November 16, 2012

Friday Updates - on Monday, November 19th, 2012
Happy Thanksgiving. Hope you get to spend it with those you love.

Info/Reminder:

 travel reimbursement procedures.

• Remember to use  new travel form[July 2012].     It is on our shared drive. "G" drive
• Any travel (other than travel to schools) requires an agenda/conference booklet to be submitted with the request for reimbursement. If you attend a PD [training at another site] a sign in sheet with the date and times will work for documentation.
• For recording keeping purposes, please submit travel to schools separate from travel to state meetings or pd you attend.

Google Calendar:

Keeping your calendar up to date is documentation.

"inviting" Tanya and Kay to an event that takes you out of the office/school is notifying/requesting time off from work. 

Please remember: Just because it is "on your calendar" I will not see it unless you send me an invite. We have grown too big for all of your calendars to show up on my screen.

• Please, please, please, please remember to "invite Kay and Tanya" to any event that will take you out of the office/school regardless if it is NCD, annual leave, sick leave, using time spent/worked during summer training, etc.  
• If your event is after hours (after 3:30 or 4:30 depending on whether you arrive at 7 or 8) then we do not need to be invited.
• I can not stress the importance of this enough. This is very important.This has to become a habit for everyone. The invites need to be in advance and not last minute unless something comes up. 
• Please keep your calendar updated at least weekly. As soon as you know you are going to need to be out of the office, please place it on the calendar.  
• Please remember, if an emergency keeps you from work, please text or call Kay AND Tanya then update your calendar accordingly. 

Request to become an AMSTI School

• If anyone asks you about the possibility of joining AMSTI or their school becoming an AMSTI school, please ask them to put their request in writing and email to Tanya.  I keep an email file of everyone who wants information about joining AMSTI. I will begin recording the information on Steve's spreadsheet.   See quote form Steve's email. 
• From Steve:  "Many of you already have some way of recording who is contacting you to join AMSTI that indicates when, what was requested, contact info etc. It is very important that you build a record of this information. Should funds become available to bring on new schools, you will want to have a record to help with the selection process. Also, at an upcoming site staff meeting you should let staff know to be sure and share with you any questions or information they receive regarding requests for AMSTI. Otherwise, if someone other than you speaks with someone calling in, he/she may say “We aren’t accepting new schools” and let it go without you being aware and having a record of the contact."

Updates below apply to Specialists

• Update on dates:
• Math TTT :
• South: January 29 – 31 – USA and Troy
• North: March 5 – 7: UAH, UNA and Athens
• The following is tentative:
  Central : Feb 5-7:
  Central : Feb 26-28:
  March 12-14: ?

• CCRS:   Thanks for Everyone's help.  Kay and Melanie: great job facilitating sessions!
• Please enroll on STIPD for  CCRS.   
• The sign in sheets had been copied and given to Janis before I made sure everyone had signed in.  THEREFORE,  Melanie, Kay, Polly, Shelley see Janis to "sign in" on her copy of the CCRS sign in sheets.  
• Gadsden CIty and Cleburne County have asked for help in turning around the training.   Hold January 2nd for Gadsden CIty (Math specialists).  We will not do the training for them but will plan with them and be there for support.  They are going to do K - 8.
• Cleburne County is also asking for help.  I do not know the grade bands.   They are suppose to email me.

November 26, 2012:
Let's meet after lunch, 1:30 and go over a few things. 
Please read/look over the following before we meet on November 26th at 1:30.

AMSTI Guidelines: October 2012
Responsibilities: page 7
Site schedule: page 8
Responsibilities: pages 9-11
Module equipment and materials: compressed training: page 20
Logo Usage: page 36
Compressed training: pages 37-38
Professional Development Leave: pages 40-41
Previous Kit experience: page 50
Last sentence on page 52
2nd and 3rd paragraph on page 53

JSU Staff Handbook revised June 2010: should be the copy I gave you a few weeks ago
PR: page 12
Telephone: page 13
Personnel records: page 14
Use of University equipment: page 15
Regular, Full time employment: page 18
Professional Service Providers/Outside employment: page 18
Working hours: page 27
Last paragraph page 30
Health Insurance: page 33
Life Insurance: page 36
Retirement programs: page 37
Long term disability: page 39
Direct deposit: page 44
Flexible benefit plan: page 45
Holidays: full time staff: page 47
Annual leave/ absence report/sick leave: pages 48-50 and 52
Inclement Weather: pages 57-59
Jury duty/ Absence from duty: page 60
Resignation: page 62
Employee recognition and service awards/health clinic/parking/HR: pages 69-70

 

November 2, 2012

Dropbox:
If possible, (if you haven't already) install dropbox on your computer.  I've created a folder to share with everyone and when I add something to the folder, if you have dropbox installed on your computer, you will see a notification that a folder has change.

I have added the AMSTI Guidelines for FY 2013 to the dropbox folder.

I have updated the AMSTI school list with the most current changes of principals.  I've added email addresses for the principals and added a column of assistant principals (that we work with) and their email addresses. 

Research Articles:
Because of our MSP grant (s) I recieve articles on math and science.  Recently, I've been saving the ones that might be of use to us on the "G" drive.   There are other articles that I have collected over the years.   Anytime you need an article to share in a PD or with a group of teachers, check the "G" drive.  There are some really good research articles in the Article folder. The articles from MSP recently have dealt with Common Core for Math and for Science.

Calculators for the End of Course Test

From Steve:

Jeff and Martha Anne are working on a way to check out calculators. They will run it by several directors for “issues glitches” before we send it out.

I apologize that this was tossed upon you –but it happened to us too, without warning.

Please instruct whomever is speaking with schools calling to request calculators to explain that when the department wrote the FAQ, they knew that AMSTI had calculators but didn’t understand almost all were already out in the math classrooms-not stored at the site. If we don’t have calculators available just say we would furnish them if we had them, but they are all already out in schools.

Message should be positive, we wish we could help, but they are already in the schools.

Steve Ricks

Director

Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative (AMSTI)

Alabama Department of Education

Gordon Persons Building

50 North Ripley Street

Montgomery, AL 36104

www.amsti.org

(334) 353-9151