 I can't rock steering like it does me. So, okay, hit it. So welcome everyone to the Compass Points training. That is what you're hearing from teachers. We didn't know that. I want to start our time out together doing exactly what you will do at the beginning of each Compass Points class. So we're just going to read into that and add some commentary on the way. As people enter the classroom, which is in the Iceland house, and I'll show you that later, you'll hand them one of those glass beads or glass jams. Just one. Because evidently they do treacherous things with more than one. If you're handing them out, I suppose maybe you're more likely to get away with that than otherwise. And then over there you have couches so everyone will gather in their couches. And then you start out by ringing the chime. Some of you have top of four, some of you haven't. So if you already know this, I'll just bear with the details. So you'll start out by ringing the chime. And personally I'm a fan of asking people to close their eyes and just raise their hand when they can't hear the chime anymore. You don't have to do it that way, but I think it's a nice way of helping people to get centered. So that's what we're going to do right now. Thank you. That is a really nice way I think of transitioning from life out there to life in here. Closest door. And then the next thing that you would do in your crafts is light the chalice and say your opening words. And these opening words will be hanging in your room in the Isom House. So you get to actually have fire, but in here we just have a battery-uprated candle. So this only one to turn on the candle while we read our opening words together. Thank you. We like this chalice to remind us of the journey we all embark upon in our lives. The journey that is searched for truth as each of us perceives it. Great. And then the next thing that you head into, and let me just make sure that I'm not missing anything, is your check-in. So there's a few different ways to do check-ins, and in your binder you'll have more on drop-offs. You'll have a couple pages of notes on the opening and closing rituals for the class. You can do a joys and sorrows thing. Sure, something happy and something sad from your week. You can do a more structured check-in question, like tell me your proudest moment, or it's the funniest movie you've ever seen or something like that. Or you can just kind of do a wide-open one and share what I think it is like. The wide-open one can sometimes be challenging to corral the kids back in it if you have kids who like to go off on long tangents. So I think you just have to get a feel for what your group is like and what would work best with your particular group. And it doesn't have to be the same from week to week. So let's have us start out with a check-in by going around, putting your little stone in the bowl, passing it to the next person, and sharing who you are, what time you're teaching, and a little bit about your history with FUS and the Terran University. I'm John Oliver. I'm teaching at 9 o'clock. It's going so fast right now. I'm glad you think so too. I'll teach whenever you want. My history with FUS, I moved back to Madison two and a half years ago and sought out the community. Before that, I'd not been involved with Unitarianism that much, except they married me. So that would be a great memory stuff. What's that about? Oh, yeah, that's good. Thank you, John. My name is Cassie and I'm also teaching at 9 o'clock. Are our family enjoying the church? About a little very good going out with three young daughters and none of whom I want to teach. I'm very interested in the history of the Terran University and the Terran University. Before I was a farmer, I used to teach, so I'm looking forward to this semester. I'm Karen, Jair, and I will be teaching at 11. My family, we joined in 1989. We came about the same time Michael did and pretty much ever since. My name is Emily and I'm teaching at Sundays at 9 also. And joined about five years ago. My husband has been in UU for life, so kind of got into it through him. And have him copy more. I've also taught so many other classes and I'm looking forward to the older... Let's see here. And I'm Sue Denger and I'm teaching at 11. I have taught before on and off a lot of classes, but not this one, so I've been a member like 28 years. Wow. I'm Sandy. I've been here about three years, I think, before this I was in Brookfield, but my grandparents were UU, so I've been exposed to them. And I'm teaching Saturdays, and my daughter is going to be in my class. I'm 6 or 7 years. Hi, I'm Emily. Also, I love to be teaching Sundays at 11. I just moved to Madison a year ago, July, and I've been visiting FUS off and on since then. I've been in UU since I was 2, so my entire memory. And visiting off and on since I moved here, but more on since probably January and February, and also very involved with the 2030s group here. That was probably my first time teaching. My name is Krisha Brun, and I'm teaching Saturday as well. My child is also in class, and actually I've never taught his class before, but I've taught in younger grades for, I have two other older boys, so we're all middle school, high schoolers in our family. And we have been members since about, I think, 2005 or 2006. We used to go to the Sunday group. I'm Nicole Fenske, and I'm teaching Saturday at 4.30. My son, Charlie, is in the class, and I've taught him before, which is really hard. You're saying I don't tease my kids. I'm like, that's smart. I mean, he's a good guy, but when he's at this bus, it's gonna be challenging. I've taught intermittently. I don't know how long we've been members, maybe 10 years. So not my first time teaching, but my first time teaching this class. Great. Thank you. So as you're going through your opening routine class, the next thing that you do is share thoughts for the day. And so I'm gonna randomly pass these out. And these are just quotations that are included in your curriculum, and each of their folders, I'll show you your curriculum later, but each folder has these on a piece of paper that you can then post around the room and invite students to read them. And the purpose that they serve is to kind of set the tone for the day's game and to kind of, I don't know, prime the pump for thinking about some of the things that they'll be thinking about for that day. And then they're followed by some brief conversation about what struck you about these quotations. What do they think? What do they think about the conversation? It's just to kind of get things going. So we'll probably skip the discussion part today, but I do want to ask you to share the quotations just so that you get a sense of the flavor of them. So John, if you want to have a question. But the character of the man is not clear of you. Look at his friends. Captain's problems. The friendship that can cease has never been real. To go against the dominant thinking of your friends is perhaps the most difficult act of heroism you can perform. They are each white, 20th century political journalist, author, and historian. OK, good. Thank you. So they're kind of weighty, meaty stuff. Could open the door on some pretty good discussion, or could open the door on silence. Who knows? But one thing that I would say is that this engaging these kind of conversations might be really new for some of our kids. And so it's really important for you as facilitators to give them the space to kind of move into that. So let it be silent for a little while until somebody wants to come forward and say something. That's OK. Silence is OK. And maybe they'll step into it, and maybe they won't. But it's important for you as the facilitators to give them room to do that. OK, so though it's thoughts of the day, and then you move into the next thing, which is taking a stand. So you see at the center of this table there is a compass of sorts. And every week, at the start of your class, you're going to give them a statement that they need to agree with or disagree with. This is in the center of the room. North means yes, south means no. The middle means you cannot be totally ambivalent. You can't be totally in the middle. You have to lean towards one way or the other in your answer. So you present the statement, and then they take a stand and learn what they believe in relation to that statement. So the one from the lesson that I took those quotations from is it's my responsibility to help my friends when they're in trouble. Yes, I agree, although I disagree. And that, again, really creates a good father for conversation. There's no right answer. There's no wrong answer. There's just what do you think? And in sharing their beliefs about that, hopefully they're challenging each other, unintentionally or not, to think about things a little differently. So all of that is part of the start of each lesson each week, and that's what they call preparing for the journey. They're sort of a journey motif to compass points in terms of what direction are we going. So the discussion is going to kind of take a few minutes here. We're going to have people actually talking. I'm just doing the logistics of this. Yeah, right. Well, especially for taking a stand, you really do want to have some conversation built around that. One to many or among themselves? Well, you, as the teacher is saying, so, Don, what made you stand over there? What do you think about that? Karen, you stood over there. Often you decided to stand over there, kind of thing. And that could be a ten minute discussion. Yeah. Have you taught this before? No. It's really, the kids just really respond well to those kind of requests. They love to be able to have a chance to say how they think. And it's, I've never, plus I taught anyway, there was no conversation. Well, yeah. There is two. Hi. Next week. Karen is our one returning campus points teacher today. Please add in whatever from your experiences teaching us we go on because I think that's really valuable. Yeah. Is there a place that you're following in terms of this, in our binder, that's one? No. Okay. No. You will see when we take notes. I just didn't want to do it. You don't need to take notes on that. In fact, I do have some handouts for you that kind of summarize all this, but I purposely didn't hand them on yet because I'd rather that you just listen. And then, you know, because I think there's a lot of different ways of absorbing information. Listening first I think is a good way of seeing it in detail and in the lessons this is the third way. Okay. So, so I will really kind of hinted at how those classes are really different than anything that they've had before. I mean, I'd like to think that all of our classes encourage introspection and discussion, but this really takes it to a different level and brings it to a more personal level of what are your values and your beliefs. And I think, like, developmentally speaking, this is a great time to do that and what Karen was saying was absolutely right. I'm like, they really want to be able to share what they think about things. So, it's, you know, the right material at the right time and it really is important stuff that I think really relates to their lives. I'm sorry, I'm going to ask a lot of questions. That's totally wrong. I wouldn't say this, but I'm coming here with the groups of students that I talk about. Yeah, right. So, I know, I know that I know their tricks already. Okay. And they're going to ask what the question is. And what would you answer? That's a good question. That's a good question. Yeah, so the west and east continuum is the continuum of maybe and we don't stand there. Okay. I'm making this up. This will become a big discussion. Okay. Okay. Why does it come this way? Yeah, right. Right. I just want to make sure there wasn't an answer so I can make it for people. Yeah. And you know what? If you can find a way to integrate the west and east. Well, that depends on the question. I mean, if you think if you think of an abortion question, there's a yes and no, but there is a I'm leaning towards not or I'm leaning towards pro. You know? What if we could say to me like I can see circumstances where I could go either way. That's kind of a maybe though. I don't know. You were saying no babies, but Yeah, that's a problem. Worcester. Well. Worcester. Nobody is going to comment, judge you harshly or punish you if you decide that it's okay for them to stand on a west east continuum or closer to maybe as long as they can say why they're there. And it's not just some of the standards that I don't have to think anything about it or say anything about it. And not that they have to say anything because they of course always have the option to pass, but we really want to challenge them to take a stand. Did you have a question, Sandy? Okay. Okay. So let me share with you this isn't your reminder, but you don't have to find it right now. The goals of the authors of the conference points curriculum. Compass points will lead its young adolescent participants on a year long spiritual journey during which they will have the opportunities to sort out their feelings about themselves and their world as they do the difficult work of starting to create their adult selves to discover what they believe about life's big questions, the nature of humanity and the divine beliefs about death and faith to think independently assume responsibility, make decisions explore values and adopt the practice of radical hospitality to acquire enough background in unitarian universalist history, quality and theology that they can know and express what universalism stands for to share the above with the adult congregation, which often knows even less about unitarian universalism than your children and religious education programs and to understand that religious liberty is a hard one legacy that continues to need protection. So, pretty lofty goals I think it's safe to say that even though that may sound like that's heavy stuff or something that they go about it in a way that is really engaging and interactive would you agree? Very much so. So know that that's what they're shooting for and don't let it scare you because it's not going to do that. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the, there's five units in the brief descriptions for up there so the years divided into these five units the first unit is the journey and that covers sessions one through five although number two isn't included this year. But that kind of sets the tone for the year it focuses on your covenant and it helps them to kind of get comfortable with the role of being a seeker or asking these kinds of questions so focuses more on group cohesion and getting them comfortable with just talking about things of this nature and that doesn't have anything to do too fast. Traveling north which is session seven through fifteen as far as the diversity of new new beliefs and where they came from it includes one of the highlights of the year which is the congregational poll where they ask the congregation around in the comments area ask the people what they believe about a particular topic. We have three different polls that we do one is on beliefs about God one is on beliefs about what happens when you die and one is on beliefs about seven principles this year's is the seven principles we rotate them because otherwise it would be kind of boring people would be responding to the same questions year after year we're hoping that if we do a three year rotation people will forget they've said them a few years ago so have any of you participated in that? So that's kind of fun for them and cool for them to see the range of beliefs that are represented here because it's easy to assume that we hear things alike and while there aren't many similarities there are definitely differences too we've created an alternative lesson ten on our living tradition during the traveling north unit and there's a really good chance that not all of those lessons are scheduled because overall there are more lessons in those curriculum than we have weeks to schedule next they go to traveling east which is sessions 16 to 19 and that focuses on issues of transition and life and death so there's definitely some discussion about dying and death which I think is an important for them to be able to talk about and beginnings and life and sort of not only the birth of coming into this world but the birth of a new cell kind of thing so traveling south focuses on our connections to our UU faith it really focuses a lot on UU history and the struggle for religious freedom so there's some kind of lively lessons there that focus on some of the new world figures from our past and then traveling west focuses on okay so how do we do the material universe and how do we live that what does that mean that our need to be alive what does it mean to act when they do your way kind of thing it's a little more practical and that session is 29 to 35 and then the what was the traveling south what were the left of the sessions for that traveling south is 20 to 28 I want to this is a little bit of a bad track I want to look more closely at the structure so that's the structure of the year there's a structure of the lessons the first of that structure we've been introduced to preparing for the journey which is everything that we did at the beginning but just to give you a little sense of some of the other things that they might respond to for taking a stand so that you can flavor what that's like some of the other examples are include statements like our faith can guide us in our journey through life sacred texts even when ancient can still have much meaning for our lives changes good and some other but just to give you a sense of your life so okay let's hand over the structure so it's a new year old there you go so after the preparing for your journey part we go into what they call the heart of the journey and for the heart of the journey we share a story or some sort of activity that either challenges the understanding of that topic or broadens the experience of that topic or in some way goes a bit deeper into that theme for the day so to offer you some examples one lesson even wilderness and some animals destroyed some of your gear now you have to decide what to take with the one undamaged backpack that you have and then groups you decide what's going to come with you but the hitches that you all have to agree on what it is I think probably everyone has done some variation of that activity usually something about being shipwrecked or something like that but that challenges them to think about what do we really need in life there's a bible scavenger hunt in one of the transitions lessons they created graffiti wall of death where participants write large mural paper all the time that they can think of that people use to describe death and then they use those to explore what those terms say about us as a society as individuals as a culture there's another lesson where they look at images of celebrities and they have some conversation about what it needs to be a celebrity because of your beauty or perhaps your athletic talents versus being a celebrity because of your ideas and your values and your beliefs there's another one that's a puzzle pairs discussion where each person is given either the name of a theological term the word or definition of that term like agnostic pantheist theist and they have to find each other and then they have to present what that means to the rest of the class so that's kind of what the part of the journey is like and then from there they go into getting there and getting there sometimes seems very similar to the part of the journey but both of them are ways of really going a little bit deeper into whatever the thing is so some examples of being their activities include creating a living timeline of biblical events and then each person has to read their date an event and give a brief background on that event another one interesting is being wrapped in a cocoon and then breaking free of that and the transition lessons one of the transitions lessons there's a feast in heaven and hell arms are taped to some sort of wooden ruler or something and hell is a feast, hell is not being able to eat the food because they can't bend their arm to do it heaven is being able to feed each other so that's a cool activity that they have liked in the past there's a transcendentalist mystery dinner party there's a tug of friendship where they all have to work together to pull on a rope and stand up together and then see what happens when one person doesn't join in on the team and how they can't do it together without having everyone so those are the kinds of getting their activities kind of further emphasize the things of the day and then next in the structure of the lesson is stopping to rest and in the curriculum it says that you should be using journals and we are not using journals because they usually end up getting left behind and it's just a sad list of paper so the things that they journal about could just as easily be things to just reflect on and that could be silent reflection or that could be anybody want to share your thoughts about this it could be going around the circle and giving everybody a chance to respond to that but just know that you're not going to have journals so you'll have to adapt that part of the lesson and then at the end of each session you take a stand again so it's interesting to see if where they stand on that continuum is the same, it's the same prompt so have the day's activities and discussions and whatnot changed where they would stand or are they still pretty clear on where they were before or sometimes instead of taking a stand they have a quick stop where they have to just respond very quickly to some sort of statement like examples are if I were a fundamentalist I might think and then we would go around the circle and people would respond or just share something that surprised you in this session or really struck you as interesting or whatever and even if it has a quick stop written into the lesson and you think it would be more interesting to do a stand again so that's the general structure of each lesson and it's kind of nice that it's the same each time one thing that I didn't mention in the beginning that I want to bring up is I think it's really helpful for all of our classes to sort of write down have visible what is going to happen from throughout your time together so I wrote down what we're doing together preparing for the journey it was our opening thing we've talked about the goal structure and the substance we're going to do a tour of the classroom we're going to talk about drop-offs and supplies we're going to talk about lessons learned from previous teachers and have question time it's good to do that in the beginning of your class like maybe after you have the new check-in perhaps or whatever seems right for you but I think that visual is cute for them a lot of people just feel comforted by being able to see what's going to happen so I want to encourage you to do that in that classroom as well so one of the interesting things that I want to bring up about this curriculum is you know it's pretty meaty stuff and I'm sure that it will bring up a lot of ideas for you and perhaps a lot of memories from your own of the disapproving this to all of our teachers now be mindful of whatever baggage you may have regarding your own beliefs or religious upbringing and you know we want to really present a diverse range of ideas in a very respectful way in our classes and it's really easy when we get into some of these discussions to maybe talk about a particular denomination or something in a way that could be critical of them so if you can just be mindful of that throughout the year first year I mean our second year or third year using this but I can tell you that Janet and I were at the job of decorating this it would really fall and we would blast picking out paint colors when did you do when it was all red fresh I think that this past year was the first year that it was used no like a year and a half we were in the middle of it when it was two years ago but we still tied it even though it was the middle of it right yeah I think it got finished like in March or something so it is a really these are your divided in half because they're rather heavy and I know that some of you are familiar with our curriculum about this so I want you to know that there is a folder for every single lesson in your curriculum and in the folder are a variety of materials any handouts that you need are there waiting for you these are the quotations that you can post around the room and have people read they're also I think written on foam that's something else there's mostly handouts for this curriculum what that's needed that would be in here so just know that your materials are in here for you you shouldn't have to prepare any materials before coming to class the other way that you get supplies and when you look at drop-offs I'll explain how to read our supply lists but there are some items that will come to you each week in a white plastic bin that perhaps is on top of that shelf so you have those as well this clipboard will have your attendance sheets on it and we do ask that you take attendance because we like to keep track of people's participation I don't think we'll have anyone on the waiting list for this particular class but if we did this is how we would determine whether or not we could let in other people based on how the people are showing up each week and that usually moves on top of this bookcase the bookcase over here has a lot of the basic supplies that you will need each week it's got pens and pencils, markers scissors glue sticks matches for your chalice your chime has I think rocks in it that you will pass out as people come in like I did with the glass stone there are some journal books there there are some journal books there I'm not quite sure what those are from I'll have to check but they're not there's this dry erase board and there's also easel paper behind it so that's where you can write your agenda for each week you have a recycling can and a trash can fun bumper stickers and what else the TV here is a smart TV so you can access the internet through it you also have a cv player if you are using technology for that lesson make sure you're preparing enough time to make sure everything's working if it's not working Dan is a great go-to person to help out with that so with Steve Gregorius who was also there on the weekends Dan is usually a Saturday so because I teach the media education they always have a backup plan yes it's always good to have a backup plan you mean if there's always there's no username or password issue there's a username or password okay so it should work I mean another alternative if that weren't working we could potentially roll one over here but that's probably what they're saying shh don't tell them that it's hard to get them up the stairs so if you have a really small group um so there is a restroom downstairs this room across the hall but if you ever needed to break out into a couple of groups we were able to use that as well upstairs are offices for the congregation Shreya Shemail that rent space from us as well as an office former gerian Mosher was a lane administrator but he also sees clients up there and did you know that we have a radio station we have a radio station and it's at the end when we first came in it was straight ahead downstairs is my body and soul they meet down there so sometimes they're having issues with the compass points people being kind of loud and disruptive so if you think just going to remind your students if they're having fun counting on the floor it's a fact that there are people down there I should say about I'll show you that I'm going to close the doors additional dry erase board here I should probably buy some more it's nice to have that extra space this is a great room it's a little I wish it was just a little bit white sometimes they feel a little cramped in here especially if you have a large class 11 o'clock it's going to be awesome so emergency procedures these are also drop box folders you guys have it really easy if there is an emergency there's a door right there that you can just head out and head out to the street if let's say the fire was right there then just head over there and head out that door I don't think anything but just know that that exists you have a lot of leftover there's scratch construction paper there are first aid items down on the bottom shelf should anyone cut themselves or if you have the unfortunate opportunity of cleaning up bodily fluids there are some nonly text gloves down there and some special cleaning material oh name tags each class has name tags for all their students I would encourage you to use them names so just make sure that your name tags get put back on the right container each week there's also a box with some fidget toys if you have kids who would benefit from fidget toys go for it if you have kids who think fidget toys are something to throw across the room nah so some kids do really great with them and some you also have a whole bunch of leftover or not leftover a whole bunch of poster board in here and I think that's just because Rachel doesn't know it's hiding back here so I'm not going to tell her plenty of poster board this year any questions about this space the window lines are top of the line because we have connections so you can put it up like that you can maybe some of you are familiar with these from home you can pull this down and have a diffused light in here you can have it totally up pretty nice especially this is important for the 430 people because the sun can jump feel free to open the windows please remember to close them when you leave because no one really knows sure they know that closely and sometimes they get left open perhaps days so please remember to close them okay quite a few if there's anyone who is not comfortable with Dropbox and doesn't want to access their information this way please let Rachel know she'll be happy to get you materials in paper form but if not then just know that there's a ton of information here there's a lot that you can just look at it electronically and you don't sound like you have to write it and maybe some things that you you're fine with on Dropbox some of the things that you're not so this is where your class lists are did you all get the link that Rachel set up okay so you have your class lists and there's a little list for each time I'm just going to kind of walk through some of this stuff so you have the name of your students you have the parent contact email or the parent names and then you have the email contact information for both the primary parent and an additional one because we ask you to send out emails each week giving a summary of the class it's important that you have these email addresses and it's also important that unless you know the new kid has added the class that you go back to this like we have some classes where there are kids adding throughout the year and it was becoming kind of a nightmare for us to keep current information in teachers hands so that they had everyone's email addresses so this is a great way to do that because Rachel and I can go on there and add an email address and then the next time you go to send an email you go here copy and paste the email addresses and send out what you need to do so that is going to be way easier this year theoretically you should I'm learning Dropbox so earlier this week I'm like Rachel I can't I can't just highlight one column I don't know what the problem is she said did you open it open the folder so once that's opened then you can just highlight that column copy and paste it into your email okay very very nice feature we think and then you have your the phone numbers and all of your contact information for the teachers at the bottom of the class list is all the teacher contact information so your names and emails are right there Rachel and you are the only ones that can make changes on it we are the only ones who can make changes however you guys can make comments so let's say you want us to change your email address you can just go to review I believe new comment and I can say please change my email address and then theoretically and I believe Rachel and I get a little notification saying that a comment has been added by Karen and then we know to go there and take a look at what she said this you can use any Dropbox file so if you're doing a lesson for instance because all the lessons are also available on Dropbox and you have some feedback for us on that lesson then you can go ahead and leave us a comment on Dropbox what's in here what's that there so what you have there is a paper copy of the curriculum you don't have class lists you don't have supply lists you don't have your calendar you just have a paper copy of the curriculum okay does that oops I didn't need to do that I do actually have paper copies of your calendars for tonight or you pick them up I believe because I want you to have an opportunity to start putting your schedule together tonight but they're also available they're also available on Dropbox are we able to have a calendar or something like that I don't think so because then everyone would have that you know like we use Gmail we use Google Docs but I haven't done a lot of our rescheduling that's great if someone from each team wants to separate them up I know a lot of teaching people this is essentially Google Docs so going down the line of other materials and their conference points there's these images of Barnaby when the sages are a monitor lesson we don't need to look at that right now they're really there more often there for you but then you have lessons and so all of your lessons are included here we have the offers to send us electronic copies of lessons this year which is really really nice so that's the same as what's in here and there's a couple lessons that we have like I told you we wrote lessons one and two so you don't even you have no lessons but I'm here you don't even have the old lessons one and two so there's no room for confusion you only have the new lessons one and two there's a couple lessons that I have written suggested edits to you know different activities or what not so you can see if there's any lessons one and two they're up there my revised ones are up there they're on there the ones that they wrote are not up there so I guess it looks like you have to download their lessons there we go so that's exactly what it looks like in your paper copy this is just an electronic image of what your paper copy is sorry this is just to remember why it's so jumpy except that this is a really old you have to try this tool in the shed so anyway under your lessons folder you have all of the lessons that you need session 16 for example I wrote suggested edits to that lesson those are there technologies technologies what's that? all technologies to use so here you have the suggested edits so if you are they're included in your binders if you're going the paper route if you're going the draw box route just look to see if there's any if there might be any additional materials associated with a particular session this has my suggested edits for session 16 and then there's another folder there that has the guidance invitation that's part of these suggesting so there's your lessons then you have your accomplish points calendar and for those of you who are new to teaching there are two days I believe in your calendar here that it says faith and action activity a big class has a faith and action coordinator and the role of that person is to plan two service projects during the year so that is their thing to lead and take responsibility for they're supposed to keep you in the loop about what it is that they're planning and we ask that one teacher be present from whatever that is and it's not here, it's offsite especially since these kids are older and it's easier to take them offsite so we do ask that one teacher be present for that so there are those lessons like for instance your first one is at the bottom of this page which is October 8th or 9th and the faith and action activity could take place any time during that weekend it's probably not going to fit meet me into the time that your class usually meets because they're coordinating with some other organization to do something it could be cooking a meal at the homeless shelter or doing some sort of thing out at the algorithm or any number of things so that's there I've put in the calendar the children's chapel dates your kids don't go to children's chapel they're too old for that if you don't already know this children's chapel something that happens at the beginning of worship time and it lasts about 20 minutes it's a time when normally our kids start out in the auditorium with everybody else but on children's chapel dates they meet separately from all of the adults and they're there for about 20 minutes and then they go to class I put that there not because your kids have participated in it but because some of you have younger kids and you might want to be with other children's chapel you don't have to be but I just wanted you to have that information I also noted that on the first day of class it's really great of all the teachers can be there so that all the kids can meet you and you can meet all of the kids attendance is usually quite high that first day so it's a good opportunity to capture everybody and I also think it's a good idea to have whatever teachers are present take a piece of leaving class that day so that the kids are identifying you in that role so hopefully when you have some time to plan for the next couple months you can figure out who's going to do what for that and anything else that I want to point out about as Sandy mentioned these are schedules for Saturday and Sunday so you don't just kind of be careful as you're doing your calendars to know which days are yours there's some, I wonder when savings is coming there are some lessons like for instance in December like the weekend of December 3 4 there's no Sunday classes so really that information is there for the Saturday people and then two weeks later there's no Saturday class because it's the winter solstice service and everyone goes to winter solstice service that is why the same lessons are scheduled twice because it's different groups doing that and that's kind of the end of the look out for that in January we reconvened by creating the class banner that's something that all the classes do each year it's a great way to kind of reconnect after the holidays they will not have seen each other for quote a while so it's a nice way to kind of have some social time and the banners are supposed to highlight something about your class so it also gets them thinking symbolically about what you've been studying like how are they going to represent some of the themes of compass points so it gets them a little reconnected with the content while also giving them some time to socialize each other and then we have a banner parade a few weeks later when all of our classes have a chance to create their banner we'll start out service with a banner parade and you'll be given lots of information about the calendar can you explain the difference between the curriculum and the community yes absolutely the curriculum leaders, the person who is responsible for the bulk of the lesson from really delivering the main content of the lesson the community lead is the opening and the closing rituals and this is the person who kind of pays attention to how kids are acting in class and I think that they're paying attention to good things and to some of the more challenging things so it's our behavioral challenges in the class the community person steps in and deals with those things so that the curriculum they can just focus on the lesson if the kids are doing some team activity and let's say they're being really respectful of each other, really cooperative really inclusive, whatever the community lead can shine a light on that be sure to give positive reinforcement for that kind of thing so that's the difference between the two I highly encourage people to take turns being one or the other and not just do the same thing each time and it doesn't mean that you can't if you're curriculum lead that you can't intervene in some sort of behaviors or something like that or if your community lead that you can't comment on the content of what's being talked about it's not that rigid it's just you know mostly I'll do this and mostly you'll do that I think so thank you for asking that to talk about that so that is while this is coming up okay so as you are preparing for your lesson I highly suggest that you do it like a week and a half time so that you're familiar with the content and you can be thinking about it how you want to present it as much as possible it's great if you can not meet from your binder so that it's more authentic like this and so if you read through the material ahead of time then you have some time to kind of make it yours think about how do I want to convey this in a language that feels right and comfortable for me you don't have to go more for a word with what's in the binder you really want to kind of deliver the way that feels right for you you know communicating things so as you're approaching this I would say read through your lesson at least a week ahead of time and then check your supply list to see exactly what materials you're going to have so you know that you have your basic supplies that are in there all the time but then so it's listed for each lesson what you're going to have lesson three for instance the stuff that's in the grade there the copy paper and the lunch bags those are things that will come to you in this okay anything that's in that grade is going to come like that and then believe that it's the stuff that you will find in your curriculum box folder so in that way you always know what kind of materials you're having there might be some little things that you need to prepare like for lesson four teacher prep and write the students to bring this blue stone that we want you to do that there's not a ton of teacher prep for this curriculum unlike some of our like more crappy classes but there may be some things like for lesson six contact your classroom support coordinator to ask a parent to ask a parent to bring the students that need so classroom support coordinator for some of you may not be familiar with those each class has a classroom support coordinator in the younger grades that person schedules a parent helper each week in the 7th grade they know that we need parent helpers so they don't do that but if there's ever something unique like this need for lemons then there's a little prep flag that you should let your classroom support coordinator know that someone needs to bring lemons so and then the other thing that we ask them to do at this grade level is to plan a couple social activities for your class and that's not something that you as teachers have to be a part of that's a response to middle school kids saying that they really wish to have more social opportunity for their classes outside of the class time the roller skating thing yeah that's sort of like that on a big scale because all of the schools are divided and then the classroom support coordinators just do your class you will notice that you'll get any email that they send out to the parents of the kids in your class because that's where native base does things for better and for worse we are going to be phasing into native base and that is a glorious thing because there's a lot of limitations to our native base but for now we'll be getting all those emails and it's kind of nice to know what's going on you nicely put it to the parents yes so any questions about your supply list okay so you just have to get in the habit of looking ahead and you often it's listed on lesson four we should we might have to be mentioned on lesson three right yes and putting it out in the email to the parents yeah because every week you send out an email summarizing what happened and that's the opportunity to say hey tell your new kids to bring along the smooth rock next week if they want to yeah this is another that is for the parents and the reason why you have that in there is that I'm going to ask you before classes begin to send a welcome email to the parents and we're really excited to be seeing your kids soon and cut this point there's a little glimpse of what we're going to be doing this year the teachers are blah blah blah blah blah if you wanted to you can do pictures of yourselves and then you can attach the calendar for the parents and what's different about it it doesn't have curriculum so that gives them an idea what you're going to be talking about between which is kind of nice for them to have so that is there for you to use when you send out your welcome letter and one of your next steps is to decide who's going to do that then there are we're going to go over these weekly tonight but we compile some reflections from previous teachers about campus points and they're not going to go to campus they're also there and then all of your session quotes for those thoughts for the day are available here as well I don't think this is useful but now you know that they're there so that is everything that's in the campus points folder the other folder that you were sent a link to is the teacher materials and I just want to show you quickly what's in there one thing is the teacher materials I have all of these listed because as an administrator I have all of them you should only be able to pull up the teacher materials in the campus points folder so there's some information there's some suggestions for behavior management if that's helpful to you I will also add that I am always available to do behavior issues if there's some chronic issue in your class please let me know sooner rather than later so that we can address it when I'm here I wear a pager so if there are any issues that need to be dealt with like let's say something is going on and you just like leave that kid out of the classroom for a while so decompress then you can come to the child care room which is right across the hall and they will page me and then I can sit and talk with that child and just decompress for a little bit he or she can have a break from class they can have a break from that student and then we can kind of take it from there sometimes we have had to have meetings with parents to kind of plan for how to address some behavioral things but more often than not there aren't any issues but I do want you to know that you don't have to suffer inside all year if there's something going on for weekends when I'm not here there will always be somebody who is caring around the pager and I'll let you know that it's through teacher's news which is an email that I send out almost every week with whatever information I think is important for you to answer that week so there's information on classroom rituals so this is at the front of your binder but also the whole channels, lighting thing yours is kind of more written into it so I don't know if it's going to be as a problem for you but if you're feeling fuzzy about classroom rituals, know that that's there I think that's probably what we really have to say about that because I think it's really laid out in your curriculum ideas for community building in your classroom would feel like you would benefit if your class just doesn't feel very cohesive and you would benefit from having more community building time there's a bunch of ideas there there are forms that I don't think will be relevant to you there are other resources that I feel like have faith development or you know, behavior development milestones, types of things that are under the other resources folder that are there for you to access there's teacher tips this class who volunteers list is the group that you have at this so all the teachers and the CSEs and the faith of natural people so it's the same thing as what you have there if you wanted information on how to build a covenant for your class which happens in lesson three for you guys there's some guidelines for that there you don't teach in the nursery school so that's the point if there are any allergies in your class let's take a look you don't have SNAP that's worked into your class but I know that people show up through which is totally fine but I don't think you do aware of any allergies in your class so let's just kind of take a look and see if you have any the way that the CSEs live out of that class and there are none common points so do you not have to worry about that I have to figure out how to get to your thing it's so weird because it seems like every page you follow is a little bit different just information on supplies that I've went over but if you're a little fuzzy about how you're supposed to be getting supplies you can look through the user's guide there are teacher orientation videos from previous teacher orientations that you could take a look at and then there's a teacher's manual and that plays out some of our policies and procedures and kind of like a suggested way of preparing for each week probably the most important policy that you are aware is that we have two adult rule and you have to be sure that you always have two adults in the room with the kids so if for instance there's a week when over here a teacher doesn't show up then for you guys you can probably send a kid over to find a parent or me or Rachel so that we can make sure you have a second adult to bear with you so if you've never taught here before it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a look at that teacher's manual and just see what's in there okay any questions on that? alright I do want to hand out your poll for this year because they are different each year so I want to make sure that you have the one that you need for this year and the next year I think there's just a couple more things that I want to have giving you time to get together with your team the 430 section does not have a faith and action core leader you may have noticed I've put out a call for a long couple of times if we don't have one step forward then just don't have class education unless you want to find something else but I don't think it's really fair for you guys to have to find something else if no one else is willing to step in to be a faith and action coordinator I'm not really surprised by it but that's these guys are old enough that they're a little sophisticated if you guys aren't hearing anything from your faith and action coordinator and the time is getting near let me know and I send out reminders to faith and action coordinators and give them a little lunch but sometimes I'll get a little teacher to give them something and it's best we can so that's important information for them the compass points kids all start out in service at the beginning from their message for all ages these lessons are designed for 16 minutes they're having teachers with an inclined inclined to have kids just come directly to class I would not recommend that unless you would come up with about a half hour's worth of content so have them go to service it's good for them to experience service in two years they're going to be doing their own service so they should be going to service at the beginning and then coming to your message for all ages and when you children's chapel day they should tell the director or something no they'll still start out oh okay I see the big kids always goes and then the children's chapel splits off right so a couple of longer handouts that I want you to have did I go and get a copy of the middle grade students and the reflections from your teachers okay so the middle grade students we're not going to go through that but if you have any concerns about teaching this age group or curiosity about what they like then I would encourage you to read through that this is from a middle school principal who shared these thoughts with us and then the reflections from previous teachers I think is kind of useful so some of what they had to share was just how how different this class is for these kids because it is asking them to engage in material with material in a way that they haven't been asked to before so to be kind of patient with that to provide some of the structure to allow them to step into that space so this person said guide them in how they should participate or they will default into participating in ways that you won't want or you know more silly kind of stuff so if you kind of set the tone that this is a fun but more serious opportunity to be together then that will go a long ways this person suggested don't let them spread out too far physically keep them closer in to prevent them from hiding a distance away avoid the fidget toys start out with more structure about sharing like raising hands if that becomes an issue in your class we have some tauting sticks that you could use to help them not talk all over each other the covenant should always be posted in your classroom so that you can refer to that as a way to remind them how to be respectful with each other and then it's always easier to loosen up as you go on but to start out with some pretty firm guidelines about how we should be in community together one teacher would always start out with a minute of silent reflection you could do that if you want and then just have that silence continue for about a minute before heading into class she found that really helpful I think the rest you can probably do on your own but there are some good observations from previous teachers so my person talked about the covenant that you built and really utilizing that to add in to classroom behaviors okay any questions? what I want to do is give you time for your teaching team to start working on your calendar and you might also want to use that as a time to communicate with each other maybe what you can need from each other to work well together as a team so for instance if you have a kid in the class you might want to do some guidance on how others should interact with your kid because sometimes people are really hesitant to intervene with another person's child when their parent is in the room if you're someone who really like rarely communicates by email then you need to let your team know that so that they're not always waiting for you to respond by email if you're someone like me who really values quick email responses that's a good thing to let people know so think about that a little bit too with your teaching team and how you guys work together because probably more frequently then complaints about the kids are complaints about teaching team members and how they're not communicating well or working well together honestly that can be a big issue and I think there's a lot to be gained by investing some time to building that team in the beginning kind of like we do with our kids in the community building I think it's important for the teams to be able to really be in contact with each other you kind of have each other's backs throughout the year and it's good to know that you can trust them and communicate well with them speaking of teams if for instance you are not able to make an email let's say you're scheduled to teach and you're sick that day what you would want to do is contact your team members and see if they can fill in for you and if they can't contact your classroom support coordinator and see if that person can fill in and lots of times or the other parents fill in it doesn't happen very often that there's no work for the team who have been outbound but if that day then the teacher teacher the person who's used to teaching this curriculum would have to step in as the curriculum lead and whoever is helping out as an outsider would just be there is the second to build and then you can break up into your teams and spend a little time on your calendar and then we'll wrap it up sound good? thank you