Learning Target: New Team members will understand the varied responsibilities required each day, each week, each month, and each semester, and know who to seek for support as needed.

Before School Starts

1. Become familiar with the Faculty/Staff Handbook. You will receive a hardcopy, but if you need one now, here is a digital copy: Handbook
   • Assignment: Handbook Open Book Quiz. This in Canvas. If you do not yet have an HCDE email or Canvas account, then save this for later.
     
     
2. Prepare to make purchases. School money is tricky. If you want the school to pay for purchases, remember the following:
   • Fill out a purchase order (PO) first. These are in the front office, or you can print one here: PurchaseOrder.pdf. (Wait until this approved before making a purchase.)
   • Purchases should benefit the students you have this year. Don't wait until spring to spend your money. 
   • Purchases should be focused on instruction. It is OK to spend some of your allotment ($500) on decor or incentives, especially those that foster an instructional result.
   • It is always OK to ask the principal, assistant principal, bookkeeper, or secretary for advice/guidance on purchases.
     
     
3. Be familiar with the three tiers of instruction for WIN. We call RtI (Repsonse to Intervention) WIN time (What I Need Time). If you are not yet familiar with the RtI model, please watch this short video to get a very basic explanation: Response to Intervention (RTI): The Three Tiers of RTI instruction - YouTube. 

Daily Responsibilities    

• Logging Money - mentor lesson - Mentor Lessons will be conducted in-person.
• Attendance & Lunch Count - mentor lesson
• Learning Targets - mentor lesson
• Dismissal - (video) - To access these videos, we will need to set up an account for you. In order to have an account, we will need your HCDE email address and a cell phone number. If you have both of these things, let Jeff Paulson know that you are ready for a "PikMyKid" account. [email protected] .

Weekly Responsibilities

• Panther Pride - mentor lesson
• Weekly Newsletter + Panther Post - 
  Check out this one-pager: Weekly Newsletter 

  • A few years ago, we met with parents and faculty to talk about school communication. A parent that had three kids at Thrasher said, “I have three kids and seven teachers.” This is because one child in fifth grade had four teachers, the child in third grade had two teachers, and the child in first grade had one. This, of course, did not take into account the related arts, intervention, and ex ed teachers that were involved. She continued, “For three kids, I have seven ways to find out what teachers expect. One uses Class Dojo, one uses Google Classroom, one uses Canvas, one uses a custom web page, one uses good old fashion email, one uses an app called Remind, and one uses paper notes in a folder.”

    One of the greatest strengths of Thrasher elementary is the parent involvement. We want to make this easy on our parents. So, we redesigned classroom and school newsletters to have the same design, delivery, and format. 

  • Admin creates a newsletter for teachers as well. It's called Panther Post and comes out each Sunday. You are responsible each week for the information in the Panther Post. It should take less than ten minutes to read and should be read by Monday of each week. Due to teacher feedback, the Panther Post replaces the generic faculty meeting. Instead, faculty meetings are focused more on professional development.

• Team planning - Thrasher Team Norms.docx - Google Docs -- Be familiar with these norms. They are a big part of team life at Thrasher.

 Other Responsibilities

• Timecard - This is so complicated, even a video won't help. See the secretary before each payday to make sure your time is logged correctly. After three or four times, you might not need help anymore. If you do, we all understand!

• Duty Stations - Due to COVID, arrival and dismissal procedures are subject to change, which means duty responsibilities change. Since we will not be describing duty stations here, be sure to check with administration or your dept./grade level team before you are scheduled for duty. -- This will be part of your mentor tour.
  
  
• Drills - This will be part of a mentor lesson - Related topics: safety folder, radio, evacuation routes, tornado shelter locations 

• Parent/Teacher Conferences - This will be part of a mentor teacher lesson

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