The blog hasn't seen much love over the summer. At times I felt like I bit off more than I could chew. My "jaw" is a little achy after this summer of fun, 2 grad courses, reboot, family, and household projects, but it was a welcomed break.
One way or another our doors are opening in just two short days to allow students back into classrooms. Already students are practicing and conditioning for fall sports. The building is shiny and clean, my classroom has a new coat of paint and new 1950s style grammar posters on the wall. All things that must be done to open the doors to students and make their environment fun and easy to learn in.
But the doors to my classroom have been opened and revamped in another way this fall. This year I have chosen to focus on communicating with parents more in a hope to achieve my Reboot Goal #2 - Boost Student Achievement. I want our students to be recognized not just for their sporting accomplishments, but for what they do in the classroom too!
The first step of that process was to create and send a letter to parents telling them a little bit about the class their student is taking as well and inviting open communication throughout the year. I was terrified to click send on the first email, but I did and in total emails went out to the parents of about 50 students. I hope that parents will be interesting in what their student is doing in class as well as sees that they are at school for more than just the game on Friday night.
The next steps of my plan to boost achievement will be posting updates on what is going on the classroom to the #emwolves twitter hashtag as well as send postcards to parents about good deeds or accomplishments I "caught" their student doing in the classroom. I think an actual piece of mail that they parents get and the students could see will be a nice reminder and something parents could put on the fridge, not something they probably get to do very often at the high school level.
One way or another our doors are opening in just two short days to allow students back into classrooms. Already students are practicing and conditioning for fall sports. The building is shiny and clean, my classroom has a new coat of paint and new 1950s style grammar posters on the wall. All things that must be done to open the doors to students and make their environment fun and easy to learn in.
But the doors to my classroom have been opened and revamped in another way this fall. This year I have chosen to focus on communicating with parents more in a hope to achieve my Reboot Goal #2 - Boost Student Achievement. I want our students to be recognized not just for their sporting accomplishments, but for what they do in the classroom too!
The first step of that process was to create and send a letter to parents telling them a little bit about the class their student is taking as well and inviting open communication throughout the year. I was terrified to click send on the first email, but I did and in total emails went out to the parents of about 50 students. I hope that parents will be interesting in what their student is doing in class as well as sees that they are at school for more than just the game on Friday night.
The next steps of my plan to boost achievement will be posting updates on what is going on the classroom to the #emwolves twitter hashtag as well as send postcards to parents about good deeds or accomplishments I "caught" their student doing in the classroom. I think an actual piece of mail that they parents get and the students could see will be a nice reminder and something parents could put on the fridge, not something they probably get to do very often at the high school level.