Reflection

Here we are in November, nearly three months into the 2011-2012 SY. So how are we doing? Is CHS moving forward in a positive direction? How is the PLC process going?  Several of you have shared your thoughts, questions and concerns about our PLC journey at CHS. Questions that have arisen include:  Why are we spending so much time in our collaborative teams answering questions? And, what happens with our responses and what’s the real purpose of PLCs?

 I’ll start by saying that the purpose of the guided questions for our PLCs is to get a pulse of our school.  The responses are an analysis of sorts, to discover and identify our school’s strengths, weaknesses and areas of concern with respect to student achievement. The PLC process is part of our effort to establish productive professional relationships where we can be honest and build shared knowledge to help lay the foundation for true, genuine collaboration. Our administrative team values and honors your input and we feel that it is critical to work together to identify our current realities so we can make informed and appropriate decisions to build our capacity to help all of our students to learn and to become the vibrant, academically excellent school we envision.  Thank you for your continued commitment and trust in the process.

What’s next? This week our PLC time will be devoted to working on our school wide goals: Connectedness, Safety, Attendance and Increasing student achievement (Grades),  Please see the email sent on November 2, from Cris Ray to confirm which Goal you will be working on. When we reconvene in December each team will report out and we will share the results of the various PLC guided questions at that time. 

Noteworthy hype: Have you heard about the Kahn Academy? This is a fascinating phenomenon. If you haven't heard about this you gotta check this site out. This is a totally free tutoring and support site that is pretty mind boggling.  This one guy has created thousands of super high quality videos and lessons covering every core subject you can think of. I think it shows some promise for helping to  support teachers and students. Click here to go to the Kahn Academy. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this. 

Dates to remember:

• Canned Food drive this month
• 11/15 Academic Booster Club Mtg @ 2:45 Large Conference room
• 11/15 Mr. CHS Pageant 7:00 PM
• 11/16 Delayed start/ School Wide PLCs