Family Newsletter 10/24/22 

Hello Maverick families!   

Thought this graphic might be helpful in understanding this age range!! 😊 

Student-Family Conferences: 

As mentioned during Curriculum Night, McClure will be hosting student-family conferences on Monday, November 18th from 11 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.  We have shifted our working hours to do our best to accommodate family schedules.  The conferences will be between 20-30 minutes and led by your wonderful McClure student.  We are preparing every McClure student to create a portfolio of work so far this year that they will present to you. We will work with our kids in Advisory to be fully prepared to lead their conference with you.  Advisory teachers will be on hand to support, as well.   

Though we are not the first middle school in the district to host student-family conferences, there are not a huge number of middle schools that do this. We are building off of what has been successful in other schools in our district and country.  

The three goals for student conferences this year are: 

1. Build connections/trust with families​ 

2. Build student accountability and agency over learning; set goals for the year​ 

3. Inform families of student progress​ 

Knowing that the set up of middle school is quite different from elementary school, (teachers with 7 classes including Advisory and upwards of 150 students), we have to think creatively about how to support our kids and families in connecting with the school and understanding their child’s experience. We are very excited to put our kids in the “driver’s seat” of their learning, prep them to show you some of their work so far, and explain their goals for the year.  

We are really hoping for 100% participation but we will have a plan for those who are unable to participate on this date.  We also want you to know that we will be providing baby-sitting so you can drop your young ones off for the 20-30 minutes of the conference which will allow you to focus on your McClure student’s presentation. 😊 

Finally, because this is our first time facilitating student-family conferences, we will be asking you to complete a short survey when you finish your child’s conference so we can make improvements for next year.  Thank you, again, in advance for providing constructive feedback for us!!  

Curriculum Night Family and Teacher Feedback! 

Thank you to those who participated in our Curriculum Night Survey and even more so to those who provided constructive feedback so we can make improvements in the future.   

Results: For our families, about 65% indicated that they liked the format (rated the evening 4-5 on a scale of 1-5), particularly that having students lead their “tour” was super enjoyable and illuminating.  [75% ranked the evening at least a 3 out of 5!] 

For our teachers, we had an 85% positive outcome to the 1-5 survey. 

So, overall, we believe we are headed in the right direction for next year’s Curriculum Night.  

That said, we are well-aware that we have some areas for improvement.  For example, yes, the lines in classrooms to greet the teachers were long and became unwieldy.  Also, aside from the syllabi and other informational documents, some families wanted a little more information about the scope and sequence of their child’s learning for the year and also a little more information about teachers.   

We also clearly need a better presentation set up in the gym and/or do this in a different space. 

I have already brought the survey results and parent/teacher input to our whole staff and our Instructional Council and we believe we have a pretty solid plan for next year making some adjustments based on parent and teacher [brilliant!!] input/ideas.   

Thank you again for teaming with us to make our events as positive, informative and community-building as possible.  

Have a great week!!  

Go Mavs!