Mitchell School Improvement Team Agenda - 1/31/17

Dear Mitchell SIT,
I am looking forward to our time together tomorrow morning.

Our agenda will focus on our IB developments at Mitchell. In particular we are going to extend our discussion from the last SIT meeting (where we focused on assessment) and gain additional perspectives from parents and community members on:

1. The revised IB assessment policy
2. A draft of an IB report card addendum (possibly for use during the March reporting time period).

If you have questions, please let me know.

See you at 7:30...I'll bring coffee :-)
Kevin

Mitchell SIT Agneda - 12/6 @ 7:30 AM

Mitchell-Scarlett Community Room
December 6, 2016
7:30 - 8:30 AM

Hello!
We are excited to be meeting with the Mitchell School Improvement Team today to get some important input and feedback related to the development of the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) at Mitchell.

Meeting topic: PYP assessment policy

1. Morning message - and coffee talk (10 mins)
• Be ready to introduce yourself and share something you know - or believe - about school report cards.
2. Greeting (5 mins)
3. Sharing (5 mins)
4. Activity (25 mins)
5.  
6. Discussion and reflection (10 mins)

Get ready for the most interesting Mitchell School Improvement Meeting you've ever attended.

Note: The format of today's meeting is connected to the Responsive Classrooom morning meeting practice shared and discussed at the last Mitchell principal coffee:

Minutes - SIT Meeting, 11.1.16

November 1, 2016  -  SIT Notes

IB: I Know and Questions

-How do I communicate the great learning we are doing through our report card

-Is there a visual way to communicate information through the report card

-Inquiry through art, how do teachers find resources to support curriculum

-IB changed our practice, how do we connect our units to our community

-Inquiry model, report card – how does my child get there – the process rather than the product, how does my child develop globally minded

-How will our work impact achievement

-Raises expectations for kids and finding that kids can do it, when will I have my 5 minute elevator speech ready

-More opportunities for language development, what is the balance of direct instruction inside project based/inquiry learning, how can we be documenting/representing what we are doing here to support other schools

-Experienced IB as a high school student – prepared me for college and thinking skills

Proposal for the group:

-Focus on development of family engagement activities

-Support development of literacy practices (teachers)

This was discussed and supported as foci for school imporvement

Family Engagement – Things We Already Do

-EMU Parent Writing Project Night (MH)

-ESL Classes at Mitchell with Washtenaw Literacy (JB)

-MFLI Book Give-Away connected to CLN (JB)

-How could we connect culture to reading – Reading night through a culture dinner/cultural and parents can interact through that event. The cultural event could be the draw (KL)

-End of unit culminating event (MS) Promote these on the calendar

-Kindergarten Beyond Bedtime Stories, students and families (LT)

-Partnership proposal for community center room – thinking of the notion of globalness, Spanish classes 4 sessions for K-2 parents in October, 3-5 parents in November

           -Deliberate opportunities to help families get to know each other

           -Invited Spanish speaking families to serve as the experts/resource

           -Food is important, it’s a draw

-Cooking classes or parents provide/teach a class, people like to show their stuff (LT)

Is this the way to go? Why? And what’s the process?

-Ideas would be vetted and we’d choose which to focus on. Which ones will help us to leverage achievement?

-Two parts: Connections to school improvement and parents access to the community center to teach a class/etc. (LT)

-A form we could use so parents can propose a class? (SG)

-Use the community we’ve already established through the Spanish/English classes, informal approach to talk about/use the community center (KL)

-Crucial piece is deciding who will be the core organizer of the community center and developing the room, develop a curriculum for family engagement (CR)

-Small group that would like to meet and talk about this room and the process for how we use this space/do this work (KK)

-Tree house analogy, parent liaison (CR)

Next steps:

Develop family liaison job description

Develop process for moving forward with "activity" for family engagement

December SIT Meeting Focus

- Updates on family liaison, job description and process for how we do the work
-  PYP Assessment Policy - read it and give feedback

School Improvement Team Agenda - November 1, 2016

Mitchell-Scarlett Community Center
November 1, 2016
7:30 AM


Note: If you have time before the next meeting, please over ideas we've previously generated for the Mitchell-Scarlett Community Center.

Introductions - During this time, please be prepared to share something you know about IB at Mitchell and one question you have about IB at Mitchell.

Proposal for focus of Mitchell SIT for 2016-17
1. Development of family engagement activities
2. Support development of teaching and achievement practices listed in the school improvement plan


Dates for Mitchell SIT 2016-17
November 1
December 6
January 10
January 31
March 7
April 13
May 3
June 6

Thank you and your input please

Dear Mitchell School Improvement Team,

It was a pleasure to meet with all of you today.  We are a new team!  Thank you for your interest and commitment as we continue to shape the learning environment at Mitchell.

Two things to share:

1. I have sent invitations for the proposed dates and times of upcoming school improvement team meetings. They are all on a weekday at 7:30 AM which seemed to be an OK way to proceed for our group.  If you did not get email invitations, please let me know and I will try again.

2.  At the meeting today, we decided to collect input from our group to understand the areas of interest and possible areas of focus.  Please CLICK HERE for a recap of today's meeting and to give your input.

Once we have received the input (by the end of the week I hope), we will be in touch again to share.

If you have questions, I would like to help.

Thank you.

Kevin

Follow up to 10/5 SIT meeting

Dear Mitchell School Improvement Team,

Thank you for all of the questions, input and questions today at our first meeting of the year!  I am excited about the energy and possibilities we have in front of us.

My recap of today's meeting shows below.  It may be that I missed something. If this is the case, your reminder/input can be received using the link below :-).

We left the meeting with the direction of giving input about possible focus areas for SIT (including several ideas that came up at the first meeting):
- Details about Education Yes! to better understand the tool and possible areas of focus.
- Grammar and the teaching of Standard English
- Understanding the current data of the school
- Understanding the way teaching and learning is approached at Mitchell (and how the IB Primary Years Programme will change that)
- Developing the use of the Mitchell-Scarlett Community Center in connection family needs

We also talked about having time at SIT meetings to report out and/or share ideas. 

We surfaced a possible idea of having subcommittees form to work on a specific issue. Relative to subcommittee, having the SIT work with PTO representatives to looking at pick up and drop off procedures was brought up.  Given the input from SIT and PTO parents at this time, we will form a subcommittee to look at this and give input.  If you are interested, please let Kevin or Mrs. Liddell know....or put it in the Google Doc link below.

I'd like your input and thoughts.  Would you please CLICK HERE to share?

Kevin and Matt will use this input to shape and propose our next SIT agenda and the direction for the year.

Thank you.
Kevin

Mitchell School Improvement Team Meeting

Mitchell-Scarlett Community Center
October 5, 2016
7:30 AM

For our first meeting of the year, I am hoping each member will read the following before coming to the meeting:
A. The purpose of the Mitchell SIT team is to:
     - Support the requirements of Education Yes!;
     - Facilitate the improvement of Mitchell School through the analysis of data;
     - Implement strategies to support Education Yes! strand 4;
     - Fulfill the requirements of Public Act 25 of 1990.
     - Come to the meeting with one question you have bout the purpose of the SIT
B. Look over the current draft of the Mitchell School Improvement Plan (SIP)
     - Before coming to the meeting, please share 2-3 things you notice about the SIP on THIS document
C. Look over ideas we've previously generated for the Mitchell-Scarlett Community Center

At the meeting, we will:
1. Introduce ourselves
2. Answer at least three of the questions from A above (maybe more if it makes sense)
3. Spend at least 10 minutes sharing what was noticed in the current draft of the SIP
4. Dialogue about the community center proposal, share the current work, and discuss

I'm also open to suggestions in revising / tailoring the agenda if you have suggestions.