Friday, November 30, 2012

Parents Are Learners Too

Today is an exciting day at Austin!  We are starting off with the 1st of our series of 4 Parent Courses devoted to informing and involving our parents in the work we're doing with Operation Transformation.  Part of that work is a realization of the responsibility we have to build reciprocal relationships with our parents and community.  This is a great first step towards achieving that.

We've used a great (FREE) tool to help us organize the event and plan for our attendees.  SignUpGenius.com was an easy way for us to publicize the class and keep track of those attending.  It's a great tool for organizing volunteers, parent conferences, etc.

Check out the link below for the presentation that we'll use. 

Parent Class #1 Presentation

One item that the presentation references is the Campus Pedagogy.  The Campus Pedagogy is a component of the Transformation Plan that was developed at the summer Principal Academy.  In short, it outlines what we believe our school community should look like.  Take a look at the graphic version below, and give us your feedback!  It is meant to guide us over the next few years as we "transform" our learning environment.  Of course, it will change and evolve as WE change and evolve.





Tuesday, November 13, 2012

We Believe...

For the past few years, Austin has had Belief Statements that voice what it is that we believe about education and the needs of our learners.

Having since composed our Campus Guiding Purpose, we realized that we needed Belief Statements that reflect that Guiding Purpose and tell our community what distinguishes Austin from other elementaries, so we bravely undertook the task of reviewing our Belief Statements and updating them to be authentic reflections of what we hold to be true!  Our team leaders helped facilitate this process with their teams.  Needless to say, there was plenty of cutting, pasting, adding, omitting, and rewording.

We couldn't be more proud of our final product!  What we ended up with truly verbalizes how Austin is unique and strives to ignite passion in our learners AND educators.

Check them out, and let us know what you think.