Another great week of learning with a character strengths shot in the arm mid-week!
Here is what’s up next week:
Monday, Sept. 13
VS A-D
1:30-3 Admin Mtg (Molly attends)
Tuesday, Sept. 14
VS E-H
9:30-10:15 SST
3:15-4:30 MS Leadership Team (agenda)
Wednesday, Sept. 15
Consolidation Day
*Happy Birthday Daisy Lo!
3:15-4:30 Divisional Mtg (curriculum focus)
Thursday, Sept. 16
VS A-D
3-4:30 Admin mtg (Molly attends)
Friday, Sept. 17
VS E-H
5-8pm StuCo Movie Night
Upcoming (on the radar)
- Oct. 13: End of Quarter 1
- Oct. 14 and 15: Parent Teacher Conferences
Meet Ups! Continue: In order to continue to support the social opportunities for our students, we will continue to provide Meet Up opportunities on Wednesdays. Please sign up for your preferred week/time on the MS Meet Ups Fall 2021 document. The instructions are listed on the document. You can see the student interests on the information tab as well. You can also see student survey responses the first group of activities on the last tab “PT Summary.” One new type of activity I am hoping we can offer in both time sessions each Wednesday is a Study Zone for homework support. Please complete your sign up by Monday, Sept. 14 at 3:30.
Tech Time from Daniel: There are two Zoom advanced features we would like to make you aware of: Immersive View and Focus Mode. To enable these features go to your online Zoom profile:
https://zoom.us/profile > Click on Settings on the left column > In Meeting (Advanced)
‘Focus Mode’: Focus Mode allows the host and co-hosts to see all participants’ videos without other participants seeing each other.
Although our school policy is that videos should be on at all times, Focus Mode may be used, where appropriate, as a tool to avoid distractions when students are working on something that does not require them to see other student’s videos. Please keep in mind the need for our students to connect with each other – please use focus mode sparingly.
Once focus mode has started, participants will only see the video of the host, co-hosts, and their own video. They will only see other participants’ names, their nonverbal feedback or reactions, and hear them when unmuted.
Immersive View allows you to create a backdrop with your students inside the environment. Meeting and webinar hosts can select Zoom’s Immersive View the same way they would select the Speaker or Gallery View. When enabling Immersive View, hosts will have the option to automatically or manually place participants into a virtual scene of their choosing. Hosts can also easily move participants around that scene and even resize a participant’s image for a more natural experience.
Current scenes can accommodate up to 25 participants in a scene, with various layouts for smaller groups. A number on each scene tile indicates how many people it can accommodate. We recommend deploying a scene that aligns with the meeting size.
Both Kelley McKenna and Gary Bertoia have been testing it out and can be a teacher resource. Any technical questions please direct them to Daniel.
Recording from David Bott on Character Strengths: Please find the link to yesterday’s faculty meeting with
David Bott on Character Strengths. Mel will share more information about our work on Wellness this term.
EduSpark PD Resource Reminder: Everyone, all faculty and staff, received emails last weekend from
EduSpark and Craig Kemp. This is a new PD platform which SSIS joined for all faculty and staff that provides courses by educators and educational consultants (such as Kent & Yong Zhao). As of yesterday, 31 people went in and made their account and now have access to courses. To do so, you will need to click on the link to update your password.
Craig Kemp’s email is also included in those email if you have questions or issues. Below is a screenshot of the Courses page with the long list of topics included. Enjoy.
Calling Parents without using your cell phone: We can now create Zoom meetings with dial-in access. In this way, parents can use a phone to dial into a Zoom Meeting.
When scheduling a Zoom meeting select the appropriate Audio Setting.
Ensure that the Dial from location is set correctly.
Repeat – Personal Development Leads, Advisory, and House Leagues as we move forward: As of this school year, all SSIS grade levels have a Personal Development Leader (PDL) following the reorganization of the schoolwide middle level leadership positions (you can read more about this in the MS Middle Level Leaders document). These positions were created to better meet the SSIS mission of developing our students not only intellectually, but also personally. Lead by Roxanne, MS Dean of Students, our MS Personal Development Leaders (PDL) are:
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- G6: Kevin Brodeur
- G7: Kelley McKenna
- G8: Cintia Bastos
The primary objective of the PDL team is to support and coordinate student life experiences and personal development in division ensuring the intentional personal development of the SSIS dragons. In middle school, this happens primarily through the advisory program, Week Without Walls, the house leagues program, student activities/events, MS Meet-Ups!, after school activities (ASA) and athletics programs. Our PDT will provide oversight and coordination of these events and programs.
Last year, we had an incredible team of Advisory leads who focused on the development of our advisory program. The revision of the advisory program to match PERMAH was the major priority of the division last year. The advisory leads tended to the scope and sequence of the overall program and also created a fair amount of the individual advisory experiences/lessons for advisors. This team concluded this work with the completion of the scope and sequence and topic alignment. This year, the PDLs will provide oversight to the advisory scope and sequence, making recommendations for continued growth and improvement as well as adjustments needed in response to Virtual School and/or other community needs. One key difference between the work of the Advisory lead team last year and the PDL team this year is that the PDL team is not responsible for advisory lesson creation. The refinement and creation of any needed advisory lesson will be shared across each grade level as has been done in previous years.
Another change moving forward is in the oversight of House Leagues. The oversight of HL will move from the PE department to the PDL team. We will continue with the same goals for the House League program, and HL activities will continue to be supported by various departments in the design, development and creation of HL events. The PDL team will be evaluating the HL program for the year and will be design the scope and sequence of that program, as well as delegate responsibility across the division for the actual creation of events.
