New Year

Team Lincoln,

We have come so far the first half of the school year.  As we move towards the second half of the year  we must remind ourselves of how far we have come and how far we most continue to go to become the best we can be.  I am excited for the challenges ahead.  In this educational world of change we know that the only constant is change.  We will see an abundant amount of changes in the coming months.  Besides our first journey together with the RISE evaluation tool, and yes I must meet both of my goals to be effective too.  We will be faced with obstacles and challenges to who we are.  There will be decisions in 2013 that we might struggle with and find hard to understand but it is always with the best interests of students and Team Lincoln that those decisions are made.  We currently are building a wealth of data that gives us an indication of the success of our students.  We have completed Acuity testing two times thus far and indications are that we have work to do prior to ISTEP to reach 80/80 status.  After window B we have the following scores:

7th LA 79% predicted to pass
8th LA 73% predicted to pass

7th MA 90% predicted to pass
8th MA 80% predicted to pass

It remains the responsibility of all teachers to prepare students for success not only on ISTEP but for their futures as well.  We will look at what we all can continue to do and improve upon to prepare our students for success.  We have looked at several Best Practices during the first half of the year:  Conley's Intellectual standards, learning objectives, Do Now's, metacognition, effective and equitable questioning.  As we continue to get into each others classrooms remember that rigor and effective use of these practices are what we are looking for.  The feedback that we provide for each other through this process makes us all better, it makes TEAM LINCOLN better.  If we can begin to expect more and provide quality feedback of each other we can grow together and nothing will stop how effective we can be.  We are a Team!  So as the changes of 2013 come upon us remember that we will face them together and that the goal is for our students to be prepared for success.

Happy New Year.