FORUM on 6/3

Forum Minutes
June 3, 2009

I. Attendance
¸ K-2: Shults
¸ 3-5: Deskins-President
¸ 6-8: Howie
¸ 9th grade: --------?
¸ 10th: Appleby
¸ 11/12: Boshka
¸ Tech: Sherman
¸ Intervention: -------?
¸ Admin: Boshka, Kinzer, Jensen, Loeffler

II. Good News from Teams
¸ High School reported most seniors got good scholarships
¸ Graduation was short but very sincere
¸ First time for baccalaureate
¸ Elementary school reported Kindergarten graduation at Sliters park went well
¸ L Losing 3 teachers at the Elem level: Deskins, Howie, Moul
¸ 8th grade trip leaves for their trip on Thursday- looks like they have lots of fun planned
¸ 5th has been at Ravenwood this week! Going well!!
¸ Multi-age went to Ravenwood last week and it went really well!

III. HPT Restructure
¸ Right now the school improvement system is bogged down. We need to re-align the entire process. All teams will be restructured by discipline and by grade-level.
¸ Next year we will be working on: Curriculum, Instructive and best practices. This is the time to focus on our students and the curriculum
¸ Next Fall one of those September days will be used for this re-alignment
¸ Content teams will be one big vertical team and then break down into smaller focus groups within the team.
¸ Benchmarks will be assessed.
¸ Next year specific goals will be articulated.
¸ Here are the teams:
¸ Math: Epperley, Bach, Pitz, Dorr, Gross, Pierce, McAnally, Tennant, Johnson, Dolezal, Swope, New
¸ Language Arts: Singleton, Lamar, Shults, Morley, Henion, Bonner, White, Blinn, Pierce, Ball, Appleby, Sullivan, Boskha, Clark
¸ Science: Brown, Trembath, Pogy, Bodenhammer, White, Heupel
¸ Social Studies: Perleberg, Manders, Carter, Aldrich, Taylor
¸ Sped: Wisher, Richter, Pilskalns, Wallin, Hanson, Raab (Aides: Manicke, Standley, Stodghill, Lyons
¸ Art: Britt, Taylor
¸ Music: Blinn, Peters, Richter
¸ Counselors: Wood, Ahnert, Nadeau, Willison, Strong
¸ PE: Epperley, Loeffler
¸ Shop: Melkioty
¸ Spanish: Young, Trenerry
¸ Tech: Richardson, Roberts, Zielanski, Shanks, Porrrovecchio, Sherman, New
¸ *****All questions/concerns will be answered this fall!! There will also be some flexibility in these teams!

IV. The Inservice Days (The First Four Days of School TENTATIVE SCHEDULE)
¸ Orientation/Cluster Day 1
¸ HPT Restructureing Day 2-3
¸ Building Preperations/Meetings Day 3-4

V. MEA Days (October)
¸ You need to have a plan
¸ MEA days are contracturally required
¸ There will be flexibility if you have made prior arrangements to fullful your PIR if prior arrangements have been made (Summer workshops)
¸ Otherwise things will be offered at our school
¸ MEA is in Billings this year

VI. Cluster Day Ideas
o AGATE
o ANKEL TAPING
o SCHOOL ATTOURNEY
o TECH
o INDIAN ED
o SUMMER INSTITURE FROM THE CO-OP
o BIG 6
o Anyone with ideas please contact Scarlett
o You get DOUBLE PIR if you teach one of the classes!!
o Teams planning on presenting a cluster need to put something in writing
o Here is the tentative schedule:

Tues Sept 1st
8:00 Greeting/Orientation
8:30-10:00 Guest Speaker
10-10:15 Break
10:15-11:30 Cluster
11:30-12:30 Lunch
12:30-1:45 Cluster
1:45-2:00 Break
2:00-3:15 Cluster

Wed. Sept 2nd Thur. Sept. 3rd Fri Sept. 4th ----T.B.A.

Subject: 2009 Totally Wired Teacher Award

Our humble colleage, Mike Roberts received the following email from Bri Brewer Head of Community Development for Dell’s Education community.

I would like to personally extend my congratulations to you on being
nominated (multiple entries) and ultimately selected for the
Ypulse 2009 Totally Wired Teacher Award!!

You were selected from more than 200 nominees for your dedication to technology supporting instruction and your commitment to being an advocate for its potential in education.
http://www.ypulse.com/the-2009-totally-wired-teacher-ismike-roberts

Tech HPT

Still working on the finishing touches of the tech plan.

Did you know that as a teacher at Bigfork Schools you can become a tech mentor or mentee? You can also ask for University of Bigfork Credit, PIR time, or personal days as a result???
Ask your building rep for more info!

Elem/Middle School Rep:Scarlett Sherman, Greg Moul, Mike Roberts
High School Rep: Sue Zielanski, Matt Porrovecchio

6-8 HPT

The 6-8 team spent yesterday's HPT meeting recommending sixth and seventh grade students to next year's leadership class. We are looking to involve students that have demonstrated the ability to sway their peers, in either a positive or negative direction. The goal is to teach these natural leaders the skills they need to use their abilities to create a positive social and educational environment. The leadership course will likely be a combination of character education, and a civics curriculum.

10th Grade HPT

Tenth HPT continued to talk about next year's goals, those we hope to still accomplish no matter how the HPT system works next year. We tried to nail down a large community based project for each quarter. 1st: A motto and logo contest along with a What's Good About Bigfork English discussion. 2nd: Food Drive (With the graduation of this year's class it will be interesting to see if the kids really get behind this like they have in the past.) #rd: Empty bowl, a huge project involving the entire high school, more on that later. 4th: Community service day. A day for kids to go out into the community and do some good, picking up trash, doing yard work, going planting trees, etc.

That's where we are right now, any ideas or additions would be great.

3-5 in May

The last two early releases have either been consumed with math (Ms. Math was here. I think she has a real name, maybe Rachel?) or grade levels planning end of year trips. As a team we have not seen very much of each other but we take comfort knowing we are planning the end of the year.

It seems there has been a lot of work happening involving math with a lot more to come. Hopefully someone with some actual insight will post too! 3rd recently visited a museum (I know, I should remember the name!), 4th just returned from another successful overnight adventure to Great Falls, and 5th is about to embark on yet another two night-er to Ravenwood the first week of June!

intervention

The Intervention Team was mostly involved in other meetings, scheduling, and athletics but those who could meet did so briefly and talked more about some students who were in danger of losing credits through failing, notably the seniors.