awkward questions. One key question that wasn't raised was whether Steve will still be at BES next year. That's crucial and nobody asked it. At any rate, PowerPoint could have been used to show areas of the building being discussed (locker rooms, science rooms) but under the circumstances it probably wouldn't have been worth the trouble to create it. It's kind of a relief not to be looking at a screen at every meeting.