Coach Cavin suggested that I keep a journal so that he can stay updated on my new job. What a great idea! Often, I am making random notes on stickies and notepads with no way to organize those thoughts later. Now I have a place for reflection.
School begins one week from tomorrow. I have been on a school faculty retreat in Dallas and I have seen my classroom once. There is a lot of construction going on in the building so I plan to be there a great deal this week to get set up. Also, this week I will be working on my syllabus, rules, consequences, classroom procedures and my lesson plans with my team. I have many of these things scattered around in binders, word documents and presentations. I also would like to request my students' cum records and write a letter to send to the parents with my class procedures. My goal this week is to get these ducks in a row.
The retreat allowed me to get to know my department and participate in some team building. I promised my team that I would reach out to them when I needed help. Let's see how they respond!

Meetings, working lunches, and guest speakers. "What is said here, stays here. What is learned here, leaves here."
A huge concern for our school according to the testing statistics: African-American males.
Suggestions/Interventions: male mentor programs (with effective mentor training), encouragement for extracurricular activities, male-lead organization/ Bulletin 100 class "Reconnecting Youth" requires a minimum GPA (unfortunately), seat these students in the "T-section" of the classroom where teachers tend to focus, male-based assemblies, maintain high expectations (pull them aside and ask them to be leaders), survey these students and gauge their needs, and start a committee to plan these events.
English Language Learners:
CHALLENGES:
curriculum/textbook and the language/vocabulary, reading and writin assignments, getting from lower levels of thinking to the higher-order levels of learning, SES differences.
STRATEGIES:
multiple approaches to cognitive processes:BICS- "above surface" -pronunciation, grammar, vocab. CALPS- "below surface"-semantic and functional meaning. Above all be explicit and systematic. Focus on a few key words, use visual aids, real objects, work in groups (think/pair/share), use english/spanish cognates, word wall, deprocess a few days later, cooperative learning groups, modeling

Approaching these students with high expectations of a high level of rigor is imperative. To accomplish this intrinsically, I will have a daily schema activator. This will be organized onto a laminated poster for daily quick reference and as a way to plan, guide and deliver my instruction. It will relate the new information to a real world application and/or the students' prior knowledge. I want them to have a vested interest in the material rather than just a surface knowledge to answer simple questions. They will need to know, understand and DO each day. The poster will explicitly state the "activator" (to be completed in the first 5 minutes), the "BIG idea" or learning objective, and what they will know, do, and be throughout the lesson.