St. John's, Chicago
New Starts New Believer Stories:
1 - St. Paul, (Austin) Chicago- This is a new start preschool at St. Paul,
Austin, which has had a K-8 school. 12
preschoolers have been enrolled. The
classroom was remodeled and equipped very developmentally via a generous grant
through CLEF.
- Zion, Ottawa- A story was shared about a young preschooler
who helped bring prayer into her family’s life.
- St. John’s Chicago- They hosted a parent night and attendance
seemed to be much better due to offering activities for the children including
an ice cream snack.
- Trinity, Naperville= They are up to over 35 students during this
first year of operation. They operate off-site from their church in an office
building. They have five different
native languages represented in their two year old room. They have site pastor who is helping with
intentional efforts of connecting their
largely non-member group of parents with Jesus and the church.
Dates to remember:
1. Sept
26, Jan 30, & April 24 NID Leadership Conference at Concordia University
with presentations geared at our NID elementary administrators, EC Directors
& Marketing/Admissions Counselors-
Sept
26 meeting- How to use the new Lutheran Portal and Admissions Counselor Ryan
Bredow will be presenting
Jan
30 meeting- Team Ministry with
presentations from ministry teams at Immanuel, Dundee and St. Peter, Arlington
Heights
April
24 meeting- TBA
Misc. Tidbits:
1 - Camscanner- A free app which takes a picture of a
document, converts it to a PDF so it can be sent a readable document. Aimee Walsh recommends it.
2 - The NID Early Childhood East and West
Region brochures for 2016 – 2017 are done and being distributed. The East Region meetings will be on
Wednesdays and the West Region meetings will be on Thursdays. One per month for each region from 4:30 –
6:30 PM. The brochure (attached) outlines the topic for the month along with
information regarding the host school location, contact person, phone number
and contact email address. The topics for this year include:
a. September 14 & 22- Staffing
b. October 19 & 27- Faith
Integranion
c. November 9 & 17- Allergies and
Other Health Information
d. January 18 & 26- Technology
e. February 15 & 16- Educating
Parents
f. March 16 & 23- Creative Arts
g. April 19 & 27- Building Bridges
between Family & Church
h. May 17- Planning Meeting for 2017 -
2018
Program Discussion Topic: “Staffing”
1. St
Paul, Mt Prospect (Amy Cimarusti) will
be sending the group an electronic copy of their “Aides Handbook”. They use a system of volunteer aides in their
preschool program. The aides are mostly
school moms. They use their hours in the
classrooms as ways of reducing their
children’s tuition and fees. This
handbook does include such topics as expectations and evaluation.
2. Great
resources for interviewing, training, and assessing early childhood staff :
Blue Prints for Action, 3rd
Edition by Paula Jorda Bloom ISBN: 978-0-9827082-4-8
It comes with a CD filled with assessments and other helpful
staffing/professional development tools.
$44.95 from Redleaf Press
Recommended by Amy Cimarusti & Julie Klopke
3. If
you don’t already have a Reduction in Force (RIF) policy adopted for your
school, do so soon! It needs to be ready
to go far before you start using it. The
LCMS does have some resources available to help with the development of RIF
policies:
Contact Mike Zimmer for more information
4. Staff
members need to know the job expectations as assigned by the church and
school. These expectations need to be clearly
spelled out in a staff handbook, reinforced at meetings, and documented through
signed statements. St. Peter, Arlington
Heights (Julie Klopke) uses a “Covenant of Holy Manners” with its staff to
document the employees willingness to uphold the employment and ministry
expectations. (attached)
5. Since
we teach our children to “play nice with each other”, we as adults need to also
follow this guidelines with respect and seeing the need to assist others. A great resource for introducing and
emphasizing this concept with adults is the book Choosing Civility by
Forni “Choosing Civility
is a simple, practical, perfectly measured, and quietly magical handbook on the
lost art of civility and compassion.” Recommended by Doris Knuth, who leads
workshops on this topic.
6. The
power of prayer before the start of the school day works so well. It’s great when parents see your staff
praying, too. Zion Ottawa is faithful in
using this tool.
7. Idea
for staff moral and support: “Whine
& Wine Meetings” (St John’s,
Chicago) are monthly meetings for
relationship building amongst their staff members.
8. If
you have questions regarding the placement of LCMS trained teachers contact
Mark Waldron at Concordia University, Chicago mark.waldron@cuchicago.edu Work:
708-209-3031
9. Other
area universities to contact for faith based trained teachers:
North
Park, Chicago 773-244-5730
Judson
University, Elgin Doris Haugen, 847-628-1510, careers@judsonu.edu
10. Check
out the staffing material in the LCMS Treasurers Guide
11. Check
out the updates in employment laws in the Fair Labor Standard Act
These laws have specific implications for teacher aides,
custodians, secretaries, etc. who are working at an hourly rate. Exempt from this law: Commissioned ministers
including, but not limited to teachers;
pastors
12. Ideas
for finding more substitute teachers:
o
Social
media advertising on Facebook in your local area. @$20 per ad which goes out to specific
geographical areas. Aimee Walsh has
effectively used this tool.
o
INDEED: a job placement site http://www.indeed.com
o
Contact
your local public elementary school principal for the names of retired
kindergarten/lower grades teachers
o
Local
moms’ networks. Aimee Walsh has had
success with the Naperville Moms Network
Christ the Rock, Rockford
New Starts New Believer Stories:
1.
Immanuel,
Belvidere: A parent shared with the
staff that she wanted to know the words to their class prayers since their
child was trying to teach them to their family.
2.
Rockford
Lutheran: A visiting pastor shared with
them that she felt a truly enthusiasm
for the Gospel within the children in chapel that day that motivated her
to be even more excited about sharing her message with them.
3.
Immanuel,
Belvidere: Students were making a
variety of crosses in their classrooms using all types of manipulatives
following a chapel service.
4.
Christ
the Rock, Rockford: One of their moms,
who was relatively new to their preschool,
started assisting in the Sunday School program. She enjoyed it so much that she is now
teaching a Sunday School during her second year in their preschool.
Announcements:
1.
Rockford
Lutheran is having their Commissioning Service at Christ the Rock on September
25, 2016
2.
Immanuel,
Belvidere is having their annual Literacy Fair for the community on February
16, 2017. This year it will feature Eric
Litwin, author of the Pete the Cat books. There will be three different time sessions
for this year’s fair. They invite the
area public schools, daycare centers, homeschool families, etc. It takes place in their sanctuary.
Staffing Insights, Ideas & Resources which were shared:
1.
A
great “5 Minute Walk-Thru” form was recently shared on the LEADnet list serve. It was written with many very positive
elements in the following categories:
a. The students were….
b. The teachers were….
c. What I observed today included….
It will be attached to
these minutes.
2.
A
document from the NID Educational Resources was passed out. It is called “Daycare Centers and Preschools
Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
It has information regarding some of the updated labor laws and how they
pertain to places like daycare centers and preschools with part-time
workers. It can be found on the NID website
at
Note:
Many other great administrative resources are also found on the NID’s
educational
resources list: http://www.ni.lcms.org/school-administration-resource-library
3. A discussion
took place on “How Do You Show that You Care About Your Staff?”
o
Verbal
affirmations
o
Making
them special lunches
o
Daily
treats with attached notes
o
Sticky
note messages placed on great places on a teacher’s desk, bulletin boards, etc.
o
Special
candy bars such as “Paydays” with cute messages to go with them.
A Tour of the Christ The Rock’s
Preschool room,
which focused on their yearly theme of
being
on the “Farm” took
place. This theme is used throughout the
year in the classroom’s dramatic play equipment (farm foods, clothes, etc),
classroom decorations (country chair, curtains, table decorations, bulletin
boards), science center (real plants from a farm such as sunflowers, corn, etc)
and
manipulatives (farm play sets).
Art idea:
Here’s an idea for easy gluing with young children. Take 1-2 regular kitchen sponges
and place
them in a food container which can be air-tight sealed. Pour two bottles of school glue
into the
container covering the sponges and seal the container. To use this container with glue….
open the top
and place a piece of paper on the “glue-filled” sponge. It will adhere an appropriate
amount of glue
on the paper so it can then be attached to something else. These glue containers
can been used for
several months…even over a full year…. as a source for easy gluing (see photo).
The tour also showcased a church-school event called “Chalk for Peace” in which both church
members during a Sunday
morning worship service, as well as the preschoolers during preschool,
went outside and drew with
colorful chalk on the sidewalks around the church & school building.
They were also given some pieces of chalk
attached to an index card with the words “chalk for peace”
so they could do the
same types of drawing on the sidewalks around their own homes. Both church
and school families enjoyed the
activities and it was well documented on the bulletin boards around
the church
and school (see photos.)
No comments:
Post a Comment