The Hawk Happenings: Pennoyer Staff Newsletter

Hawk Thoughts & Happenings

Team Pennoyer,

Welcome to our first Hawk Happenings of 2024! While I really enjoyed having a break and unplugging from work for a little bit, I truly have enjoyed the week back and seeing everyone at Pennoyer. There's been a good energy this week with students and staff, and I've enjoyed walking through the hallways and classrooms. I tried my best to catch up with a lot of you and touch base about your Winter Break. Many staff members truly just took it easy, and had some relaxing time at home with friends and family with no big plans to attend to. Those are sometimes the best breaks as far as I'm concerned.

We did try to venture out for a few days to New Buffalo, Michigan the day after Christmas, but with no snow and many things closed, my kids kept reminding me that they'd rather be home or in Hawaii like some of their friends. Yeah...lots of luck with that! My wife and I definitely liked the change of scenery, slow pace, and quiet nature of being up there. If nothing else, it was a break from Chipotle, Netflix, and our normal routine. We got our two teenagers to actually play some board games with us (Family Feud and Trivia Pursuit), we fed deer that came right up to the fence in our backyard, ate some great meals, went ice skating, and hit up some antique stores for fun.

Here's Sadie and Jamee sitting by the fire that was a highlight most nights and my cooky son Lennon lying around one day with an idea he had to become "soccer head." I do love them so much, and I'm glad we got away a little bit.

Hawk Action Items

All teachers should have begun instituting our universal expectations each day this week for every class period they teach a new group of students to support behavior, expectations, and build connections. We're calling this our 3 to Succeed!

1. Greet students every morning.

2. Display School PBIS expectations OR PBIS Expectations (BLANK) in the

classroom and review everyday. Example: What are 2 ways we are

responsible in the classroom? In school?

3. Anytime your kids are in the hallway (arrival, dismissal, transitions,) you are

in the hallway with them. Middle school - transitions between classes.

*Admin will continue to walk the hallways as much as possible during transitions to help support and check in on our progress, along with weekly pop ins to classrooms to support our 3 to Succeed daily universal school wide expectations. Also, Meghan has put together a simple Google Sheet linked HERE for grade band teams to do their own fidelity checks weekly and share some of the different ways, where we can all learn from each other, that they're focusing on reviewing our PBIS expectations with students. Thanks again to everyone for your openness and support with all of this! Reach out to Adam with any questions or concerns.

Just a reminder that we'll continue our work digging deeper into our professional development centered around student engagement this trimester. In addition, this will be a great opportunity to perhaps tie the behavioral RTI work and classroom management structures we’re working through that directly correlate with high levels of student engagement. HERE is our Pennoyer Trifecta Vision & Framework as a reminder!

The Innovation Coaches; Angela Gonzales and Justin Gonzalez, will be joining one of your common plan times during the day in the next two weeks and are excited to meet with each of your teams individually. During your team plan you can expect Angela and/or Justin to do the following
- 5 minute check in
- 5 minute review of SMARTE Goal (feel free to check it out ahead of time)
- 15 minute reflection, revision of SMARTE goal if needed
- 5 minute closure and minimum next steps
Each team will have the opportunity to decide which 30 minute team plan slot you’d like to meet virtually. Should any of the proposed times not work for you in the next two weeks, please do let us know. You can sign your team up using this form.

*For any teachers and staff that don’t have common plan time with their counterpart (content area or grade level), please feel free to pick a time that works best for you. Feel free to combine with another team if you’d like as well.

For Learning Walk Participants: please review the proposed grouping/timing of your learning walk cohorts found at the bottom of this page, and provide any feedback/requests in the orange cell of which time slot you’d prefer for your group's time slot.

For Learning Lab Participants: please review the proposed calendar/timing of your labs found on this page, and provide any feedback/questions in the orange cell at the bottom of the page.

We’d love for all team plans/meeting dates & times, as well as feedback/questions to be provided by Friday, January 19th at the latest.

Wanna make somebody's day at Pennoyer...don't forget about our staff shout outs we'd like to get started up again this year! It's real easy; if one staff member wants to give another staff member at Pennoyer a positive shout out for something that week, just send a quick email blurb to Adam, and he'll feature it in our weekly Hawk Happenings!

Great job with all the social media posts shared for the month of December! Keep it up in January. Here's the Google Form for teachers to complete. Thanks!!!

Stipend Opening for JV Boys Volleyball in the spring...Connect w/ Adam if interested.

Weekly Hawk Playlist/Lyric

"Come with me and you'll be, in a world of pure imagination. Take a look and you'll see, into your imagination..."

-Pure Imagination from the movie Wonka

Hawk Celebrations

For our first celebration of 2024, I'd like to highlight our new middle school math teacher this year, Mrs. Carin Chrastka! I've had numerous opportunities to pop into Mrs. Chrastka's classroom and witness firsthand so many of the amazing things she's doing to engage our students at the highest levels. She is passionate, dedicated, thoughtful, and so creative when it comes to managing the curriculum and supporting all of her students. Mrs. Chrastka puts students at the center of their learning and dynamically moves through lessons to keep students focused and truly being a part of their own learning experience. She has effective systems in place to challenge students and reward them for positive behavior and working hard. One of the coolest things Mrs. Chrastka came up with was a way to leverage some of our brightest math students at Pennoyer and have them support other middle school students. Each week, Mrs. Chrastka has 8th grade Math 2 students coming in and out of her class to peer tutor other middle school students either one on one or in small groups. What a great leadership opportunity she has opened up for many of our students! Mrs. Chrastka is #Pennoyerpride all the way!!!