Friday Focus - November 2, 2012

• Let's all give a big hand to our Teacher of the Year, Mrs. Flower, and our School-Related Employee of the Year, Mr. McStay. Congratulations to the both of you!

• We are going to be conducting a school-wide evacuation drill in December. Please remember that the north side of the park is our evacuation destination. Please meet with your teams to ensure that everyone is aware of our procedures. We will have a short training at our November faculty meeting to go over the specifics of our evacuation procedures.
• Report cards are due to team leaders next Monday. Team leaders will review them and submit them to administration next Wednesday.
• There will be no school next Tuesday for voting. Please get out and vote if you haven't done so already. I do not like to get political, but I think that it is imperative that I encourage you to vote "NO" on Amendment 8. It is being labeled "Religious Freedom", although this is not what is at the core of the amendment (we already have as much freedom of religion that we can have). Public funding of religious private schools is the perhaps unintended consequence that will cause the most harm. The education funding piece of pie will not get bigger; it will only be divided into smaller pieces, directly affecting our public and charter schools.
• Our Fall Book Fair will continue through next Thursday.
• 1st Quarter Honor Roll names should be given to Mrs. Tusa next Thursday. Please also submit to me the name of your "Terrific Kid" for the 1st quarter on this day as well.
• Days 1 and 2 of our next round of data chats will take place next Thursday and Friday. Please refer to my email on this subject sent two weeks ago.
• Barnes and Noble Night is next Thursday at 6:00. I hope to see many of you there!
• Next Friday is Miss Alaineus Day. I'm looking forward to see how everyone is displaying vocabulary words throughout the school. One of the areas of weakness for many of our students based on the first round of the FAIR was vocabulary. How many of us are deliberately implementing vocabulary strategies in our reading instruction that are designed to improve student performance in this area?

Quote of the Week - "If you don't smile until Thanksgiving, your students never will." - Todd Whitaker.  I hope that we are still working on building our relationships with our students.  It is amazing how much they can accomplish when they trust their teacher.