Awards and Share the Wealth Saturday

 Happy Saturday to everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends and colleagues.  This week has been super crazy for me.  On Thursday night, I was asked to attend the Bette M. Stephenson Recognition of Achievement awards ceremony with my principal and another member of our school team.  The Dr. Bette M. Stephenson Recognition of Achievement was established in 2009 in honour of Dr. Stephenson’s lifelong commitment and contribution to Ontario’s publicly funded education system. This recognition program acknowledges school communities throughout Ontario that have distinguished themselves through their leadership, data-driven strategies and whole-school approaches to help every child succeed. Each of these schools has adopted an action plan based on their unique circumstances to work toward improved student outcomes.  It was nice to have an evening out with colleagues, and to have our school honoured once again for excellence.  Last year we received the Weston Foundation award for Excellence in Mathematics education.  I am very fortunate to work at a school which continues to strive to provide excellence in all areas of education.  The staff and students are my inspiration each and everyday.

That's me on the right...with my colleague Marlie and my principal S.Bauer in the middle.

After the awards dinner on Thursday night I had to hop into bed and get a good night sleep as it was parent/teacher/student interview day for me.  Our Fall Progress reports had been sent home on Tuesday, and I had 24 interviews booked back to back from 7:30 to 3:30 p.m.  Normally, I would have held some of the interviews the evening prior, but this year had the award ceremony to attend.  In the midst of all this, I knew I wanted to write a blog post and to support Mr. Hughes from the blog "An Educator's Life" with his regular "Share the Wealth Saturday." 




 

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 I was trying to think of something I could share this week that might be of value to you my readers but also link into what I was doing at school.  I am fortunate to have been working with a student teacher candidate from the M.Ed program at OISE for the past month.   My student teacher was going to take part in the interview process with me, and I was trying to think of ways to demonstrate how to make an interview flow smoothly, especially given the time constraint of 15 minutes per interview.   I put together a conference sheet which has helped me immensely during interview time.  I find often the parents come to the interview and they are unsure about what to discuss with the teacher.  I created this little "script" and conference sheet to keep me on track and give the parents some talking points.  If you would like your own copy just click on the image below for a FREE download.

I cannot tell you how successful using this little "tool" was. I was able to easily facilitate conversations with the parents, take notes, and keep to my time schedule.  I can now go back to the forms, review my notes, use them to make updates to my IEPS, and follow up with any questions, concerns or requests.  It will be invaluable in assisting my "memory" as holding 24 interviews in one day got to be a little overwhelming by the end of the day.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to share with you some information and pictures of my next adventure in the classroom....Interactive Math Notebooks.  I started them last week with my class and the students were super excited.  Right now, we are working on Patterning and Algebra, with a focus on Triangular Numbers.  I decided that introducing IMNs would be a great fit for this activity.  I will share more details in upcoming posts.  Please come back and check in soon! 

Have a happy and healthy weekend everyone!