Welcome Back

Upcoming Important Dates

Wednesday, February 25 – Faculty Meeting 2:30 – 4:00 Advisory Cluster meetings
Friday, February 27 – School Dance Sponsored by the Student Council
Friday, February 27 – Honors Music Festival at Westbrook Middle School 8:00 am
Wednesday, March 4 – Leadership Meeting 2:30 – 4:00 in Melanie’s room
Thursday, March 5 – Full performances of the School Musical (Schedule to follow)
Saturday, March 7 – EdCampMaine Wayneflete School 8:00 am
Tuesday, March 10 – 8th Grade Parent Night at the High School 6:00 pm
Wednesday, March 11 – Early Release Day Students dismissed at 11:10
Wednesday, March 11 – Potluck luncheon with HS faculty, Chris Kaufman and “Bumper Soccer”
Thursday, March 12 – Parent Teacher Conferences 3:00 – 8:00 pm
Friday, March 13 – Parent Teacher Conferences 8:00 am – 2:00 pm
Tuesday, March 17 – Chris Record and HS Dept Head meet with 8th Grade 8:00 am

Faculty Meeting Agenda

We will all gather in the Library at 2:30. The 7th grade will be providing the food and we will enjoy the stories of vacation and any other news from our staff. After the social time and our celebrations, we will adjourn to our Advisory Clusters to prepare for Parent Teacher Conferences. Just a reminder, we will be meeting with parents on Thursday and Friday this year.

Honors Music Festivals

We will have several of our students heading out for the day on Friday, February 27th to attend the Honors Music festival at Westbrook Middle School. Please know that these students have been informed to let you know they will be missing from class and the will need to get the work so that it can been done.

Also, please wish these great kids, and fine musicians “Good Luck” in this event. I know they will represent all of us very well.

If you want to take in their concert on Saturday, February 28, it will be at Westbrook Performing Arts Center beginning at 3:30.

Alice @ Wonderland

In the past several years I have taken “complaints” from faculty and students about not being able to see the entire play during the school day performances. We always, sort of, played this off as a marketing ploy to “hook” the kids into coming back to the evening performance. Truth is, we just did it to try and fill the time on an early release day!

This year, we will have a schedule so that every student gets to see the entire performance. I realize this will cut into teaching time, but the overwhelming feeling in the past was that this was important for all the kids to see. We will get a schedule out for each team to see the entire performance by the end of this week.

EdCampMaine

I think many of you are familiar with the EdCamp format, as we have used this with a few of our PD events in the past and they have been very well received. EdCampMaine is a full blown event free of charge, and open to all. It is held on the Campus of the Wayneflete School on Portland’s West End. Did I mention that it was FREE!

Here is the web site of EdCampME.org wit loads of information and a link to register.

While much of this PD event is based in technology, there are many things that are not. It is led by the participants and if you have any ideas about what you’d like to know more about, I’ll bet there will be someone who can help out, technology based or not!

If I didn’t have a Budget Hearing on that Saturday, I would be there, I may truy to get there for the afternoon sessions, if we aren’t too long winded!

The Beginning of 8th Grade Transition to High School

This is the beginning of moving our 8th graders along to the high school. The first meeting will be on Tuesday evening, March 10 in the auditorium of the high school. It will begin at 6:00 pm and will go until 7:30. Principal Chris Record, and all of the Department Heads will be present to inform the students and their parents about the transition process and what to expect next August. Please let your students know of this evening and how important it will be for their parents to attend.

On Tuesday, March 17, Chris and the Department Heads (sounds like an Alternative rock band!) will again meet the entire 8th grade in our Auditorium, beginning at 8:00 for about 45 minutes to further discuss what the students can expect in the coming weeks as the register for their fall classes.

I am not sure if we ran a different schedule in the past, but if we need to, I will get it out early next week.

March 11 Early Release Day

We will gather with the faculty of the High School to hear Chris Kaufman present on the subject of Executive Functioning of Adolescents, a topic near and dear to many of us. You may remember that Chris presented to us a couple of years ago about the adolescent brain and it was very well received. This presentation should bring us to the next level of understanding the brain of the adolescent.

We will begin with a Pot Luck Lunch with the high school faculty in our cafeteria, We are asking that each of you bring in something that you would like share with the staff. We will also be getting some GHOP Pizzas to help supply the food line.

I would love to have folks also bring in the recipe for the food that you bring in so that we can put it together into a book type format that we can share with the faculty. So, if you have some favorite recipe that is always a hit at your family gatherings, and you would like to share it with the faculty, please bring in a sampling, along with the recipe that we can share.

Parent/Teacher Conferences

We will return to our practice of holding our Parent/Teacher Conferences on Thursday evening and Friday, during the day. The responses from parents was very much in favor of getting the High School and the Middle School on the same schedule as it made for just one night out as opposed to two nights.

We will begin conferences immediately after school on Thursday until 8:00 pm and then on Friday from 8:00 until 2:00 (or until you’ve met with all of your parents).