Holy Mistletoe! Tomorrow is December!

Just For You

A Little Something

If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.
~ Fred Rodgers

If you could physically see what you left behind after every encounter, what would it look like? Would you see light? goodwill? encouragement? Would you have left behind something beautiful or significant? In today's world many of our meetings are online. We leave behind a tangible digital trail. What does yours look like? What have you left behind? Have you forged a trail with dignity, self-respect, kindness, purpose? Your words and actions remain long after you depart. Leave something of yourself that others will remember fondly. Teach your students to do the same.

Remember To Take Care Of Yourself

Modeling is good practice at any age, not just as in modeling good behavior for others, but modeling yourself after those you hold in high esteem. 

Educational Excellence

Our core values for Educational Excellence state that: 

• We believe learning is life-long

• We believe in giving our best each day

• We believe that all students can learn

• We believe in setting high expectations for all

So... now it is time to reward our students for continuing to strive for excellence.  You, in turn, should feel proud of the work ethic and confidence you have instilled in each of them.

  
**Click here to learn more from Julia about the upcoming awards.

Intentional Instruction

Please watch this video from Spring and Jeanne regarding the hour of code that will take place next week here at Kuehnle.  

You will need to access the following Google Doc and Sheet after watching the video: 

https://docs.google.com/a/kleinisd.net/document/d/1oOVbZXi-BiVw4WPD8WRlvYGuchkpPmQh3DWSdPXSWrk/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/a/kleinisd.net/spreadsheets/d/1uZKbgExiruAS3lxuSm994qwj9dovvQ9KzGnqcay6ONU/edit?usp=sharing

Collaborative Community

In order to have truly effective teams that work together to ensure student success, we must be able to continuously move past conflict and respect one another.  The following article is a very good read. Enjoy!

http://www.allthingsplc.info/blog/view/315/dealing-with-conflict-on-collaborative-teams


Last, but MOST important ...
Join us on this padlet to lift up your colleagues! 

Week 13 "Teamwork divides the task and multiplies the success."

Just For You

To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.

~ Buddha

When time is a commodity and it feels like there just isn't enough of you to go around, the first thing we often let slide is our self-care. Not enough time? We stop exercising and sleep less! No time for meal preparation? We eat more fast food! Before long these quick fixes contribute to feeling lousy both inside and out. Taking care of ourselves is a long-term investment that reaches far beyond this moment. It might not be as convenient, but when we are strong-bodied and clear minded, everyone benefits, including the young people we teach each day. 

Educational Excellence

What Makes a Teacher Effective?

There's little mystery as to what makes one teacher more effective than another. After reviewing hundreds of meta-analyses on teaching effects, John Hattie (2009) concluded that "the current mantra, that teachers make the difference, is misleading" because "not all teachers have powerful effects on students"; indeed, he notes that "it is teachers' variability in effect and impact that is critical". Hattie concludes that "it is teachers using particular teaching methods, teachers with high expectations for all students, and teachers who have created positive student–teacher relationships that are more likely to have the above average effects on student achievement". Decades of research suggest that the following teacher behaviors, which serve as the touchstones for this chapter, distinguish highly effective teachers:

·         Highly effective teachers challenge their students. Good teachers not only have high expectations for all students but also challenge them, providing instruction that develops higher-order thinking skills.

·         Highly effective teachers create positive classroom environments. One of the strongest correlates of effective teaching is the strength of relationships teachers develop with students.

·         Highly effective teachers are intentional about their teaching. Good teachers are clear about what they're trying to teach and then master a broad repertoire of instructional strategies to help students accomplish their learning goals. They know not only what to do to support student learning but how, when, and why to do it.

Intentional Instruction

Kuehnle Core Value: We believe that students learn best when teachers establish clearly defined learning objectives and expectations, utilize research-based instructional strategies, continually assess programs and adjust strategies based on assessment. 

Collaborative Community

Kuehnle Core Value: We believe in working collaboratively with colleagues, students, and parents; sharing ideas and respecting other's opinions to achieve our common goals. 

Kudos to the 2^nd grade team for their Collaborative Community! They are having productive, reflective, and purposeful conversations in PLCs and weekly planning that impact instruction and student learning.  (J. Drew)

Week 10 "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell when his influence stops." – Henry Adams

Can you believe we are nearing the end of the 1st nine weeks of school already?! We have accomplished so much in such a short period of time! Look out 2nd nine weeks...here we come!! 

Educational Excellence

T-TESS Refresher

As we move into scheduling T-TESS pre-observation conferences, observations, and post-conferences, below are some points to remember about each phase.

The purpose of T-TESS – it’s a process designed to support continued growth and development. With T-TESS, it’s okay to be where you are; it’s not okay to stay there.

Pre-Conferences

·         T-TESS centers on conferences that reveal the appraisee’s thinking. Why is the teacher doing what he or she does? Upon what are their decisions and actions based? Are students responding as the teacher planned when designing the lesson(s)? •

·         For pre-conferences, the ultimate goal is to better understand how a teacher plans, not just what a single lesson plan entails. • Pre-conferences are an opportunity to focus on planning – how does a teacher make scaffolding decisions, grouping decisions, decisions about activities? How well does a teacher know his or her students? How does that teacher translate that knowledge into planning?

T-TESS Rubric

·         The T-TESS rubric has a lot of “echo” in it, and evidence can map to multiple spots on the rubric. That’s not an accident – the teacher steering committee that built the rubric wanted it to be more holistic than previous rubrics and to reinforce that many practices bleed into each other.

•     The success of a single activity is dependent on several integrated practices within planning, instruction, and classroom environment. A breakdown in any one area can lead to breakdowns in several others.

·         This makes mapping evidence to the rubric more challenging, but it also provides great fuel for conversations.

Pre-conferences and post-conferences are opportunities to figure out what the root causes of both successes and struggles were so that reinforcement and refinement decisions are more accurate and valuable for teachers.

Intentional Instruction

We want to recognize Kinder for demonstrating the following Kuehnle Core Value when working with Jaime Drew on creating a meaningful assessment and rubric for their students.

• We believe that educators should be flexible and have the courage to change course when needed with a student-centered philosophy.  

Visible Learning 
You have heard us mention Visible Learning and John Hattie's work.  You may have heard that we even sent a few teachers to hear him speak.  If you are wondering what the fuss is all about and why you should be interested in Visible Learning, then click here to read this brief article.

Collaborative Community

Same Box Once the game is over, the King and the pawn go back in the same box. ~ Italian proverb There's a reason sports analogies are often used when discussing the workplace. One reason is because you are very much part of a team, the educators' team — a selfless group that works long and hard to ensure the success of their students and of future generations. Being a member of this team means you work well with your fellow teammates for a common goal, one that understands the importance of turning out responsible and caring members of society. At the end of the day, we all go back out into the same world. You can be proud that your team is making the world a better place to live.

With something to think about . . . 

V.A.C.A.T.I.O.N. 
Visit another classroom and talk it over nicely! 

We have so many great teachers on campus that we can learn from.  If you know a teacher who implements Daily 5 seamlessly, uses NHA effectively, teaches a concept that you struggle with well, or anything else you can think of, take some time to observe them.  You can schedule a time with the teacher you want to observe so you are sure you are visiting during a time you will see what you are looking for.  Planning would be the ideal time, but if the observation is going to be meaningful, help increase student success in your classroom, and/or assist you with your T-TESS goal then we can help with providing coverage.  This is a perfect opportunity to learn from our peers, so take advantage of it!

Let's Celebrate The Latest Kuehnle All-Star Megaphone Recipients: 

Deanna Brewer

Judy Carroll

Keri Lenard

Nancy Wood

Hailey Haynes

Daria Clark

Bethany Iselt

Week 6 "A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way." - John C. Maxwell

Hello #TEAMKuehnle! We have heard so many wonderful things about the blog, and we hope you are enjoying it too! If you have something to share, we are always open to feedback! 

Educational Excellence

Celebrating Greatness Amongst Staff! 

Congratulations to:
Deanna Brewer, Jasmine DeRitter, Keri Lenard, Raina Garza, Michele Garland, 'Liese Altendorf, & Joanna Emanis
*Don't forget to bring your All-Star megaphones to the faculty meeting on October 5th to celebrate another teacher! #payitforward

We would like to highlight some examples of our Kuehnle Core Values that we have noticed on campus.

Educational Excellence:  We believe in setting high expectations for our students.  

-          We are excited to see the classroom goals being set and look forward to seeing individual student goal setting.  What a way to demonstrate this core value.

      Intentional Instruction:  We believe that educators should be flexible and have the courage to change course when needed with a student-centered philosophy.

-          We are so proud of how flexible and efficient 3rd grade and special education teachers were as we added Ms. Daria Clark to our staff.  This change happened quickly without much disruption to the students' learning.  

      Collaborative Community:  We believe in working collaboratively with colleagues, students, and parents; sharing ideas and respecting other's opinions to achieve our common goal.  

 -          We are so excited to see your collaboration skills and opportunities reach new levels through 

      Google Classroom! 

Intentional Instruction

We reviewed out STAAR data with teachers during PLCs last week.  We celebrated the great things we are doing, discussed things that are stagnant, and pondered over things that need to change.  We looked at specific subgroups such as special education, LEP, ethnic groups, etc.  to identify our strengths and areas of concern.  After much discussion the questions we have to answer now are:

• What are we doing now to be sure that your students are making progress? 
• Do you know your SSI/AI kids by name? 
• Do you know which students are in which subpop so that you know who you are focused on?
• What are we doing to ensure that intervention and enrichment are both happening?
• How are we monitoring progress and tracking our data to keep our groups fluid? 

We must have serious conversations about how to intentionally plan our instruction to get the biggest bang for our buck in all areas.  We can collaborate with our PLCs, meet vertically with other grade levels, seek out our campus specialists, etc. to be sure we are doing whatever it takes to help our students make progress and reach success!

Collaborative Community

We have noticed several areas of collaboration happening on campus.  Here are some of the things happening all around us:

• Teachers are working on putting together "Lemonade and Literacy."  We have heard great things being planned to help our students and their families with literacy development at home. 
• Administration and teachers have collaborated, written, edited, revised, conferenced, and more to create outstanding T-TESS goals for the 16/17 school year.  
• Teachers are working closely with Jamie Drew and Michele Garland on planning creative lessons, looking at data to drive instruction, and putting together meaningful CCAs to support the TEKS. 

We could list a million other things, but we are very pleased with what we have seen taking place!  

We realize that we are tapping into a lot of technology to create lessons, collaborate via Google, stream live announcements, etc. so we wanted to offer a little video tip to hopefully make accessing these resources a little easier and faster.

Faculty Meeting Video

ELPS TELPAS Connection Video

Here is the google form to complete after watching the video.

NOTE: Deadline to submit the Google Form and receive credit in Eduphoria is Friday, September 23.  

Week 3 "Do what is right, not what is easy."

Welcome to the 3rd week of school! We hope you had a fabulous Labor Day! We are looking forward to another week full of goal setting and reaching success! 

Educational Excellence

This year is off to a great start! We have seen lots of goal setting within the classrooms, NHA being taught and utilized effectively, and teachers discussing RTI and SSI data to create flexible groups. We have started our classroom learning walks focusing specifically on the environment and culture of the classrooms.  We see you all working on building relationships with your students and providing clarity for how every aspect of the classroom will help them succeed this year.  Remember, we are here to unlock every child's potential! Watch this eye opening video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxyxywShewI.

We are also attaching a document that the Klein ISD Teaching and Learning Center shared with us regarding classroom walkthroughs and what we are looking for within the content areas you are teaching.  This is a quick reference guide that is easy to read.   Click here.

As we continue to strive for educational excellence, we want to use T-TESS as a guide.  We have completed the Introduction and GSPD portions of T-TESS training.  You should now be working on setting a professional goal for yourself.  Remember, these are due in Eduphoria by September 15th. To address a lot of your questions and concerns in creating your goal for the year, please click here for an informational quick tip.

Intentional Instruction

As you are working feverishly to create groups based on your RTI and SSI data, keep in mind what your goal is.  Keep in mind the 4 guiding PLC questions.  Keep in mind the data discussion questions given to you during staff development week.  Be sure that your instruction is intentionally planned to meet your goals, to target specific needs, to reach students where they are and help them to grow and learn.  Be sure that you are targeting subgroups that are in need of specific, targeted interventions.

Along those same lines, we want to be sure that we are ready to go for the first 9 weeks credit recovery week.  The week for these sessions is October 31-November 4.  Please visit the Grade Recovery folder in Klein Share to edit and save your Kuehnle Grade Recovery Plan 2016-2017. These need to be completed by October 7th.  In that same folder, you will also find the forms that you will need to edit and send home as the credit recovery week arrives.  

Collaborative Community

Collaboration at its best, creates a culture of success.  In building that culture of success, we have already seen various teams, students, parents, administration, etc working together on various tasks. Every little task is a puzzle piece to growth and development of our students success academically, physically, and/or emotionally. Here is what we have seen thus far:

• Teachers collaborating with Students:
• Setting Goals (classroom and individual)
• Creating Classroom Rules
• Standards for Success (teacher and student)
• Teachers collaborating with Colleagures:
• Professional Learning Communities
• Lesson Planning
• Grading Guidelines
• Intervention Groups and Times
• Teachers collaborating with Parents:
• Open House
• Meet the Teacher
• Positive Phone calls and/or Emails home
• Parent-Teacher Conferences
• Administration collaborating with all:
• Professional Learning Communities 
• Staff Development
• District and Campus Meetings

Don't forget we are also sharing all of these great things via Twitter using our 2016-2017 team theme,  #TEAMKuehnle.

Another way to keep up with what is going on for our school and community is to visit our awesome PTO's new website:   https://kuehnlepto.membershiptoolkit.com/

Faculty Meeting Video

Welcome to your first ever faculty meeting via video! We have something to share with you, so click here to see what's in store. 

Happy 1st Day of School! We hope you had a fabulous day building relationships with your students! We are looking forward to another year of greatness and success! 

Educational Excellence

It is amazing to see the many dedicated educators that have attended summer professional development sessions.  Aren't we lucky that we get to attend meaningful trainings for free through Klein ISD to help us grow and learn for our students each year?!   As we enter the 2016-2017 school year, let us implement the new strategies and techniques we have learned about this summer.  Let us take the opportunities we have to share this learning with our students and colleagues.  We will also continue building on our knowledge about various topics such as: Nurtured Heart Approach, Google Basics/Classroom, T-TESS, and more.

Looking for classroom ideas to go along with the Nurtured Heart Approach? Click here.

"Once you stop learning, you start dying."  
- Albert Einstein

Intentional Instruction

We all know by now that this year we will be using a different evaluation tool called T-TESS (Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System).  We want you to fully understand the instrument and understand our role in supporting you with this new tool.  We are here to offer and provide feedback on what we see within the classroom.  We are looking forward to having meaningful conversations with you regarding instructional practices so we can make positive changes to continue doing what's best for kids! Hopefully you have had a moment to dive into and dissect the remaining portions of the rubric after last week's training.  In doing so, you may discover unanswered questions.  Please ask! We are here to serve you and we want you to be fully aware of the components of T-TESS before we jump into observations.

This year we will continue to dive deeper into the Nurtured Heart Approach, as well as focus on Kuehnle Core Values to ensure quality character and academic success within all of our students. We will make it our priority to find the greatness in our students and help them thrive this year!

Another thing to look forward to this year is the research of John Hattie.  He has done a lot of work to see what instructional strategies help us get "the biggest bang for our buck." You would be surprised to see that some things we have a the top of our list, actually produce a negative impact on student learning.  We started to look at some of his work during staff development, by discussing homework.  We want to make sure that if we are sending home things to work on, that they are meaningful tasks.



"Intelligence plus character - that is the true goal of education."  
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Collaborative Community

We would like to take this time to celebrate all of our staff members for building a foundation and following through to see to it that our students are successful! One way our students' success is measured is through the STAAR test.  Let's celebrate all of our staff members for taking part in this success!!

Math    88% Phase-In Level II; 36%  Level III Advanced

Reading  86% Phase-In Level II; 34% Level III Advanced

We would also like to take this time to thank each of you who were able to join us for the Kuehnle Lock In.  Your feedback regarding this event is welcome and appreciated.  Please email feedback to Mrs. Haynes via hhaynes1@kleinisd.net.  If you were not able to be with us that night, please know you were missed!

To continue with our focus on T.E.A.M., check out this video.

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success." 
- Henry Ford

*If you have read today's blog, stop by Mrs. Haynes' office for a little surprise starting 8/23/2016!