Harwood Union Staff Blog 2022-23 : Harwood Staff Blog Update

Early this fall a desire by the Harwood community to have student led dialogues was expressed by many. After months of planning led by students, over 50 students facilitated our first dialogue last week on a topic of their choosing - school safety.

Before sharing any more it’s essential to extend gratitude to the student leaders who made these conversations possible. The reflections and subsequent needs and requests from students were powerful and concrete. Below is a powerful summary of the dialogue by one of the student facilitators and the subsequent takeaways and next steps.

With deep gratitude to Maisie Franke (Student leader & facilitator)

The major takeaway from these discussions was that students across every grade recognized that Harwood doesn’t feel like a safe place for everyone, even if it does for most. The current school culture is affecting all students on some level and multiple spaces, such as the bathrooms, were identified as places of increased discomfort. A combination of the knowledge that some spaces act as avenues for increased social pressure and anxiety.

Needs and next steps as identified by students included creating more safe student spaces in Harwood, increased clarity and communication around rules and consequences, and building easily accessible student support systems.

Students want places of comfort where they can go for a mental reset, or to get support in all areas surrounding emotional, physical, and mental health.
Clear rules and consequences that are enforced throughout Harwood was another need brought to the table by students that would make school a safer place for all.
This transparency and follow through demonstrates explicit communication between students and staff on expectations and values of our learning community.

Harwood students and staff moving forward need to strive to speak up and be advocates for others, collaborate with one another to create solutions, and be strong to our values as a community. Everyone of us holds the best intentions of making Harwood a safer place for all students and we will get there through direct communication on next steps and transparency on what we need to be able to learn and succeed in our school.

Please find Student Dialogue Needs & Next steps in detail here.

We are grateful for the continued collaboration and looking forward to moving forward as a community,

Meg, Laurie and Duane

Calendar:

April 1st - End of Quarter 3
April 7th, 8th and 9th - Freaky Friday Musical Production
April 18th - 22nd - NO School - April Vacation
May 2nd - 20th - SBAC testing window
May 23rd - 27th - Spirit week
May 12th - Family Conferences
May 18th - Family Conferences
June 11th - Graduation

Appreciations:

Staff Member	Appreciations
Jess Deane	For kindly supporting us to stay aware of the 4 day schedule this week, which caught many of us by surprise!

Safe - seen, heard, respected & understood:

Topics

Information/Links

DESSA

Update and Task

IMPORTANT UPDATE: We recognize that we have not been able to fully utilize the DESSA information to date in the desired way; however, completing DESSA this year will be incredibly important toward obtaining baseline data and longitudinal data for our students. Our efforts to continue to fully understand student social emotional skills and needs, and any change in these areas over time, will be fruitful. It will enable us, in the years ahead, to intentionally implement strategies and interventions that specifically target skill areas needing growth individually, per TA, grade level, and schoolwide. A districtwide update of DESSA this spring/summer will give the Student Support Collective Leadership group more data points and many more options for fully understanding, sharing, and utilizing the data. Thank you for taking the time to complete these.

We have contacted our Central Office gurus and they are hard at work with addressing our ERROR issue from earlier this month. Additionally, we have provided them with updated information to reflect disenrolled and enrolled students since our last administration. Please be on the look out for a FACSTAFF email to let you know this work is completed and you are cleared to complete your DESSA forms for each of your TA students.

Data and surveys - oh, my.

What happens next?

Much data is/has been collected through a variety of surveys this year.

Our hope is to use the DESSA and CSCI data to give us a baseline as we begin 2022-2023 and work to meet our benchmarks for next year and 5 year goals overall.

To that end, a friendly reminder to please complete both the DESSA & CSCI

Project Kratos Update

Detention Update

Kratos update ---- Link here: Kratos)

Presence - All administration and Staff will become more present with holding students accountable as well as physically present during identified transitions during and after the school day.

Lunch Expectations

Respect the space - no running, throwing of food - overcrowding of tables (designated seating for tables only)
Students must stay in Kate’s garden, the cafeteria and Kate’s Garden Hallway during lunch time. Students must use the gender neutral bathrooms during this time.
Show respect for the staff on duty, yourself and others at all times. Appropriate Language is expected. On duty staff will be walking around the cafeteria to offer assistance with any issues that may come up.
Respect others’ property. Don't expect that others will clean-up your trash. Please pick-up after yourself. Place compostable items into the appropriate bin
Be a kind person.

Perseverance - Reported and encountered behavioral issues will be addressed in a simple and achievable manner.

We continue to meet as a student support team on a weekly basis to review/adjust our programming to ensure we are creating a safe environment for our community. When we receive a student complaint or concern we task a member of our student support team to conduct an intake to determine our next steps.
We continue to track discipline infractions, following up on concerns when presented. See information below.

Plan implementation review and adjustment - Weekly reviews and adjustment based on feedback (formal and informal) will guide our forward progress.

We continue to hold our weekly Friday morning meetings beginning around 8:00 in the library as a place where staff can create, connect and be curious about how things are going in general.
Please read* IMPORTANT: Discipline issues that occur during supervised time must be logged in powerschool and the teacher must make a call home or email to the student’s parents (s) to indicate that a discipline infraction occurred and the teacher is requesting a student serve an afterschool detention. We hope by doing this some of the recent inconsistencies with parents/families not understanding or not knowing their student is to serve a detention will be cleared up.

Detention Update

This past week we connected (email and/or phone calls) with families/students regarding behavioral/attendance issues which resulted in afterschool detention for many. Please note we schedule detentions based on students/grouping and other issues (students who can’t be together, etc)

Going forward we will send out notices to students/families who fail to attend these afterschool detentions informing them if they miss 2 consecutive afterschool detentions they will receive a out of school suspension on the Thursday after their 2nd miss.

Discipline Consequence Update

High School
Suspension issues and served	TBD	Duane will update this next week.. Thanks for your patience
Current Hazing, Harassment, Bullying investigations in process	2(on going)	The student support team is following a well articulated process for conducting and determining whether or not an offense occurred with appropriate remedies offered and followed
Detentions issued and served	10 issued 6 served	Detentions were issued for late/skipping class
Middle School
Suspension issues and served	0	The middle school did not have any students suspended this week.
Detentions issued and served	3	Students will serve detention on Friday for being late to class and one for acting out in class and the rest are for refusals

TA update

Kindness month continues! I found this lovely quote and hoped it might inspire you:

“Because that’s what kindness is. It’s not doing something for someone else because they can’t, but because you can.”

~Andrew Iskander

I have heard from a few of you that your groups have already engaged in an act of kindness. Please share your experiences with students and colleagues. Let’s spread the word about kindness!

Academic Support and Advising

Appreciation: to Sally, Erin and Maggie for all of their hard work meeting with rising seniors in person; sophomores through TA and freshmen in TA and Global Studies!!! Shout out to Jen for all of the behind the scenes support!

Finally kudos to the TA teachers who spent time supporting students as they make choices for next year!

Academic Check ins: With the quarter rapidly coming to a close please be sure to take time to check in with your students.

EOYR (End of Year Reflection)

Goal Reflection This reflection pairs well with your academic check in! Take time out to celebrate successes and support planning to overcome obstacles!

Climate Survey this week!!

It is time for the district climate survey. Please have students complete this in TA next week. The deadline for completion is April 1st! I will send the email to students on Monday at 8:00 AM to allow access for the day you choose to provide time for students to complete. (Tuesday is normally the day we set aside for ELO booking and logistics). The survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.

The link is also here if you need to share it with students.

As always please contact Ellen if you need support, resources or assistance!

Rigorous & Robust Academic Program:

Topics

Information/Links

Staff Meeting

Objectives: To complete SBAC training and have Course Alike planning time by Department

Where: Look for an email from your Dep’t head

What: Look for an agenda from your Dep’t head

Staff Meeting Calendar

FEEDBACK PLEASE!

Course-alike proposal for next year

As we start thinking about planning and revising course curricula and syllabi for next year, we want to ensure that different sections of the same course have commonality. Please take a few minutes to review this Course-Alike Expectations DRAFT from the Teaching and Learning Leadership Team. We welcome feedback on this draft anytime between now and the end of next week (4/1).

Ways to provide feedback:

-email Jess or another member of the TLLT with your comments and suggestions

-come see Jess in the Garden Lounge during ELO A or ELO D next Wednesday 3/30

-stop by Jess’s office anytime she’s in there and doesn’t look too busy :)

TLLT staff members: Kate Stauss, Adam Sargent, Brian Wagner, Marcus Grace, Wendy Rand, Dana MacDonald, Vicki Hummer, Jon Potts, Rachael Potts, Alex Rawson, Andrew Reid, Sarah Butler, Erin Dezell, Jon Berliner, Jess Deane

Positive school climate and culture:

Topics	Information/Links
FY 23’ Hiring Update	This week: Offer out to Special Educator Director of School Counseling 2nd round interviews for Social Workers Drivers Education Behavior Interventionist Support Staff posted *based on needs of new students to our community Next week: Additional Social Worker interviews
	A big welcome to Bob DeMars who will be our new evening custodian!
Updates from Facilities :	Front of the building, fields and all trails are OFF LIMITS due to the wet ground. Until it dries out, you can use the back side where the greenhouse is. Also windows are being left open. I know spring is here but nights are cold. Please make sure all your windows are closed at the end of the day. There should be no parking along the driveway. This is a fire lane. Please park in a designated parking spot only. See Ryan with any questions or concerns.
Badges, Oh Badges!	All employees must wear a badge while you are in the building. If you forget your badge, you must see Ray so he can issue you a temporary one. Your regular badge will then be deactivated until you return the temporary badge. As well, if you lose your badge, you should tell Ray (or April) immediately so it can be deactivated and a new one issued.
	Want to place an order with Amazon?! The best way to get me (April) your order is to create a WISHLIST and then email it to me. This allows me to open your list and click on “move to cart.” It’s the most efficient way for me to place your order. Thank you!