Echoes from Cañon
Examples of Excellence
I would like to thank the Cañon City Rotary Club for once again committing to provide every 3rd grader in our district with a Scholastic for Children’s Dictionary. I believe this is the 12th consecutive year the club will do this. Cañon City Rotary actually expects to distribute close to 300 of these dictionaries early in December to students in the RE1 and RE3 school district (I hear the Florence Club will cover RE2). The product to be distributed to 3rd graders is a long lasting, beautiful hardcover book including more than 30,000 words with easy-to-understand descriptions, illustrations, phonetic pronunciations, parts of speech, synonyms, the Braille alphabet, a guide to U.S. presidents, facts about the states, maps, and many more handy references. This is a wonderful way for these community leaders to support learning for some of our youngest students.
I want to thank administrators and staff members of both Harrison K-8 and Cañon City Middle School for renewing their focus on school climate and bully prevention work this year. I know each school is supporting instructors in being are more aware of bullying behavior displayed by students, and last Friday each of the schools’ student bodies even got to experience a fine visit by former Denver Bronco Rick Upchurch focusing on skills related to making positive choices and showing respect for one another.
Also this week, it is difficult to express just how thrilled I am at the flood of evidence I have begun to receive from building administrators indicating the important work they are doing observing classroom instruction and providing helpful feedback to teachers aimed at incremental instructional improvement and support. A the beginning of the year I challenged building instructional leaders to spend a minimum of two hours per week in classrooms conducting formal walkthrough evaluations that result in provision of helpful and thoughtful feedback. During the first three weeks of school director of student services Dominic Carochi and I took time to participate in these walkthrough processes with building leaders to make sure we are all on the same page regarding instructional expectations. The result for me so far, is high appreciation for the knowledge many of our administrators are already displaying related to this work, and feeling this effort is being conducted with great fidelity.
Finally, I want to take a moment to recognize special education department administrative assistant Raynette Douglas for the great work she does on behalf of many of the most instructionally needy children of the Cañon City School District. Director of special education Kirsten Javernick says, “Raynette is truly my anchor! She keeps me on time, in the right week, at the right appointment, organized, grounded and laughing! I could not accomplish many of the things I need to do without her unfailing support. I so appreciate her expertise in completing state level reports, managing Medicaid, and assisting the Special Education Case Managers in their daily operations. Raynette's work ethic is unfaltering; I will often find her working on reports on the weekend or after her scheduled hours. Her work is always completed with integrity. In addition, she is always ready and willing to offer assistance to whomever is in need.” Raynette, your colleagues clearly recognize your constant example of excellence. Thanks for all your hard work!
I want to thank administrators and staff members of both Harrison K-8 and Cañon City Middle School for renewing their focus on school climate and bully prevention work this year. I know each school is supporting instructors in being are more aware of bullying behavior displayed by students, and last Friday each of the schools’ student bodies even got to experience a fine visit by former Denver Bronco Rick Upchurch focusing on skills related to making positive choices and showing respect for one another.
Also this week, it is difficult to express just how thrilled I am at the flood of evidence I have begun to receive from building administrators indicating the important work they are doing observing classroom instruction and providing helpful feedback to teachers aimed at incremental instructional improvement and support. A the beginning of the year I challenged building instructional leaders to spend a minimum of two hours per week in classrooms conducting formal walkthrough evaluations that result in provision of helpful and thoughtful feedback. During the first three weeks of school director of student services Dominic Carochi and I took time to participate in these walkthrough processes with building leaders to make sure we are all on the same page regarding instructional expectations. The result for me so far, is high appreciation for the knowledge many of our administrators are already displaying related to this work, and feeling this effort is being conducted with great fidelity.
Finally, I want to take a moment to recognize special education department administrative assistant Raynette Douglas for the great work she does on behalf of many of the most instructionally needy children of the Cañon City School District. Director of special education Kirsten Javernick says, “Raynette is truly my anchor! She keeps me on time, in the right week, at the right appointment, organized, grounded and laughing! I could not accomplish many of the things I need to do without her unfailing support. I so appreciate her expertise in completing state level reports, managing Medicaid, and assisting the Special Education Case Managers in their daily operations. Raynette's work ethic is unfaltering; I will often find her working on reports on the weekend or after her scheduled hours. Her work is always completed with integrity. In addition, she is always ready and willing to offer assistance to whomever is in need.” Raynette, your colleagues clearly recognize your constant example of excellence. Thanks for all your hard work!
The Focus of Our Work
Some of the most important work we are doing in the district right now includes that being done by our Evaluation Council, our Regional Wellness Committee, and our District Accountability Committee.
Two weeks ago our Evaluation Council met to plan how the CCSD will implement the requirement of SB 191 to incorporate evidence of measures of student learning into all teacher evaluation processes by the end of the year, as required by state law. Our meeting was productive and a plan to develop a process by which individual teachers will play a major role in creating theses evaluation models was pursued. Director of human resources Misty Manchester and I will set up subcommittees to refine this process, with a hope that we can bring it back to the Evaluation Council and adopt a model by November 1st.
Two weeks ago the Fremont County Regional Wellness Committee met to conduct work, the most important of which was to consider making adjustments to our district student wellness policy. A much improved version was presented to the committee at this meeting and suggestions for further improvement were solicited and are being taken into account. We are hoping our work on this policy revision will culminate in October of this year.
Finally, this Thursday our District Accountability Committee will meet to begin its annual cycle of work including reviewing student achievement results, recommending the accreditation status of each school, planning future instructional improvement, and aligning funds to the achievement of these instructional improvement priorities through the annual budgeting process.
Two weeks ago our Evaluation Council met to plan how the CCSD will implement the requirement of SB 191 to incorporate evidence of measures of student learning into all teacher evaluation processes by the end of the year, as required by state law. Our meeting was productive and a plan to develop a process by which individual teachers will play a major role in creating theses evaluation models was pursued. Director of human resources Misty Manchester and I will set up subcommittees to refine this process, with a hope that we can bring it back to the Evaluation Council and adopt a model by November 1st.
Two weeks ago the Fremont County Regional Wellness Committee met to conduct work, the most important of which was to consider making adjustments to our district student wellness policy. A much improved version was presented to the committee at this meeting and suggestions for further improvement were solicited and are being taken into account. We are hoping our work on this policy revision will culminate in October of this year.
Finally, this Thursday our District Accountability Committee will meet to begin its annual cycle of work including reviewing student achievement results, recommending the accreditation status of each school, planning future instructional improvement, and aligning funds to the achievement of these instructional improvement priorities through the annual budgeting process.
Last Week
This past week I participated in formal classroom walkthroughs at Cañon City High School, Lincoln School of Science and Technology, and Canon Exploratory School. I also conducted in building office hours at Mountain View Core Knowledge School, Harrison K-8, McKinley, and Lincoln. On Tuesday, thanks to personnel from Colorado Safe Schools Resource Center, key CCSD employees received training in how to perform threat assessments on students of concern. That afternoon director of human resources Misty Manchester and I met with Cañon City Education Association officers Kelly Albrecht and Jamie Davis to discuss various issues of interest. We talked about an agreement to create a salary schedule study committee that was a result of negotiations from last spring, the association’s process to recommend, but not endorse, candidates for the upcoming board election, a no cost opportunity we have to train teachers and administrators more about best practices surrounding the SB 191 evaluation process, and feelings of nervousness some of our teachers are expressing regarding our new instructional feedback processes. The meeting was quite collaborative and productive, and I hope we continue to conduct such visits on a monthly basis. On Tuesday I also met about building level tech support issues with director of human resources Misty Manchester and director of technology Shaun Kohl.
This Week
On Monday I will meet about building evaluation processes with McKinley Elementary and Harrison K-8 administrators. On Tuesday I have Superintendent Advisory Council and Leadership team meetings. I have a Truancy committee meeting on Wednesday evening, and on Thursday I have my monthly meeting with DHS director Steve Clifton and RE-2 superintendent Rhonda Roberts. I will also attend Pueblo Community College Fremont Campus advisory, and our 3rd quarter district accountability committee meetings. On Friday and Saturday, along with a team of other CCSD employees, I will attend the first two sessions of a six session training about high quality classroom instruction and how to effectively evaluate teachers according the SB 191 principles.
My in building office hours for the coming week will be:
Monday September 21st from 2 PM to 3 PM at Lincoln Elementary
Tuesday September 22nd from 11 AM to Noon at CCMS
Wednesday September 23rd from 9 AM to 10 AM at CES
Wednesday September 23rd from from 10:30 to 11:30 at Washington Elementary
George S. Welsh
My in building office hours for the coming week will be:
Monday September 21st from 2 PM to 3 PM at Lincoln Elementary
Tuesday September 22nd from 11 AM to Noon at CCMS
Wednesday September 23rd from 9 AM to 10 AM at CES
Wednesday September 23rd from from 10:30 to 11:30 at Washington Elementary
George S. Welsh
