Elk River Challenge III 2023-24

Week 8

READ THIS YA’LL!

• We spent some time at the end of our day discussing the importance of parent-teachers, and the need for 1:1 points during the week to touch base and share their assignments with you - a chance to check in with Latin status, cartography progress, research papers, Lost Tools of Writing weekly assignments, terms for Reasoning, Proverbs 25, etc.

• Student enthusiasm for parent involvement may vary, but we discussed this as an expectation because (reminder to them) I am technically not the “teacher”- while I set the table for our feast each week, the feast we enjoy is prepared during their week at home. This is not in any way to avoid the responsibility of instruction (I do bear that on our Community Day), but you are ultimately the one to evaluate their progress, scale their work to their abilities, and inform the culture of their daily work in the context of your relationship.

Keep a Regular Appointment for Challenge A Pulse

• While we accomplish a great deal in our community day together, they still need their parent-teacher to keep a pulse on the quality of their work, accomplishments celebrated and areas of focus identified where additional support is needed.

• With the theme of Ownership also comes coaching, accountability and regular encouragement to keep up their diligent work so that they can make the most of the opportunities and their investments in this year!

• Please find time this week to sit down with your student and go through their Challenge A work with them.

• I would love to hear what questions precipitate out of these conversations, anything you think I can do to be more helpful in class or in communications to you. I hope to touch base with all of the parents over our fall break to hear how you think the year is going so far and share feedback! I want to make sure that we are catching any gaps that can be shored up before they feel too far behind in any area, or where you realize that there may be specifics you want to see addressed.

ALSO: We do not need to be doing homework on weekends!

• I am about to ban this at our house! Please encourage and help your student to plan their week so that they are done by Fridays (unless you love homework hanging over your weekend). I am hearing a lot of weekend work-talk in class lately, like this has become the norm. It is totally possible to plan well and get it done outside of weekends.

• This is for your choosing, and you are welcome to be doing weekend homework, but I want to communicate that it is fair to have an expectation to be done by Friday if you wish it to be so.

• We are going to be looking for the space in our days that could be used more effectively and figuring out what we need to do to keep our weekends free space for family time, because that is our desire (ownership is a process = patience).

Highly recommended: If you haven’t read Practicing Affirmation by Sam Crabtree, it is a fantastic read (even to browse for useful bits!).