November

Week of November 26th - November 30th

Important Dates:

Thursday Nov. 29th: MS/HS Band Concert @ 7-8:30pm HSPAC

"On Thursday, November 29 please join us for our MS/HS Band concert. The concert will begin at 7 PM in the HS PAC. Our very own Intermediate Band and Wind Ensemble will perform some delightful bonbons, then the HS Concert Band will perform under the direction of Mr. John Leonard. Hope you can make it, if you are interested in dorm hours, we are also in need of a few teachers to sit with the students in the audience during the concert. Kind regards, hope to see you there and thanks, Derek"

Friday Nov. 30th: MS Faculty Meeting @ 8:00am in the MS Library, Announced Fire Drill @ 10:15am

Sunshine:

Please bookmark this Sunshine Weekly link to stay informed of information and events going on in our community. To subscribe to the blog for automatic updates, scroll to the very bottom and enter your email address.

Athletics:

You can read the latest News on Athletics Website which is updated every Friday.

Lists of absent students can be found here and also on our Arts, Athletics and Activities Calendar.

SLL:

A big THANK YOU to SLL International Trip Leads for planning and facilitating advisory presentations that have kept students and staff informed about opportunities to serve and lead within a global context this year.

Enrollment for international trips closes at 12:00pm today, with students who don’t elect to participate in the international option, set to engage with service projects that will benefit Jeju. We are still interested in your project ideas and insight about how best to approach this! You can share them here.

Next steps will be to plan the classroom learning component of each international and local experience. We are striving to build connections and context that will prepare students and teachers to engage with service projects that are meaningful, and through which the direct impact of our actions is clear. We’re looking forward to exploring these opportunities to serve, learn, and lead, and will be sharing details with students soon!

Dorms:

If you are a sponsoring any MS activity that requires students to leave or return to the dorms outside of their usual dorm student schedule, please contact the Deans (cwampler@kis.ac and bfisk@kis.ac) in advance so we can support you and the students.

To check out all the exciting learning happening in the KISJ MS Dorms follow us on Twitter @KISJ_Dorms.

Technology:

The MS Intranet site has been updated. Please use this site to help you find important school information and links to documents or websites you might need.

Semester 1 Reporting: I will be offering a training session on The Super Fast Report Writer and Powerschool December 4th and 6th to help with writing comments and reporting out Semester 1 grades. Use the form to sign up for a session that best fits your schedule.

Tech Bytes: Google Expeditions is a great way to immerse your students in a topic using VR. Expeditions allows teachers to guide students through collections of 360° scenes and 3D objects gaining a different perspective on a topic. Pre-made lessons include a guided script pointing out interesting sites and artifacts along the way and leveled questions to focus students attention.

Instructional Coach:

Similar to last year, Q2 is time for data collection in support of your personal-professional goal. Please let me know if there’s an area that I can support you in to ensure you’re collecting the data that you’d like.
Are you working on a new unit? Creating a rubric/checklist that you’d like feedback? Please send me an email and I’d be happy to function as a second set of eyes.

Counseling:

Dear Colleagues, Thank you for welcoming counselors into your classrooms for the ongoing Teen Safety child protection unit and being flexible with students participation in Academic Support as a result.

The schedule is attached below for reference and review. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to reach out to your grade level counselor.

Associate Principal:

Fire Drill: November 30th @10:15. In the meantime you will be given a clipboard to keep all fire drill related information on and hooks will be installed near your classroom door where this clipboard can be placed.

Advisory Dinners: If planning a dinner with your advisory please keep the following things in mind; 1) make the start time at 6:00 (any earlier and you will be asking students to leave their athletic team or Drama/Music rehearsal for your dinner) 2) complete the MS Event Request Form at least 2 weeks in advance.

Principal:

MS Recruitment: Together with the MS Associate Principal search panel, I am pleased to announce the next MS Associate Principal. Please join me in welcoming Mr. Douglas Berringer to the KISJ community. Mr. Berringer hails from the USA, and will be joined by his family here in Jeju. He holds a Master of Arts in School Administration and brings with him a decade of leadership experience most recently serving as Deputy Principal in the UAE. I’d like to thank Whitney Little, Mareena Kohtala and Luke Zaya along with Scott Brown for their involvement in a successful MS AP search. Please stay tuned for opportunities to interact with Mr. Berringer.

MS Appreciation: We need your help! Please click here and indicate your location preference for our upcoming faculty appreciation event which will be held on January 25th or 26th depending on availability. Transportation will be provided, thank you for your input in planning this event.

Seeking your feedback: Please take a moment and provide feedback on Assessing Standards of Learning in Middle School. We will look for departmental patterns and trends to inform decisions around assessment expectations in the future.

Communicating Learning: Teachers, as you prepare for the end of the semester please click here to view the revised S1 reporting guidelines. Please note the deadlines dates and times in your calendar.

PD Opportunity: #PubPDAsia is a unique PD initiative that combines a face to face session with the power of Twitter. Across Asia, groups of educators will come together to chat in person on the topic for the month: Change. The event poster includes the questions for this topic. Each group will also connect with the others through the use of Twitter and the chat hashtag. We're excited to be hosting a Jeju location for this event. This is an amazing way to connect both with our local and global communities. Tuesday, November 27th at 7PM at Smokehouse Facebook event invitation Questions? Talk to Josh Wood, Angela Campagna, or Mareena Kohtala

Week of November 19th - November 23rd

Important Dates:

Tuesday November 20th: No morning meeting

Thursday November 22nd: MS Elective teachers SIOP PD

Friday November 23rd: MS Department meetings @ 8:00am and MS Elective teachers SIOP PD

Sunshine:

Athletics:

The marathon is almost over! Thanks to our MS Coaches, Alex, Hilary, Nicole, Neil, Lindsey, Julia S, Andrew, and Maria from the dorms, for their dedication to the longest season ever (12 weeks). Enjoy some much deserved rest.

You can read the recap from Season 1 on the Athletics Website which will be posted on Tuesday.

Lists of absent students can be found here and also on our Arts, Athletics and Activities Calendar.

Next Week Events:

MS Girls Volleyball Try-outs, Monday & Wednesday @ MS Gym
MS Boys Volleyball Try-outs, Tuesday & Thusrday @ MS Gym

SLL:

International Service Learning and Leading trips enrollment is in full swing! This year the following international opportunities are being offered to Middle School DRAGONS:

Grade 6: Guam (Trip Leader: Mr. Seth Hills)
Grade 7: Taiwan (Trip Leader: Ms. Nicole Kipfer)
Grade 8: Cambodia (Trip Co-leaders: Mr. Luke Zaya, Mr. Paul Boland)

Next week advisory groups will meet for Grade Level assemblies on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in the MS PAC in order to address specific student questions about trip details. If upon reviewing trip details you still have curiosities or doubts, please bring these ideas to a discussion among Color Groups, and ultimately to Leaders for the trip so that answers to your questions can be presented next week.

Please remember that enrollment for International Trips closes on Friday, November 23.

Students who do not participate in their grade level international trip opportunity will undertake Service Learning and Leading projects with local community partnerships on Jeju. These experiences are in the early stages of planning, with details on the way! If you have ideas about local service partnerships or opportunities we should consider to explore, please see this form. If you have any curiosities, doubts, or ideas, please feel free to contact kwilke@kis.ac in order to share them!

Technology:

Hour of Code (Dec. 3-9) Volunteers needed! This started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities throughout classrooms.

If you are interested in taking 1 hour of your class time the week of December 3rd for an hour of code activity, please let me know and we can work together to figure out a plan.

Tech Bytes: Pear Deck allows you to spice up your presentations, add interactive formative assessment questions and give students a chance to apply what they are learning in your slideshow. It is an add on to Google Slides integrates into Google Classroom and saves information on Drive.

Counseling:

Dear Colleagues, A special thanks to all of our KIS Reads teachers for welcoming counselors into your classrooms for the Child Protection and Safeguarding Teen Safety unit. Thank you all for being understanding and flexible with students participation in Academic Support this past week and beyond.

Students have and will continue to learn how to prevent, recognize, and respond appropriately to unsafe situations. Throughout Q2 we’ll be working with Advisory Leads to reinforce and expand this unit in Advisory. In S2 we’ll be collaborating with our Physical Education teachers to embed Child Protection and Safeguarding into the Health curriculum.

The unit schedule is attached below for your reference and review. If you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Counseling

Associate Principal:

A new supervision rotation starts on November 22. Please check the supervision schedule to confirm your responsibilities.

Club Showcase assembly in the MSPAC during club time November 22. Students are to report to their advisory first, leave all of their belongings there, then walk with and sit with their advisor in the MSPAC.

Restroom usage: In an effort to continue our Child Safeguarding practices and protection of teachers, all Teaching faculty, staff and adults will refrain from using student restrooms. Adults will only use the restrooms marked Staff Only located on each floor of the MS building.

Principal:

Communicating Learning: Communicating progress to students and parents consistently via Google Classroom, and individual email is crucial to maintaining open lines of communication between the classroom and home. Communication with all stakeholders is particularly key if you detect a sincere change in learning outputs or perhaps a social emotional concern. Our goal is no surprises at the end of the semester, in order to achieve this communication is key. Teachers, as you prepare for the end of the semester please click here to view the revised S1 reporting guidelines. Please note the deadlines dates and times in your calendar.

MS Recruitment: I am currently attending the Search Associates Recruitment Fair in Bangkok, my goal is to finalize a short list of candidates for the MS Associate Principal position leading to an offer of employment. I will also be supporting other senior leaders in the search for several other leadership positions at KISJ. Our incoming Academic Head, Shawn Vento will be in touch with the middle school faculty in respect to plans for the upcoming MS Principal search. If you have any questions or would like to offer your input please contact Shawn directly.

Final Call: off-campus housing stipend: Please click here and indicate which KISJ sponsored events and dorm related activities you’ve attended. Our accounting team needs this information as soon as possible for November payroll. Today is the final opportunity to qualify for payment in the month of November.

Week of November 12th - November 16th

Important Dates:

Tuesday November 13th: MS Faculty Stand-up meeting @ 8:00am MS Library

Friday November 16th: MS Department Collaborations @ 8:00am

Faculty Council:

The Faculty Council met this past week for the month of November. Please see our Public Minutes of the meeting as there are updates to some concerns brought directly to us from the MS division. As a friendly reminder, please let us know if you have anything you would like your council representatives to know by completing this MS Faculty Council form or seeing Brian or Stacy. Our next meeting is November 26.

Sunshine:

Athletics:

Thank you to our super MS soccer coaches Alex, Hilary, Nicole and Andrew (dorms) for giving up not one, but both of their weekend days this past weekend to provide our students the opportunity to compete at the Songdo 7s Soccer tournament in Seoul.

It was a great experience for our students to compete against some of the best competition on the mainland. You can read the latest News on Athletics Website which is updated every Friday. Lists of absent students can be found here and also on our Arts, Athletics and Activities Calendar.

KISAC - November 16th & 17th:

A detailed schedule of the below events will be send out on Monday.

HS Girls Volleyball @ KISJ
HS Boys Volleyball @ SJA
MS Girls Badminton @ BHA (Friday Only)
MS Boys Badminton @ NLCS (Friday Only)
MS Girls Soccer @ BHA
MS Boys Soccer @ NLCS

Dorms:

Due to prohibitively high costs and many students expressing a distaste for much of the meal, the KISJ Dorms will not be hosting a Thanksgiving dinner this year. These resources will instead be used to support dorm students in connecting with the community in other ways.

Technology:

If you are interested in taking 1 hour of your class time during this week to dedicate to an hour of code activity, please let me know and we can work together to figure out a plan.

Technology Bytes: Google Classroom Student Selector (This one's for Android users). The Classroom android app allows for you to randomly call on or select a student essentially a “popsicle sticks” app. Go to the people tab, select the icon with 3 squares and a diamond in the upper right hand corner. A random student will pop up when you need another student, click next. You also have the option to call on that student later or choose absent if they are not in class.

Instructional Coach:

How can I help? I would love to get into classrooms more and work with you on data collection in progress to your personal professional goal, or any other instructional/curricular projects you have going on. Working with teachers and students is important and I’d like to do more! Please reach out, jsnider@kis.ac.

Counseling:

Dear Colleagues, Just a friendly reminder that the counseling department will begin the Child Protection and Safeguarding Teen Safety unit with our students on Monday, November 12th. Students will learn how to prevent, recognize, and respond appropriately to unsafe situations.

Counselors will introduce this unit through KIS Reads/Academic Support. Throughout Q2 we’ll be working with Advisory Leads to reinforce and expand this unit in Advisory. In S2 we’ll be collaborating with our Physical Education teachers to embed Child Protection and Safeguarding into the Health curriculum.

* If you’re a KIS Reads teacher and you haven’t received a google invite corresponding to the schedule below, please follow up with us via email at your earliest convenience. Thank you so much for all of your time and support!

Associate Principal:

Restroom usage: All Teaching faculty, staff and adults will refrain from using student restrooms. Adults will only use the restrooms marked Staff Only located on each floor of the MS building.

Restorative Practices: I will be sharing restorative question cards to all faculty over the next 2 weeks during your team meetings. Please keep this card in your wallet or id card case in order to have easy access when having restorative conversations with students. If you have any questions or need some clarification regarding these cards please let me know.

Principal:

Communicating Learning: MS departments are currently focused on reviewing and formatting all assessed standards in each course to ensure our future PowerTeacherPro gradebook is ready to use in S2. Department leads are guiding this process in respective departments, teachers, you are integral to this process ensuring accuracy and congruence - thank you for your oversight here. Ultimately, the middle school hopes to soon adopt a semester report similar to the ES that communicates learning effectively with students and parents.

Atlas: Please continue to allocate your time accordingly during planning periods (non-student contact time) toward staying up-to-date on ATLAS curriculum mapping. You might consider using the Atlas Style Guide to direct your work. If you have questions please reach out to Julia Snider, Rick Odum or myself, we are here to help.

Sharing our learning: We are looking to continue to engage our parent community in second semester, please email me directly if you’d like to facilitate an upcoming Dragons Dialogue. Based upon parent and teacher feedback our focus for November is Standards Referenced Assessment and Reporting and in December we will revisit TCRWP Essentials.

Off-campus housing stipend: Please click here and indicate which KISJ sponsored events and dorm related activities you’ve attended. Our accounting team needs this information as soon as possible for November payroll.

Week of November 5th - November 10th

Important Dates:

Monday November 5th: MS Department Leads meet @ 4:05pm in MS Community Center

Tuesday November 6th: MS Faculty Stand-up meeting @ 8:00am MS Library, MS Leadership meet with MS PAB @ 10:00am

Wednesday November 7th-9th: 8th Grade Seoul trip

Friday November 9th: School wide and MS department meetings @ 8:00am

November 10th: Typhoon make-up day, Students depart campus @ 12:30pm, teachers may leave at 12:45pm

Sunshine:

Athletics:

You can read the latest News on Athletics Website which is updated every Friday.

Lists of absent students can be found here and also on our Arts, Athletics and Activities Calendar.

Technology:

Looking for volunteers: The HTC Vive is up and running. I am looking for some teachers who would want to work with me in creating a lesson with their students that uses AR/VR technology. This is a list of the applications we currently have, but I am always looking for more. (Video Link)

Instructional Coach:

Counseling:

Dear Colleagues, Starting the week of November 12th the counseling department will begin the Child Protection and Safeguarding Teen Safety unit with our students. Students will learn how to prevent, recognize, and respond appropriately to unsafe situations and identify at least one Safe Friend and Safe Adult they can turn to for support if needed.

Counselors will introduce this unit, across grade levels, through KIS Reads/Academic Support. Please reference and review the schedule below at your earliest convenience. Throughout Q2 we’ll be working with Advisory Leads to reinforce and expand this unit in Advisory. In S2 we’ll be collaborating with our Physical Education teachers to embed Child Protection and Safeguarding into the Health curriculum.

We’ll be following up directly with all KIS Reads teachers next week. In the meantime and always if you have any questions or concerns please don’t hesitate to let us know. Thank you for all of your support!

Please see the schedule at the bottom of the weekly.

Associate Principal:

Multi-Purpose Room usage: STUCO has started the process of identifying behavior guidelines regarding this new student space. This is a work in progress so please be patient, in the meantime remind your students to adhere to these behavior guidelines:

Respect the space

Return items/furniture to their original spot

Clean up after yourself

November 10th: Is a shortened schedule day for our students. G6 special schedule, G7 special schedule. Please look over these and direct questions to your team leader.

Seoul trip elective/club coverage: Please note if you are an 8th grade teacher chaperoning the 8th Grade Seoul trip and you teach 6th and 7th graders as well, you will need to make sure your classes have coverage including electives and clubs. Complete the sub request form asap.

Principal:

Seeking Feedback: Thank you for taking the time to complete the WASC perception survey forwarded to you by DOTL Rick Odum. If you have not received the link to the survey please contact Dr. Odum directly.

Classroom observations: Teachers, I would like to hear from you as to what you'd like continuous feedback on this academic year as I informally 'walkthrough' and observe your class, meeting, workshop or learning opportunity. As you think about providing me with guidance refer to your personal or team goal, or perhaps your department challenge planner, consider our MS Road Map (all speak to one another). What is one observable item you'd like feedback on? Please click here to let me know.

Sharing our learning: We are looking to engage our parent community several more times this semester, please email me directly if you’d like to facilitate an upcoming Dragons Dialogue in November or December.

Off-campus housing stipend: Please click here and indicate which events and dorm related activities you’ve attended. Our accounting team needs this information as soon as possible for November payroll.

Planning with the end in mind: On December 21st faculty may depart campus from 1:30pm onward. Note, all S1 grades and comments must be complete prior to your departure from campus.

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