"WORK TEAM NEWS"
WINTER 1996


Our Work Teams at Thoreau are alive and well! You probably know that the staff and community of Thoreau formed four Work Teams in order to focus on some specific areas for growth within our school. These teams consist of staff members, parents, and members of the community. Each Work Team meets several times during the year in order to develop goals and recommendations appropriate to their area. Some teams have already piloted, field tested or implemented their ideas. Other Teams needed to survey both students and/or parents to aid the process of developing their plan. Throughout each school year we have kept parents up to date on our Work Team progress, and we will continue to do that again.

We feel our Work Teams are gratifying and definitely beneficial for student improvement at Thoreau. Our areas of focus fit very well into both the district and state expectations, and our process allowed dialogue among staff, parents and members of the community.

Please feel free to contact any of the Team members, or myself, if you would like additional information, or have ideas or feedback to share. If you would like to participate on a Thoreau Work Team, please let us know.


STUDENT ASSESSMENT, EVALUATING, AND REPORTING

Our school will continue to use our Writing Continuum with our students and parents this school year. The process of student inclusion in spring conferences will also continue. The Assessment Team developed survey questions for parent and staff feedback and found that these two activities were well received by both groups.

The Team has developed a reading continuum which we will pilot this year. Some teachers are also implementing portfolios as a part of the spring Parent, Student, Teacher conference (in which the student has a major role) . There is much research evidence showing that portfolios highlight a student's best work; demonstrate a student's range of work; share information with families and teachers; foster a positive self-concept; encourage students to set goals, self reflect, take risks, be creative and provide a comprehensive long term portrait of performance for the child and family.
The Assessment Team is aligned with the Communication section of our Student Profile and newly required State Academic Standards. The Team will participate in the process of matching these expectations with our current practices in reading, writing, and at a later time, mathematics

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INTEGRATION OF ARTS AND CURRICULUM

This Work Team will be focusing on the arts section of the Student Profile and the creation of arts as a learning vehicle for students. Their goal this year is to align the learning guidelines of the Profile with what is currently our school's practice. A long range plan for arts integration in our school will then be developed.


LIFE SKILLS/PARTNERSHIPS WORK TEAM:

The Life Skills Team has researched many programs that incorporate life skills into daily teaching and learning, also those that are aligned with the "School to Work" section of the Student Profile. During their meetings this fall the Team members realized that all of the Life Skills activities address different audiences and serve many different purposes. Recognizing student needs at Thoreau, the Team recommended programs which they felt would address immediate skill priorities.
The selected programs address skills which include: problem solving, social interaction, collaboration, conflict resolution and the understanding of cause and effect. These skills are very important for student and life success. Staff, parent, and student training throughout the year will allow us to incorporate these skills within our Thoreau school day.
The programs chosen by the Work Team to recommend to the staff address both immediate needs and long term needs. These programs also address the following audiences directly: the children, the total staff, and the parents and community.
Playground Conflict Mediation is the program recommended to address immediate playground needs. This program provides training for students in problem solving. It allows conflict manager students to be paired up at recess to work with students who have minor disagreements on the playground.
Love and Logic, from the Foster Kline Institute will likely be one program used to address both short and long term student skill acquisition. Staff and parents unite in this program in a specific approach of relating and communicating with kids. The whole understanding of a child's self esteem, giving choices you can live with, and replacing punishment with empathy and natural consequences are some of the highlights.
The staff and Work Team also decided to have several interested teachers trained to pilot a program in the classroom called Tribes. This program builds a learning community in the classroom and in the whole school. Partnership with the parents and the Thoreau community is critical to the success of whatever programs are adopted and it is the intention of this Work Team to involve you as much as possible in all aspects of this process. The total Thoreau staff will be trained in whatever programs are adopted so that everything we adopt will be implemented school wide. More information to students and parents will be forthcoming soon about the activities of this work team.
When addressing community/family partnerships, the Lifeskill/Partnership Team discussed working towards the expansion of some already existing Thoreau programs, as well as the development of some new ones. The Lunch Buddy Program is presently doing very well. We have approximately 25 Lunch Buddies, with more than 50% being from the general community, and the rest being Thoreau parents. If you would like to be a Lunch Buddy at Thoreau, or know someone who might be interested, please contact us at school.

TECHNOLOGY

The Technology Work Team ended last school year by deciding the distribution of our computer hardware for the 95-96 school year. Two new mini-labs were created and two additional CD ROM capable machines were procured to allow each of the non mini-lab classrooms to have greater computer access. A summer group met to finalize this year's plans with topics that included internet training, staff continuum development and use, along with identification of staff training needs.
This year's Work Team has met and developed sub-committees to pursue several important long range tasks. These include the development of our school's Long Range Technology Plan. School Internet, Student Technology Profile, and staff and community training will continue to be a part of this plan. Also included will be an identification of the skills students need to incorporate technology into the learning process.
Information from the LWSD Student Profile will be incorporated into this Team's work during this school year. The Student Profile information will have an impact on our Computer Center and it's goals, as well as the goals of our staff and students.
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This is the current status of our four Work Teams. Again, please feel free to call any team member if you have any questions or ideas. If you are interested in participating in this process, please call us!

Our Vision: In partnership with family and community, students will succeed as skilled, knowledgeable, creative, lifelong learners and contributors to our diverse and interdependent world.




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