Hello Everyone: I am so pleased to share all of the wonderful things happening in our district this week from my vantage point. I am so proud to share a photo of our new professional development committee. It is such a pleasure being a member of this high functioning working group. The committee is co-led by our Assistant Superintendent Dr. Novak and middle school teacher Dorothy Dwyer. To the right is an image of all of the great committee members. Committee Members Include: Beverly Clark, Audra Kaplan, Joyce Bennett, Emma Blydenburgh, Dorothy Dwyer, Susan Wynn, Kristen Kinneen, Katie Novak, and Myself (not pictured). I had the great pleasure of two school visits this week. I spent Monday morning over at the high school. To the right are some fun images of what I was able to see. I spent most of my time in ELA, world language, and history classes. Lucky me! I also very much enjoyed my visit to Middle School South. It was wonderful to see students engaged in many different subject areas. The District Strategy Committee held its first meeting Monday evening. During this first session we were introduced to all members, defined the concept of district strategy, articulated committee tasks, developed a draft vision statement, and defined next steps. Committee members include:
In regards to supporting our district's leaders, I wanted to share a few images of our work this week. The first photo is of our Wednesday workshop on self-assessment. During this workshop, administrators used the data from a SMART goal instructional data meeting protocol we conducted to inform the student learning section of their needs assessments. The second is a picture of our school leadership team meeting this morning. Today, we had professional development in such areas as effective leadership capacities (from chapters 3 & 4 of our group book study of Primal Leadership), SMART goal training, and discussions on CPI training. Many thanks to the administrators who prepared presentation materials and actively participated in group discussions. In district news, Mr. Luke Callahan (our Director of Technology, Information, and Media Relations) shared the following press release recently titled "Novak to Keynote Annual MRA Conference". http://www.gdrsd.org/District/News/4125-Novak-to-Keynote-Annual-MRA-Conference.html In case you hadn't seen it, I thought I would share! I hope to see many of you Saturday evening (6:30 pm) September 27th at the Harlem Wizards vs. GDRHS Faculty Game at the HS. I look forward to putting on a jersey and MANAGING (note it does not say playing-as my playing would just be a sad sight). Thanks to one of our teachers, Jay Vilagomez, for all his work organizing this event. To the right is photo of me at Grotonfest after seeing a brave crusader sporting the Wizards sign. To kick off the event, the Wizards visited our schools today! Have a great weekend everyone! Dr. Kristan Rodriguez, Superintendent of Schools |