Grade Level Committee Updates

Elementary

The Elementary Grade Level Committee spent time as a committee in break out sessions, collecting good thoughts/ideas and answering questions in relationship to our AWSP governance reconfiguration, advocacy platform, self care & work-life balance, MTSS supports in place at the building level, and celebrations of what’s working in your school.

Additionally, with new membership to our committee we spent some time completing a “Goose Chase” with the Goose Chase app to get to know our colleagues on the committee better and to have a little fun prior to heading to our dinner social. We encourage you to check out this fun app – it’s easy to do and a fun way to connect in a staff meeting and to laugh together as a team!

Our second day, we focused our professional learning on using a “Fishbone Diagram” with any problem of practice your school might be facing. We highlighted the importance of “Inquiry vs. Advocacy”, the importance of suspending opinion to guide teams to solutions where they actually had control. We used this critical video to teach the concept to participants.

Middle Level

• WIAA Report – New leadership at WIAA. Challenges introducing 6th grade sports (Wrestling, Track, X-country) include space and referee availability.

• NASSP Report, Region 7 convening report and advocacy – An emphasis on connecting with local legislators – inviting them to your school in order to help them understand how school works. Focusing on the positive and asking for support in order to increase opportunities for more students.

• Discussion and idea sharing on the new discipline law.

High School

Our agenda was full of items relevant to our collective work.

Special kudos to John Belcher for his expert facilitation skills and having us share some of our collective work through the use of Google Slides and Padlet. Modeling this activity for our group gave us all ideas we can take back and use with our staff.

As you return to your work remember to take a moment and thank your Superintendent for allowing you to attend and be a representative of your region at the meeting. Feel free to pass a long any documents or information you heard/learned to the rest of your administrative team. Coupled with your own administrative team is the league that you represent. Be sure to update them and other individuals with the details of our work at your next meeting.

Here are the items from our agenda:

• ESD - AWSP Alignment Transition: As you report back to your region regarding the governance structure transition some key points are the following:
  • Coordination of stronger regional teams
  • ESD liaisons who will further the work of supporting school leaders across the region
  • Focused AWSP Executive Staff regional support
  • Increased student leadership connection
  • United principal voice from each region
  • Equal and increased representation across the state of Scott Seaman’s presentation to the whole group that shows the of the ESD’s.

If you would like to review the notes we took during our table discussions, they can be accessed here.

• EdCamp: This is always an enjoyable time of our work as we take the time to learn from each other. Topics for this meeting were: 9th grade failure rates, inclusion practices, creative discipline ideas, and increasing all student voice.
• Advocacy Work: The amazing Roz Thompson joined our group and reviewed the upcoming Legislative session. She focused on a couple key bills (notifications and school safety) and walked us through HB 1599 and what the state board was going to rule on.
• Met in regional ESD teams and adjourned.

Thanks again for your work and most of all your time. John and I hope you found it valuable, informative, and most of all worthwhile. As always, should you have any questions, thoughts, comments, or things you need me to follow-up with, give me a call or shoot me an email.

Our next meeting is January 25th and the 26th at the SouthCenter Double Tree. Until then, keep up the great work for kids!