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Dear
Families:
We
hope this finds you and your family well as we head into the Winter Vacation.
December
and January are filled with special events in our school. In December, our
music teacher, Agnes Zsigmondi, organized our 3rd and 4th graders and
our 5th and 6th graders to present chorus concerts to our school
community. The time and energy it takes to bring a group of students to the
level of a performance is extraordinary. We hope you have had a chance to hear
some of the beautiful music they shared this month, and a big “Thank you!” to Ms.
Z. for leading this work.
News
and Information:
· As
you may recall, in the spring of last school year, we completed our Crocker
Farm Family Survey. (See attached results) We were incredibly fortunate
to be able to enlist the help and expertise of Crocker Farm parent, Dan
McMurrer, with this project. Dan develops, organizes and analyzes surveys in
his professional life, and we owe a great deal of gratitude to Dan for
volunteering to help with our survey. Many thanks to Dan.
· On
December 14th, our School Governance Council, which includes parents and
staff, met to review the spring 2015 Family Survey results. As you will see in
our survey results, we are proud of the countless areas of strength you
reported. At the same time, we are also mindful that we have areas to improve.
To that end, our SGC group decided to focus on two particular areas for
potential growth/improvement for the coming year:
o improve how we collect
data from families (We had a 66% response rate last year, but in the upcoming
year we aim to hear from every family)
o build on strong
teacher/family communication practices in regards to teaching and learning
Our
SGC group is off to a strong start, but we continue to seek membership for the
current school year. Please contact the school if you are interested in joining
our January meeting.
· Our
School Instructional Leadership Team (SILT), which is comprised of
building administrators and teaching staff, recently met with Ron Berger,
co-author of Leaders of their Own Learning: Transforming Schools Through
Student-Engaged Assessment. Ron will be helping to guide our school based professional
learning. Our teachers explored the following quote from the book at our last
staff meeting: “Student engaged assessment changes the primary role of
assessment from evaluating and ranking students to motivating them to learn. It
builds the independence, critical thinking skills, perseverance and
self-reflective understanding students need to college and career.” We plan to
share more of this work with you in the coming month.
Parent/Guardian
Pick up: Please
be reminded that if your child has a change of pick up plans, you must send
a note to the office or your child’s teacher in the morning. This lets staff know
who your child can be released to at the end of the day.
Enjoy
your vacation time together.
We
look forward to seeing you in the New Year,
Derek
Shea and Sharri Conklin
