Harrison Park Post

 We made it! Tomorrow is one of my favorite days. Please use tomorrow to let your students experience some joy and send them off with on the positive. You have worked hard to establish relationships and we are definitely seeing that payoff. Thank you for your attendance at the carnival with your students. We do have a coverage schedule, but as you know we have had a lot of people out and will need all hands on deck! Please be sure to check your mailboxes. Emily and I put a token of our gratitude to you in them. Emily did it all! She has had a terrible cold the past three weeks and still managed to do this and so much more. Please thank her, Conni, and the Leadership kids for their work in making the carnival happen.  K-5 teachers remember to clean out lockers tomorrow and send kids home with anything out of their lockers. These will be removed over the break (I am guessing not all, but most will be gone).  Be sure to take any items in fridges and food stuff home tomorrow....

Again my apologies for today's snafu. Our  Fire Drill will be taking place at 10:15 tomorrow (THURSDAY) .  For those of you who still have postcards for our fantastic students please turn them in to Shannon ASAP.  Please have all extended hours and payroll "things" turned in by 12:00 tomorrow. This is the deadline.  I will be in tomorrow, but have several deadlines I need to address. I also wanted to let you know I will be out on Friday for a family obligation. Karl will be here to support that day.  There is NO Basketball tomorrow. Thank you to those of you who have stepped up to support Lindsay with our holiday boxes. She has been out this week. Your help is appreciated. 

Emily and I are hosting a Dessert Bar tomorrow in the staff room. Things should be out at 11:00 and will be picked up right before 2:00.  Please be sure to have all extended hours turned in as quickly as possible. The deadline is noon on Thursday, but I would like them turned in to Shannon at the end of the day tomorrow.  Checking into K-5 classrooms today I am seeing we are seeing a way of absences. The office gave me a heads up yesterday and we are getting calls from families reporting illness. Please be sure to have kids sanitize/wash hands. Masks are encouraged (the worst is when you get sick right at the start of the break...fingers crossed).  Our Fire Drill will be taking place at 10:15 tomorrow . We had hoped to have it in the afternoon, but it was a bit busy.  From Mike Benson:  WHO: You! the amazing staff of Harrison Park WHAT: A holiday extravaganza celebrating 13 days of not needing a lesson plan.  Cocktails, finger food, arcade games, pinball, f...

 The Carnival schedule was sent out earlier today. I am putting that email info here again for reference. There will be no K-5 Specials or reading groups w/ Michelle Irons and Cheryl DeGroot on Friday. ESL teachers will continue to come to classrooms at their normal time. Classroom teachers, please feel free to take a 10 minute break at this time. Mandarin Immersion Teachers/Karen Kempster , who do not have ESL in their schedules, we will send someone to your room to give you a ten minute bathroom break.  Specials teachers and the reading team will be "working" the Carnival and supporting the Leadership students running stations. Classroom teachers need to attend with their classes.  https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1L7BkxzvDW1H5-3Uw02-YpkB2sa3bZfJzYNNwgOe6ASI/edit?usp=sharing The 4th Virtual Cadres are on December 13th. All PAT members must attend a Cadre meeting during their staff meeting time today. As a reminder, the 12 Cadre meetings for the 2022-2023 school ye...

Monday the 12th Tuesday the 13th Fire Drill @ 1:45 Cadres @ 3:30 Wednesday the 14th Dessert Bar 11:00-2:00 in Staff Lounge Thursday the 15th Friday the 16th Pajama Day/Carnival Staff Party @ Mike Benson's Lunch Service- Kempster, Jarvis, Brandt-Lazar   Five more sleeps and then you will all be on a well deserved vacation. Keep to your routines this week. Monday through Thursday should be "normal". Friday, is a day to celebrate with your students if you so choose. My one caveat there is the middle school team may want to collaborate as "Friday Fun" in every class may lead to "Friday Freakouts". An hour of a fun activity in a K-5 class is absolutely appropriate, but six hours of fun in middle school leads to...I don't want to know.  I did this last year, but will remind you that in my mind Winter Break is just that. You should not be taking a ton of work home. Please use your time this week to wrap up things and get as much as you can accomplished so...

 It was brought up at today's Safety Team meeting that there have been some issues with the staff parking lot. We have expressed to Tino that the entrance should be open at 6:00 a.m. when Tino arrives. It will remain open from 6:00-9:00 and will then be shut down again during lunches. The exit will be closed at 7:00. This is the case for all parking lots UNLESS there is a school event.  In that vein I want to remind staff  you should be out of the building by 6:00 if at all possible. If you are planning on staying past that time please note you should let a custodian know you are in the building and should not be parked in the school lots as you may be locked in. I cannot stress enough that you should not be staying past 6:00 for your own health and well being. I know it may happen once in a while, but it should not be a regular thing.    We will be getting the Carnival schedule out as soon as possible. Please remember the carnival is an activity ALL students wi...

 For those of you with extended hours please make sure you are turning them in on a regular basis. Shannon has to have payroll completed next week and has several other deadlines before the break as well.  We did have a student situation in the 1st-3rd hallway. We did not go into a team response, but were in communication with several impacted classrooms. Our safety team is meeting tomorrow and will review shifts we can make to improve in this area.  I feel like there are a million things I need to communicate out, but am not. As my dad once said when you have four kids sometimes you have to give the attention to the one that needs it most. It doesn't always seem fair, but that is what has to happen at times. At some point you will need the most attention. Please know there are so many things I want to be doing right now to support you all. Hold tight and know at some point I will have some more time to check in and catch up with you. I appreciate your work. 

I meant to discuss lockers with K-5 teachers. The plan is still to remove all the lockers in the two side hallways (Think Wu/Metcalf/Stahlecker) and the main hallway (Yin to Newton). They are saying they will all be removed, but I will believe it when I see it. For now I will say leave name tags on the lockers, but absolutely make sure they are emptied on the 16th. For those of you who were here last year you had a system in place for belongings and hopefully this will work again this year. For those of you new to HP we can discuss solutions. In the event some of the lockers are not removed kids may continue to use them.  Keep an eye on the outside doors. Some doors today were propped with small items (rocks and pinecones). If you're walking by one just check to see that it's latched.  We are sending home ihealth covid test again to all HP students.  Please pass out these covid tests on Wednesday or Thursday to your students and homeroom students.  One per student....

 I know we had some frigid rooms this morning. Please feel free to report cold rooms to me, or Shannon. I am trying to stay on top of it. I know one issue this morning was that the boilers had been shut down all weekend and it takes some time to heat things back up.  We do have a staff meeting tomorrow and will begin at 3:30 in the library.  PAT and PFSP staff I believe you received an email today around staffing for next year. We will discuss this a bit tomorrow.  We have welcomed several new students from Ukraine who will begin with us tomorrow and coming days. I will be meeting with the ESL team as soon as possible and working to ensure we are supporting students'language needs as much as possible. I am also hoping to begin looking at other resources we may be able to offer to these families. If you have one of these students we may schedule some time to look at other areas of support we may want to be prepared for. 

Monday the 5th SIT @ 3:30 Emily Out @ NCI Training Tuesday the 6th Staff Meeting @ 3:30 Wednesday the 7th ILCT @ 7:50 DLI Team Meeting @ 3:30 Thursday the 8th Safety Team Meeting @ 8:00 (Rescheduled) Friday the 9th Mid Term Progress Reports Due (Middle School) Cafeteria Service- Jarvis, Brandt-Lazar, Kempster I am enjoying the view to my backyard and the snow falling this morning. It is certainly peaceful and relaxing. While I find the weeks leading up to Winter Break fly by, I also know they can be difficult in the classroom. When my kids were younger at this time of year I did my best to make things memorable and magical. We did all the holiday things (Santa visits, Christmas ships, PIR, cookie baking...). The break was a time of relaxation, friends and family. While some of our students will experience these types of things, along with other rich cultural traditions, many of them will not. This is not something we can control, but we can control what happens in the weeks leading up ...

Thank you to Lance Pollard who has been working with our students in room 136. Today was their last day with us. They made the commitment to remain until the end of November. We appreciate their work and dedication to our students. On that note, I will share that Tami Edwards, who was slated to return to room 136 this week has officially left the district. She is open to hearing from people she worked with and you are welcome to reach out to her. Please be sure to turn in any extended hours into  Shannon you may have from the last few weeks. This is an effort to spread out her workload and ensure she has time to enter hours in.  I have not heard a lot in regards to hot and cold rooms lately. This may be a good thing, or it may mean people are tired of reporting and nothing changing. Please let me know if your room is still experiencing extreme temperatures.  Thank you to those of you who turned in your compacts from conferences. If you have not turned them in please do so...