"And we're off..." The 2011-12 school year is underway with the welcome back of our education team on Thursday this week and our students on Monday next week. Our team has returned with energy, enthusiasm and excitement to greet our students and begin to build the relationships that are so important for the academic progress of our children. Great job, leadership team for creating an atmosphere of success for our returning staff to get ready for the school year while focusing on our purpose and direction for 2011-12!
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Enrollment and Placement of our Elementary Students...
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Notifications of school and teacher placement for all K-5 students in the Bozeman Public School District have occurred. If your child was not placed at his/her attendance area school, please click on this link for more information. Enrollment continues to grow, most specifically in the primary grades (K-2), and the District must balance state class size standards, the wishes of families to be placed in attendance area schools, budget shortfall, and facility and classroom space availability. We have worked extensively to communicate with our parents throughout August. Thank you for your patience through this process.
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Education Team Welcome and Launch of 2011-12...
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Practicing efficient and effective strategies to launch the school year, we have created a YouTube video that welcomes our education team back to school and provides them with important information. The advantage to creating a YouTube video is that the information remains available to anyone who chooses to review it at a time that makes most sense for the individual. For example, our teachers and support staff have come back to school and first and foremost on their mind is that they will be prepared to welcome their students and set a successful tone and relationship from day 1. Of secondary importance to them are the technical details about how we accomplish our work through the Long Range Strategic Plan in an accountable, transparent way. I think we all understand how important the work to move toward our Core Ideology is, but being ready for our students is first and foremost. The YouTube video allows the progress that has been made on our Long Range Strategic Plan and strategies to "Tell Our Story" to be present now, but available for focus a bit later in the school year when relationships have been established with our students, and our team is better able to focus on planning.
This is an educational technique known as flipping - basically, the core information is available anywhere, anytime and the meeting or classroom time can be used for having a rich discussion about information. We are seeing success with this technique in helping our students with higher order thinking skills that are rigorous and relevant. In our district we call this working in Quadrant D. The YouTube video in its full length format to welcome back our team, which describes the progress made on the LRSP and strategies to "Tell Our Story", is featured on the web at...
BSD7 Welcome LRSP and Tell Our Story 2011-12
YouTube ScreenFlow Video
31 minutes, 57 seconds
Saved on bozemanbiology YouTube channel
URL is ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jnd44GrK-w
You are able to watch what you want, when you want. These are strategies (flipping) we will be incorporating in our classrooms and when communicating with the public this school year. Let me know what you think, your feedback is appreciated.
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Fall activity programs are underway. At the high school level, our cross country teams, volleyball team, soccer teams and football team are all in competition (see District Events Calendar below).
We have welcomed 19 new teachers to the Bozeman School District this week. Each one has spent the week in orientation and training to become effective members of our education team. A rich mentor program has been developed where the new teachers and a mentor teacher work together throughout the school year to create success for students by problem solving and learning about all the great strategies we have to improve student learning. My thanks to Human Resources Director Pat Strauss, his team and our mentor teachers for welcoming the newest members of our team and setting strategies to assure their success with our students!
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Click here to review the draft agenda for the September 12, 2011 Board meeting.
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Click here to see upcoming events. Thanks for Reading!
Kirk J. Miller
Superintendent
Bozeman Public Schools
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