Thought of the Week: The Future of EQAO
I was fortunate to attend two sessions with EQAO as the rolled out their enhanced Strategic Plan. What I heard both impressed me and created such an intense urgency. Their plan is well crafted and very responsive to the feedback that they have received from multiple stakeholders – it includes addressing the challenges around their website, messaging, etc. What truly sparked urgency was the informal visioning that their CEO Bruce Rodriguez engaged in at one point in the conversation. He described the future of EQAO assessments as basically reflecting the Global Competencies that we know our students need to have to be successful both academically and in terms of well-being (collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving, learning to learn, communication, global citizenship and innovation). He spoke of EQAO someday begin a collaborative assessment where students can access others in the province to solve math problems. He spoke of them being interactive assessments whereby students can manipulate shapes etc on the assessment in order to see all sides. He shared the urgency for schools to be engaged in the technology learning – and the need to truly take the Global Competencies to heart in our instruction. Students in Kindergarten should be coding -should be understanding the language of coding – there is no excuse not to have them coding as this is powerful learning for them. He linked the curricular changes that EQAO will be responding to in the future to the recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. EQAO is changing to reflect current times…is your school doing the same?
Add Wellbeing document
Health and Safety Reminders: Reminders
Please be sure to be engaging in your monthly Occupational Health and Safety inspections regularly. Remember that this is a VERY important aspect of our role – to schedule these inspections with the Worker Rep (who plays the primary role in the scheduling) at a mutually agreed upon time. Due diligence must be demonstrated in all matters, especially safety.
Updates
Gold Star for Debbie – The following Gold Star is awarded to Debbie for posting her PD Day artifact to the Thursday Morning Teleconference Padlet! Way to go Deb – taking risks and reading the TMT agenda last week! (Please see last week’s TMT agenda for the Padlet and post your artifacts!).
Dr Jean Clinton – Please challenge your staff to attend this event and provide one final push!!
Education Week – A sincere thanks to each of you and your staff for the fantastic celebrations that took place during Education Week. Please be sure to continue to celebrate the events by sending them to the media, tweeting them out and putting them on your facebook pages. Also, remember to take photos for the Director’s Newsletter!
TPAs – Our new process is to send all TPAs (printed and signed) to the board office (Val Nakani) by June 10th.
School Organization – As you begin to organize your staffing for next year, please let me know if I can assist with those difficult decisions. Remember that the needs of our students must come first. I will be asking for your school schedule (all teaching classes) by June 24th. We are going to standardize the template this year so that you can send me your documents and I can send them to the board office and Raj so that they are not asking you for this information – trying to reduce the distractions for you. Please note that we will be asking you to align the number of instructional minutes with the board report. You might want to refer back the spreadsheet that I had sent to you and that I used to do your staffing!
Carried Over from Last Week
Criteria for Effective Staff Meetings – We are practicing the Assessment for Learning Framework with our staff meeting success criteria. I am asking that you apply this criteria to one of your staff meeting agendas with a critical friend.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eptu9LxT9K2myANzq32cIqSnZk8FKhCuHcI_P4wKaZw/edit
- Working in teams, apply the criteria to you staff meeting agenda.
- What feedback would you give yourself? Your partner?
- Based upon the feedback, what is your next goal?
- Add to/enhance the success criteria based upon your thinking.
We will bring our final success criteria to our PD session on June 6. Thanks everyone!
Sharing of Space – Just a reminder to engage in these meeting with your partners as you begin planning for next year. Please evaluate the extent to which you achieved your goals for this year and begin to think about what you want to work on next to move further towards integration. A great question that always comes up is the use of the gym and how this is balanced between the two organizations in the best interest of students!
Nicki’s Schedule
Mon – GOPS – Board Planning Meeting 3:00, Special Board Meeting
Tues – GOPS Small and Northern Board Session all day
Wed – NRRDHS for Interviews in am, GOPS in pma
Thurs – GOPS, pm ECE College Presentation, Celebration of Our Children Event
Fri – GOPS
Upcoming Dates
May 9 – Special Board Meeting for Elementary Staffing
May 9-12- Dr Jean Clinton Celebration of our Children Event – Please encourage everyone to attend!
May 12 – College of ECE Presentation in pm for FDK schools
May 16 – NTIP Steering Committee Meeting (9:00-10:30)
May 18 – Pedagogical Leadership Session for Team of 10
May 20 – All Inquiry/PLC release days completed
May 24th- Elementary TWEA opens – staff to verify class set up by Friday, May 27th and email Raj necessary changes (Principal sends one email with all changes).
May 24 – Board Meeting (rescheduled)
May 26- Parent Involvement Committee Meeting
May 27 – Learning Fair Google Slides completed
May 31 – Early Primary Math PLCs Face to Face at GOPs
Jun 1-8 EQAO Window – no PD During this time (except PD Day! lol)
June 6 – PD DAy – Reporting Day for elementary teachers and ECEs, PD Session for elementary Principals at GOPs
June 7 – Board Policy Review Meeting
June 10 – all Teacher Performance Appraisals are complete and signed off on (and sent to the Board Office to Val Nakani’s attention in hard copy).
June 13 – Leads’ Meeting face to face at GOPS
June 15 – Fair Start Completed
June 21 – National Aboriginal Day
June 24 – school schedules due to Nicki
June 28 – School Learning Plan Evaluations Due to NMC (with school team input!!)
Learning Fair Celebration Dates – The Elementary Learning Celebration Fair will take place on Friday, May 27, 2016 at GOPS.
Modelling the Conditions for Learning 