On Wednesday of this week, we had our regularly-scheduled department meeting before school (8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., scheduled by the school once a month). Usually this meeting is for the department head to tell the rest of us whatever wonderful flavor-of-the-month has been gestating at leadership meeting, or remind us of upcoming deadlines (or both).  This week was no different.  We were to discuss chapters 3 & 4 in our SIOP books, and come up with a department-wide consensus of its most-important points.

To back up a minute here:  the department chairs are released from teaching one class so they can participate in a bi-weekly “leadership” meeting during the school day.  I think this year it takes up 3^rd period.  All the department chairs, the principal, the assistant principals, the instructional coach, and the counselors (or maybe there’s just a counselor representative) go to the leadership meeting.  I’d be jealous of the extra break in their day, but sitting in that meeting (even once a week, which is all they meet even though 3^rd period happens more often than once a week) doesn’t seem like a fun way to spend an hour.

Leadership team members are the first ones to hear about new strategies or priorities coming from the district office.  They are the first ones who know what the principals are focusing on for evaluations this year, and they are the conduit for “teacher input” on all of the above-mentioned items as well as things the admin would just as soon not talk about but the chairs bring up anyway.

I’m in favor of leadership team, by the way, because I do think it gives admin a taste of what typical teachers think (even though department chairs aren’t generally typical, because typical teachers avoid things like hoop-jumping and extra meetings).

And anyway, I’m besties with a leadership team member, so I hear about most of the stuff before it becomes common knowledge, without having to deal with the discussion and/or training that goes along with it.   Without leadership team meetings, we would ALL have to learn about the flavor-of-the-month, all the time.  This method saves me a lot of stomach acid, as I can avoid much of the nonsense and only pay attention when I absolutely have to.

So, back to SIOP:  SIOP stands for “Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol,” and it was created for the purpose of standardizing instruction for English Language Learners.  In our area, the ELLs are almost exclusively Spanish speaking, but SIOP applies to anyone using English as a second language.  The procedures used aren’t actually much different than any careful and conscientious teacher would use anyway – things like “provide a model for the students to see what is expected” and “check for understanding in a variety of ways.” 

I’m not actually super clear on the specifics, because once I determined that I did all that stuff anyway, I may have mentally checked out.  I’m pretty sure that there’s some lingo I’m supposed to memorize, and I will definitely check that out before my next observation.

After the department meeting -- where we also discussed ideas for a “grade-wide” summer read (each grade will read a common book over the summer), and the dates for when testing starts – we were to meet in our designated Professional Learning Community and, using the 3-2-1 strategy, create a document about chapters 3 & 4 to send to the department chair that he could then forward to admin.  Luckily for me, my PLC is scheduled to meet on Wednesdays during 1^st period, which was immediately after the department meeting.

Also luckily for me, my partner in PLC is, if not quite as ornery as I am, at least in agreement with my orneriness, and she needed to go over some things in her room first. She said she would come to my room when she was ready.

This is because they expect us to have our PLC meetings during our prep period, that precious 83 minutes of time we get, 2 or 3 times per week, that is supposed to help us prepare for the classes that week and grade the work and contact the parents.  On the weeks that 1^st period occurs 3 times, we still have 2 other preps to use, but on the weeks that 1^st period only occurs twice, well . . . let’s just say we often hold our PLC over the phone for several minutes instead of in the same room for an hour.  I type up the conversation on the “PLC minutes” form we are expected to use and submit it to the department chair, and I FEEL FINE about that.

Anyway.  Thirty minutes later, my partner came to my room with her SIOP book (she’s so obedient) (I had to search to find mine, which was under some papers in the shelf by my desk)  (okay, under a lot of papers in the shelf by my desk).  The 3-2-1 strategy was (imagine this in the perky voice of our instructional coach, who came to us from elementary schools, which is super obvious) “Pick 3 things you noticed in your reading, then 2 questions you had, and finish with 1 strategy you commit to using.” 

My partner, who had actually read both chapters, dictated what she noticed and wondered about while I typed it up.  I tried not to make it too obvious that I hadn’t read, because I didn’t want her to feel bad about not being a cool rebel like me.  We agreed to use a strategy that we both already use, the bell rang for Advisory to start (a discussion for another week), and she ran back to her classroom.  I sent our “plan” to the department chair.

I don’t remember what the agreed-upon strategy was.

See you next week! TTFN