Thursday, August 1, 2019

Week of August 5, 2019

It is hard to believe that we are a week and a half away from our learners filling our building.  We hope you are as excited as we are!

This year's theme is: Attitude of Gratitude and we are lucky to have you at Lee Elementary!  Thankfulness starts in our front office with Shanna.  Thank you, Shanna, for working NONSTOP to enroll all of the new learners.  I am THANKFUL for how Shanna welcomes everyone with a smile each time they enter the office. You rock!

Thank you to Leigh Ann and Shanna. for spending multiple days helping to organize all of the Science supplies in our former Science Lab.  You have five new tubs of science supplies in your house storage rooms. 

Thank you to those of you that participated in curriculum writing or professional learning this summer.  Your hard work and dedication helps us improve every year.  Many of you will be sharing documents during Professional Learning Week.  We are grateful to have your knowledge and skills in this area!

We want to acknowledge all of you that have put time in getting systems in place, organizing storage rooms, setting up spaces, and supporting new hires before we come back.  We know even if you weren't at Lee in person, you were working electronically, meeting for dinners, attending ARDS, orienting teammates, tweeting, and MORE.  Please know that your efforts do not go unnoticed and are what help make this the BEST SCHOOL ON THE PLANET!

I want to celebrate the blessing of an INCREDIBLE Admin Team!  Not a minute goes by that I am not reminded about the power of teamwork, collaboration, and servant leadership when I am with Angela and Leigh Ann.  They make me grateful beyond words!  

Lastly, I want to say thank you for all the babies that keep our FamiLEE growing.  This summer we have welcomed Jacque's, Stormy's, Taylor's, and hopefully Stephanie's (any minute).   What a treat it is to watch your personal families grow.  


DID YOU KNOW:
  • Claudia, Natalie, Angela, Kathy, and Susie have already been working behind the scenes this week?  We are grateful for their extra contract days!  Have you seen our Media Center? WOW!
  • the painters have not finished at Lee?   They are also touching up our building so it looks as good as new.  If you have a wall that was not repainted, hang in there.  They should be done, soon!
  • ADD DIRECTIONS FOR LINKING GOOGLE TO EMAIL


LEADERSHIP RETREAT
What an incredible couple of days we had in Rockwall with this year's Leadership Team.  It was a great three days of planning, dreaming, and visioning for the 2019-2020 school year.  THANK YOU to these ladies for giving up their summer time to put in hours of work and to grow both professionally and personally.  It was an honor to spend this quality time with them.  Please know that ANYone is welcome to attend our monthly Leadership meetings.  We also have an agenda that we share campus-wide to honor that we are leading with full transparency.  Your house leaders will review content from our agenda with you during the weeks ahead. 


MENTOR/MENTEE AND ONBOARDING 
We are looking forward to our first Onboarding meeting!  Join us at Life Safety Park on Friday, at 9:00.  Thank you to Layne, Jacque, Samira, Courtney, and Leigh Ann for putting your minds together to design this layer of support.  Onboarding will help make sure that our new folks are supported in intentional ways.  Our goal is to KEEP all of you in Coppell ISD and at Lee Elementary for a long time!  We appreciate the ladies serving as mentors this year and Layne for serving as our Lead Mentor on campus.  We look forward to our monthly meetings and are here for our new FamiLEE members!


KINDERGARTEN ASSESSMENT DAY
THANK YOU to all of the gals planning to help with Saturday's assessments.  We are super excited to get a little bit of information about our learners so we can place them and create balanced houses.  This is a HUGE endeavor and a great opportunity for our new parents to see how lucky they are to be at Lee!


NEW HIRE BREAKFAST
ALL new hires are invited to attend this breakfast at CMSW (next to Lee)  It is professional dress and there will be many school board, community and district members there.  When you arrive, look for the Lee table(s) and grab a "goodie bag."  It helps to get there early.  As parking will be limited, you may want to carpool with other new hires you have met from your house/grade.  I will be there by 7:15.


BACK TO SCHOOL WEEK
The district sent out this information last week.  Here is a document that give you an outline of each day, where to be, what you will do, and what to wear.  I hope this helps with any confusion.



RJL ROADSHOW
We are super excited to take you on a little field trip on Tuesday.  Please tweet and retweet the event out to help spread the word!  A parent link will be going out this weekend, too.  We want you to bring balloons, signs, candy, noisemakers,  and anything you think will make this event special for our learners and their famiLEEs.  We will have two busses this year.



CLASS LISTS
Class lists will start to be populated in eSchool Plus. All grade level designers will email your parents on Friday afternoon.   Please work together, as a house, to comprise a welcoming email to send out on Friday afternoon at 4:00 pm.  (Returning Staff, we can work on wording this on Friday, after lunch, while new hires are at technology training, if you like) . We want to be consistent, and send these at the same time, so that the office is not bombarded with phone calls.  In your email, please include a Google form to capture info so that you do not have to have all of your parents complete it at Meet the Designer Night.  Also include the Volunteer Background Check link so that ALL parents can get approved to engage at school.  Lastly, print off, or email a copy of this form to have parents complete if they are interested in being a Room Parent.


MEET THE DESIGNER NIGHT
Please plan to be at this event from 6:00-7:00 on Monday night.  Your space DOES NOT have to be completely ready for this event!  Stage it the best you can and remember that your space will come to life once the learners arrive and create work.  We will give you our 2019-2020 campus shirts to wear on this day and to our event.  We will take a staff picture in the gym at 5:45 and these shirts will help parents to identify staff members in the building.  I am fine with you wearing jeans with your new shirt for MTD.  Designers, if you have a PTO board member's learner, or a staff member's child in your class...they may need to come to your space at earlier, to meet you, so that they can participate in Meet the Designer Night.  Thank you for your flexibility with these parents.


KEEP AFLOAT
In an attempt to lighten your load, we have been strategically sprinkling out "to-do's" though the last couple of blog posts.  I want you to be kind to yourself this school year, so it will help if you get some of these tasks done, now, so you can focus on relationships and lesson design the first couple weeks of school.  Here are some items you can hopefully check off:

  • Watch compliance training videos and complete quizzes in Schoology
  • Complete Faculty Favorites Form
  • Visit and review the RJL Schoology Course and Faculty Website 
  • Update your campus website (new hires, ask a teammate for help, please)
  • Request keys from Leigh Ann
  • Post your final #rjlsummerselfie pics before Tuesday

LEE STAFF CALENDAR
All important events are uploaded to a shared Lee Staff Calendar.  New hires will want to add the staff calendar to your phones and MacBooks.  It will help you if you go to this link to bookmark your email on your device.  (NOT THE OUTLOOK ICON ON YOUR MAC BOOK!)  Go to "Add Calendar" above the date range and insert the link.  Here are links to help you:
HTML Link                                         
ICS Link  






Dates to Remember:
August 3- Kindergarten Assessments (9:30-3:30)
August 5- New Hire Breakfast (CMSW 7:30)
August 9- Shari H's Birthday
     CISD Convocation
     Email to welcome your FamiLEEs (4:00)
August 12- Meet the Designer Night
August 14- First Day of School!

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