HUMS staff blog update, January 5, 2020

Welcome to 2020

ITEMS:  

1.  Meetings for January: 

January 7 - Dept head- (middle school meeting in Melissa's room) Look for agenda Tuesday AM - items (let me know of other items to be on the agenda)

Celebration of learning, SBAC/MAP information, assemblies/community meetings/TA spirit challenges, update on next school year- Board meetings, configurations... lots to talk about here.

January 14 - Shared Staff  ( Agenda coming)

January 23 - LT/DH Meeting (Thurs) - updated

January 20 - Building Based Inservice (w/ Dept/ELOX planning) (2 hours-argumentative writing)

Middle School Meeting after 10:30 - Agenda will be developed prior to inservice

January 21 - HUUSD  In-service (Wellness continuation)

January 28 - Dept/ELOX Planning

2. Message from Sam Krotinger regarding mid-year(semester teacher feedback information) 

As many of you know, the HU Leadership Team has been collecting feedback about various topics/initiatives including the student class evaluation process.  We really appreciate all of the constructive ideas and suggestions that we received both digitally and in our multiple Listening Hours.  The next steps include a student input/collaboration component, with a final version presented to the faculty in January.  More importantly, if you have not done so already, teachers should administer the survey to their students as per usual. 

Check in with Sam if you have any questions etc...

3.  Recent Fire Drill Reminder:  When leaving your space/room for fire-drills - please close you doors and turn out the lights prior to exiting the building..  thanks!  

4.  Welcome to our student teachers   - we are very glad to have you on board!  

UVM student Teacher - Social Studies 

Lyndsey Adams

UVM Student Teacher  - English 

Tracy Delade

5. Given out recent illness that have become our friends... here is an interesting article about hand washing..

A Hands-On Experiment on the Spread of Classroom Germs

            In this article in Today, Scott Stump reports that two Idaho teachers were tired of nagging their  students to wash their hands. Surely the number of sick days people took were a direct result of the germs being spread around the classroom. The teachers, Dayna Robertson and Jaralee Metcalf, decided to make it into a science project. They put five different pieces of white bread in ziplock bags after having each one handled in a different way:     

-   Touched by students with unwashed hands;

-   Touched by students whose hands were cleaned by a hand sanitizer;

-   Touched by students’ hands just rubbed on a classroom Chromebook;

-   Touched by students’ hands just washed with soap and warm water;

-   Touched by a teacher’s gloved hands.

The ziplock bags were sealed (so classroom air wouldn’t get in) and tacked to a bulletin board. A month later, the results were dramatic (see the photos in the link below): 

-   The Chromebook-touched bread was almost completely black with mold and disintegrating; 

-   The bread touched by dirty hands was almost as bad;

-   The bread touched by hand-sanitized hands wasn’t much better;

-   The bread touched by washed hands was white;

-   So was the one touched by gloved hands.

Students’ reactions: ......... Hand washing improved dramatically, and students and their families realized that hand sanitizers weren’t an effective alternative. 

One of the teachers posted a description of the experiment on Facebook, and it’s been shared more than 60,000 times.

“Gross! School Experiment Shows Students the Effects of Not Washing Their Hands” by Scott Stump in Today, December 17, 2019, https://bit.ly/2F2TJi6