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Week of September 17th - 21st
Week of September 17th - 21st
Important Dates:
Important Dates:
September 15th-18th: Just Learning 2 Conference - Stronge & Abrams
September 21 and 27: are both B days
September 21st: MS Department Meetings @ 8am, MS Department Leads to forward calendar invites and agendas.
Sunshine:
Sunshine:
Happy Friday everyone! Thank you to those who donated to supplement the Sunshine budget. 75,000 won worth of donations were received. Moving forward, we will keep you abreast of how the money is spent.
In addition, thank you for your patience as we are navigating a new platform for our Sunshine Weekly. We’ve found that sending the link directly through email is most efficient. Therefore, if you would like to receive the Sunshine Weekly each Monday morning, please add your name to THIS FORM. Otherwise Please bookmark this 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.
Saturday, October 20th: The Leadership Team would like to invite you to decompress after the busy Family Weekend by joining them for pizza and beer following the close of the weekend. Time and Location TBA (but it will be somewhere on campus).
Teacher Appreciation Dinner(s)
This year, in order to address the complications of space and child care, we will be honoring teachers in divisional celebrations instead of a school-wide party. We hope that this will allow more teachers to plan to be a part of this annual event that is intended to pay tribute to the commitment that teachers at KISJ show every day. Please mark your calendars for the following date January 25th or 26th.
Athletics:
Athletics:
*Season 1 Games Begins*
Finally, the first week of action is set to to begin next Wednesday. Please take some time to stop by and support your MS Dragon athletes, they certainly will appreciate it. All games have an approximate 4:45pm start time. For future dates, you can view the schedules at either www.gecathletics.com or www.kisjdragons.com
Wednesday, September 19th
- MS Boys Soccer @ HS Field (A & B) @ Stadium Field (C&D)
- MS Girls Soccer @ NLCS
- MS Girls Badminton @ BHA
- MS Boys Badminton @ NLCS
NEW Faculty CPR Class: A reminder to all ALL NEW Faculty signed up to take the KISJ CPR Course from the American Red Cross. Course dates and times are listed on the google document. If you haven't completed the online portion of the course it is recommended that you complete it within the next week. Upon arrival for the in class session please report to room H309.
Dorms:
Dorms:
A reminder that all teaching faculty are contractually required to participate in tutoring, clubs, activities or sports at least 1 season out of 3. Employees are also required to participate in a dorm activity 1 time per month or attend 4 KISJ events per semester. Employees in off-campus housing will receive a stipend of USD $1,500 per year for these activities. The stipend will be paid out in 2 installments of USD $750 in November and May. Should there be changes in the housing situation in the middle of the contracted term, the stipend will be adjusted accordingly. Should the employee not complete part of or all of the duties, the stipend will be adjusted accordingly.
Please see MS Faculty Commitments Explained for more details.
If you are a teacher who is sponsoring any type of MS activity that will require 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.
Technology:
Technology:
The MS Create Space website is up and running. Please refer to this for technology check out, resources in the spaces and for check out along with times to bring your classes into the spaces for projects. We would love to work with you.
If you are looking for a PD opportunity please take a look at this Google Summit in Seoul. This is a two day events where teachers and trainers who are Google for Education experts run sessions for educators on the best use of Google tools across schools.
Tech Bytes: You can now add MATERIALS in Google Classroom. These are documents you want your students to have but not assignments students will complete, ie. syllabus, procedures, topic related reading. This is done on the classwork page. Click + CREATE, select MATERIALS and add the attachment.
Instruction Coach:
Instruction Coach:
- We have online access to the ASCD publication, Educational Leadership. This will enable you to access the most current edition of the journal.
Username: hslibrarian@kis.ac Password: kisjeju
- We have several books for each content area in our Professional Collection! Please come to the Community Center to see what is relevant to your content area.
Counseling:
Counseling:
New Student Support: Throughout the remainder of Q1 counselors will be conferencing one-on-one with our new students to establish rapport and provide transitional support. We will do our best to minimize their absence from core and elective classes. Thank you for your understanding and support.
New Student Pizza Luncheons: Counseling will be hosting Pizza Luncheons next week to support the successful transition of all of our new students. All luncheons will be held in the MS R&D Collaborative Space 4. Schedules are listed below for reference. All new students will be informed via email but friendly reminders are always welcome.
- 6th Grade ~ Wednesday, September 19th - 1st Lunch 11:45-12:20
- 7th Grade ~ Wednesday, September 19th - 2nd Lunch 12:25-12:55
- 8th Grade ~ Thursday, September 20th - 1st Lunch 11:45-12:20
Associate Principal:
Associate Principal:
DRAGON Challenge: Have a 1-minute discussion with 3 students about a World Issue!
Fire Drill: Our first fire drill will take place on September 28th 10:15am. This is an announced Drill. Please ensure you have the ES/MS Fire drill document and your advisory list printed. Collect your Red and Green “Signs” from your mailbox this week.
Student email Communication: Students are not allowed to send emails using the “Class of 2023, 2024, 2025” addresses. Any emails sent using these email addresses are filtered to Mr. Keith and will not be approved. If students would like to send an education-related form or education-related email to their entire class, they must speak with their teacher or advisor for approval and have their teacher or advisor send the email on their behalf. All “Class of 202*” emails that have been sent out by students this week have not been approved. Please encourage students to re-communicate these through the process mentioned above. This has also been communicated to students via the student weekly.
Access to Dorms: Due to safety concerns, students are not allowed to access the dorms during the school day.
Uniform: Students who ordered KIS hoodies will receive them on 9/27. Students and parents will receive information soon regarding the ordering process for KISJ Jackets. In the meantime they are only allowed to wear their personal winter jackets outside and in the hallways when it is cold.
MS Deli: The deli will no longer be available to students during break time as of 9/27/18
Physical Contact: Please continue to encourage students to observe and uphold the acceptable body contact rules. Handshakes, Highfives and Fistbumps, Quick Hugs, are okay! Everything else is not okay!
Campus departure: All students are expected to depart campus by 4:20pm daily. Exceptions include sport practice, drama rehearsal, or use of the MS Library. Teachers please encourage students to follow these guidelines.
Principal:
Principal:
Communicating Learning: As we enter into the sixth full week of the first quarter, you are already familiar with communicating learning outcomes expectations. Throughout the quarter, teachers will communicate exclusively with students via Google Classroom with respect to feedback on the learning process. Assignments, rubrics, and expectations are to be posted in Google Classroom and all formative and summative numerical feedback will be communicated via Google Classroom. Students must be provided multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency, therefore regular documented feedback is required. At the conclusion of each quarter teachers will post final grades and DRAGONS scores in PowerSchool, all data must be entered this quarter no later than 8:00am on Thursday October 4th. Q1 reports will be made available to students and parents at 5pm on Friday October 5th.
JL2: On the eve of our conference there are a just few updates to get you ready for learning this weekend. Click here to view the Sched, and note that busses will be running at the following times: Saturday: Leave Village 8:45, Leave KISJ 12:30, Leave KISJ 4:30 and Sunday: Leave Village 8:45, Leave KISJ 12:30, Leave KISJ 4:30. Please bring your laptop along to each workshop,
PGP: Thank you Paul and Alisha for providing a lesson example for evaluators to calibrate feedback on, your contributions are directly supporting the continued growth and development of our division and school. If anyone else would like to contribute a lesson you are welcome to do so.
Our MS Road Map still needs a little more fine tuning (design wise) before printing a final iteration for SY’18/19 however content revisions are confirmed - please click here to view our Road Map. Teams and individuals will refer to our division goal when confirming goals for SY’18/19. Please click here and read the PGP document closely. This coming week teams will continue crafting team goals and Rick Odum, our Director of Teaching and Learning will follow up in respect to providing further support as you craft your personal professional goal. Your evaluator will host a meeting on Friday September 28th to go over the evaluative aspect of the PGP. Team and personal goals are to be finalized by Friday September 28th.
Faculty Counsel: The Faculty Council met this past week for the month of September. Please see our Public Minutes of the meeting. As a friendly reminder, the council is still identifying ways that we can be most helpful and supportive to our colleagues. However, we can only do so when we hear your voice! Please let us know if you have anything you would like your council representatives know by completing this MS Faculty Council form.
Week of September 10th-14th
Week of September 10th-14th
Important Dates:
Important Dates:
Tuesday September 11th: MS Faculty Morning Meeting @ 8:00am in MS Library
Friday September 14th: MS Faculty Meeting @ 8:00am in MS Library
September 15th-18th: Just Learning 2 Conference - Stronge & Abrams
Sunshine:
Sunshine:
Thank you to those who made a donation this week to supplement the Sunshine Committee budget. To date, we have received 35,000 won worth of donations. These donations will be used for gestures of kindness within our middle school. As mentioned last week, these donation are anonymous and voluntary. If you wish to contribute, donations will be collected through Thursday, September 13 and you can simply place the money into the envelope in Stacy Breckell’s mailbox in the MS office. For transparency, we will share the funds that were collected in next week’s MS weekly, as well as keep you abreast of how the money is spent.
Please subscribe to the Sunshine Weekly if you haven’t done so yet. Click here and scroll to the bottom to enter your email. Thank you all so much for supporting our spread of 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:
Athletics:
Season 1 rosters are nearly finalized, thus far we have 122 MS students participating across 5 different sports, a slight increase from this time last year. Thank you to all the MS coaches for supporting or vision of providing as many students the opportunity to participate as possible. Your creativity and flexibility in maximizing the facilities is much appreciated. Season 1 coaches please join me for a meeting - September 11th, 6:00pm @ HS Mini-PAC
Dorms:
Dorms:
A reminder that all teaching faculty are contractually required to participate in tutoring, clubs, activities or sports at least 1 season out of 3. Employees are also required to participate in a dorm activity 1 time per month or attend 4 KISJ events per semester.
Employees in off-campus housing will receive a stipend of USD $1,500 per year for these activities. The stipend will be paid out in 2 installments of USD $750 in November and May. Should there be changes in the housing situation in the middle of the contracted term, the stipend will be adjusted accordingly. Should the employee not complete part of or all of the duties, the stipend will be adjusted accordingly.
Please see MS Faculty Commitments Explained for more details.
If you are a teacher who is sponsoring any type of MS activity that will require 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.
Technology:
Technology:
Google Classroom: Beyond Basics Workshop: Monday, September 10th and Friday, September 14th I will be offering a workshop on Google Classroom in the MS Community Center. This workshop will focus on:
- Organizational Practices
- Grading, commenting and returning student work (communicating learning)
- Google Classroom settings (custom headers, what email notifications to get and turn off)
- If you are interested in attending, please fill out the following form indicating the date and time of the session and any other information you would like to know about in regards to Classroom.
Tech Bytes: If you are tired of just typing directions into Classroom, think about adding video directions to your assignments instead. Use this link to take you through the steps to do this. If you use the Webcam Record Chrome Extension your videos are automatically saved it to Drive.
Instructional Coach:
Instructional Coach:
PD books are ready and waiting for you to sign out (thank you, Jenny!). The books below apply to any content area - preparing students to innovate; how to create and use rubrics; what easy ELL strategies can be immediately implemented in your teaching; and finally, the book that returning teachers are familiar with, Tom Schimmer’s book on assessment and feedback.
- Here is our MS PD Calendar - because it will be regularly updated and adjusted, you may want to revisit.
- I’d like to gauge interest around creating a place for teachers to showcase the learning that’s happening in classrooms. If this is something you think may be needed, please fill out this form: Showcasing (MS) Classroom Learning, and we can get the ball rolling.
- I will be visiting classrooms to see the fantastic learning that’s happening within our MS classrooms. You may see me pop into your classroom throughout the coming weeks.
The ELL site is intended to be a resource for teachers. In it, you will find ideas like effective word walls, sentence stems, SIOP strategies and more - check it out!
Counseling:
Counseling:
New Student Support: Throughout the remainder of Q1 counselors will be conferencing one-on-one with our new students to establish rapport and provide transitional support. We will do our best to minimize their absence from core and elective classes. We want to thank you all in advance for your flexibility and support.
We are also planning New Student Pizza Luncheons, with individual grade levels, upon our return from the Chuseok Break. Additional information will be shared once events are finalized.
Advisory: Advisors please take all of the advisory time you need to thoroughly introduce our updated Responsible Use Policy (RUP) for Technology. This introductory Digital Citizenship lesson will provide an important foundation for an ongoing Digital Citizenship Advisory Unit where we will explore significant themes to support the personal, social, and emotional developmental of our students, while helping them navigate their digital world in a healthy, respectful, and responsible manner.
* As a reminder, when students sign their RUP contract agreements in Advisory collect them immediately and deliver them, at your earliest convenience, to the MS Front Office. Our front office staff will communicate directly with parents and deliver contracts to our Associate Principal for safe-keeping.
Advisors please continue to provide constructive feedback, communicate and collaborate with your grade level Advisory Team Lead when needed. All of our Advisory Leads are working extremely hard to develop a flexible yet consistent structure to our program, while providing us with rich and relevant content to support the social/emotional development of our students. Don’t hesitate to lean on them as well as us, your counselors, for support when and if needed.
Associate Principal:
Associate Principal:
S1 Supervision schedule responsibilities are rotating 9/12 this week. Reference the supervision document to see if it is your turn. Please continue to encourage students to follow our acceptable body contact rule during your supervision.
Event and Facility requests: To help you plan an event or request a facility add the Middle School Event/Facility Calendar (click the blue plus sign at the bottom corner) to your calendars. Please view this “view only” calendar before submitting an event/facility request form. Please continue to use the MS Event form to make facility or event requests.
Dorm access: Due to safety concerns, students are not allowed to access the dorms during the school day.
KIS Hoodies: Students who ordered KIS hoodies will receive them on 9/27. Until then students should continue to wear KIS gear whenever possible.
KIS Jackets: Students and parents will receive information soon regarding the ordering process for KISJ Jackets.
Dragon challenge: Hold a door open for someone!
Principal:
Principal:
Communicating Learning: As we enter into the fifth week of the first quarter, now is a good time to revisit our communicating learning outcomes expectations. Throughout the quarter, teachers will communicate exclusively with students via Google Classroom with respect to feedback on the learning process. Assignments, rubrics, and expectations are to be posted in Google Classroom and all formative and summative numerical feedback will be communicated via Google Classroom. Students must be provided multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency, therefore regular documented feedback is required. Note: until our standards are updated in PowerSchool we will communicate learning in this manner. At the conclusion of each quarter teachers will post final grades and DRAGONS scores in PowerSchool.
Need support? Are your questions tech related? If so, plan to attend Whitney Little’s Google Classroom support sessions Monday, September 10th or Friday, September 14th. Are your questions related to assessing learning and attributes in your content area? Reach out to your respective department lead, our instructional coach, Julia Snider, or myself - we are here to guide this process.
PGP: School wide evaluators are collaborating with Rick Odum, Director of Teaching and Learning to calibrate our feedback on lesson observations. Teachers, we need your help with this - I would like to welcome anyone interested in providing a 20min video snapshot of a lesson to please communicate with me directly. Your willingness to offer a lesson for us to calibrate our feedback on would be greatly appreciated in respect to the continued growth and development of our division and school.
This week grade level teams will begin creating a team goal and on Friday September 14th all faculty will learn more about setting personal professional SMART goal. Much more from our Director of Teaching and Learning on this topic!
MS Staffing: I would like to invite internal candidates interested in applying for the role of Middle School Associate Principal to please contact me directly with your intentions and CV. I am currently working with HR and will have the position roles & responsibilities posted sometime next week.
HR Updates: I look forward to speaking with those of you have are thinking about recruiting this academic year. Please remember that I need to be included in your early resignation which must take place before Sept. 17th should you wish to qualify for the extra three recruitment days. Otherwise, the final deadlines is Oct. 29th. Please re-read the notes from Amos should you need further clarification.
Faculty Parents: For those who have children in grade 2 or higher please note your child may wait for pick-up in the ES Library or ES Office on days you are scheduled until 4:10pm.
Week of September 3rd - 7th
Week of September 3rd - 7th
Important Dates:
Important Dates:
Monday, Sept. 3 - MAP Testing Make Up @ 9:00am in MS Community Center
Tuesday Sept. 4th - MS Faculty Stand-up meeting @ 8:00am in the MS Library
Friday Sept. 7th - Department Meetings @8:00am, SW & MS Department Leads to send invitation and agenda
Sunshine:
Sunshine:
In our efforts to spread even more sunshine, we would be grateful if you would be willing to make a donation to supplement the Sunshine Committee budget. These donations will be used for gestures of kindness within our middle school (coffee, treats, candies, flowers, cards, things of that sort). A suggested donation is within the 10,000-20,000 range. However, please note this is completely voluntary and also anonymous. Therefore, whatever you choose to donate, if anything, is up completely up to you.
If you wish to support the financial efforts of the MS Sunshine Committee, please leave your donation in the envelope in Stacy’s mailbox. Donations will be collected from Monday, Sept 3rd - Thursday, Sept 13th. For transparency, in the Sept 14 MS weekly, we will share the funds that were collected and keep you abreast of how the money is spent.
Please bookmark the 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.
Technology:
Technology:
MAP TESTING: Thank you to everyone for all of your dedication toward MAP testing this week. Make-up tests for students who were absent these days will occur Monday (September 3rd) in the Community Center starting at 9:00. Please check this link to see students who need to report for testing.
Macbook Reimaging G6 & G8: Macbook Reimaging for 6th and 8th grade students will occur next week. Follow this schedule during Advisory times to drop off and pick up Macbooks.
- Remind students to save anything they want to keep on an external hard drive or a similar device. The software, applications, and profiles installed during the imaging process can not be erased.
- Before dropping computers, be sure students have done the following:
- Computer password changed to 1111 (video directions)
- On a Sticky note, write
- Full Name
- KIS Email Address
- Student ID
- Grade and Advisory Teacher
Google Classroom: Beyond Basics Workshop: Monday, September 10th and Friday, September 14th I will be offering a workshop on Google Classroom in the MS Community Center. This workshop will focus on:
- Organizational Practices
- Grading, commenting and returning student work
- Google Classroom settings (custom headers, what email notifications to get and turn off)
- If you are interested in attending, please fill out the following form indicating the date and time of the session and any other information you would like to know about in regards to Classroom.
Tech Bytes: Hangouts Chat chat.google.com has been opened up on our network. This is very similar to Hangouts, with a focus on group collaboration and communication. Groups can create virtual rooms and threaded conversations to help with organization, along with easily share documents, links and videos. Check out this link for more information.
Instruction Coach:
Instruction Coach:
- Books of the two consultants for JL2 are here, and we have a few extras. If you’d like a copy to prepare for the keynotes and sessions, please let me know.
- Saeree Moon, the Director of Admissions, will be visiting MS English classes next week, Sept 3-7, to observe the working level of English to inform Admissions practices and make necessary adjustments and improvements.
- Our MS PD Calendar is up and running, so please take a look at upcoming opportunities. This will be regularly updated and adjusted, you may want to revisit accordingly. Pay close attention to Sept. 26th and allocate your time accordingly.
- I’d like to gauge interest around creating a place for teachers to showcase the learning that’s happening in classrooms. If this is something you think may be needed, please fill out this form: Showcasing (MS) Classroom Learning, and we can get the ball rolling.
- If you’ve ever wondered how instructional coaches spend their time, please take a look at Coaching Roles - this may give you some ideas of how you can utilize me in your teaching practice.
Associate Principal:
Associate Principal:
S1 Supervision schedule responsibilities update. Reference the supervision document to see the changes.Please continue to encourage students to follow our acceptable body contact rule.
CCT: Air conditioning usage:
- Please make sure your doors are closed while running the AC unit.
- If leaving for an extended period of time please turn the AC unit off.
- Open your classroom windows once a day to prevent mold.
Event and Facility requests: To help you plan an event or request a facility add the Middle School Event/Facility Calendar (click the blue plus sign at the bottom corner) to your calendars. Please view this “view only” calendar before submitting an event/facility request form. Please continue to use the MS Event form to make facility or event requests.
Dragon challenge: Place a supportive message in another teacher’s mailbox!
Principal:
Principal:
Communicating Learning: As we enter into the fourth week of the first quarter, now is a good time to revisit our communicating learning outcomes expectations. Throughout the quarter, teachers will communicate exclusively with students via Google Classroom with respect to feedback on the learning process. Assignments, rubrics, and expectations are to be posted in Google Classroom and all formative and summative numerical feedback will be communicated via Google Classroom. Students must be provided multiple opportunities to demonstrate proficiency, therefore regular documented feedback is required. At the conclusion of each quarter teachers will post final grades and DRAGONS scores in PowerSchool. Need support? Are your questions tech related? If so, plan to attend Whitney Little’s Google Classroom support sessions Monday, September 10th or Friday, September 14th. Are your questions related to assessing learning and attributes in your content area? Reach out to your respective department lead, our instructional coach, Julia Snider, or myself - we are here to guide this process.
Professional Growth: Returning teachers please go to your Google Drive and locate your named folder from SY’17/18, this folder contains a lot of information you may want to refer back to as we begin to think about setting personal professional goals for this academic year. Bryan and I will create a SY’17/18 folder inside your existing folder and re-share it with you. Please take a moment and organize all docs from last year into that folder. New teachers, we will share a Google folder with your shortly, please simply add it to your Google Drive. The Senior Leadership Team is in the process of reviewing professional growth guidelines and will rollout revisions in September. Our faculty meeting September 14th will address our Professional Growth Plan.
Friday morning meetings for the remainder of Q1 we will follow the following Friday morning meeting schedule based on the HS ‘letter week’ rotation, please refer to the KISJ Schoolwide Calendar, subscribe to this calendar if you haven’t already by clicking on the blue ‘+’ at the bottom right.
(A Week) Division All Faculty Meeting (including Korean teachers)
(B Week) School Wide Departments (ELL, Music, PE, Languages, Tech), & MS Departments
(C Week) Divisional All Faculty Meeting (including Korean teachers)
(D Week) MS Departments
Typhoon makeup day is set for Saturday November 10th, 2018. Teachers, please note we will run a special schedule from 8:00am-12:30pm unless there is another incident which interrupts a full day of school before November 10th. Busses to depart at 12:45pm, teachers may leave thereafter. Parents, please consider child care options for children who are not yet school age and plan accordingly.
HR Updates: I look forward to speaking with those of you have are thinking about recruiting this academic year. Please remember that I need to be included in your early resignation which must take place before Sept. 17th should you wish to qualify for the extra three recruitment days. Otherwise, the final deadlines is Oct. 29th. Please re-read the notes from Amos should you need further clarification.
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