Welcome Letter to Parents

Dear Parents,

Hello and welcome to the 2010-2011 school year and 5th grade for your child! We are excited to start the year. We look forward to getting to know the kids and hearing their ideas. We will share more information with you about our year at Parent Information Night on Wednesday, September 1st in the evening. In the interim, please read below for more information about your child's classroom.

We are excited to have increased opportunities for team teaching this year. This is a result of changes to grade level assignments for support staff at Wickliffe while continuing to provide more common planning time for grade level teams. Your child will have two teachers next year in the classroom, Shawna McEvoy and Tammy Slater. Combined, we have taught at Wickliffe for over 30 years. However, this is not a job share classroom. Our class will have 24 children and 2 teachers, all day.

When looking at a collaborative teaching model during the 2009-10 school year, staff met several times after school, reviewed current research, invited a teacher from a neighboring school district who works in a cooperative teaching model, and conducted a site visit to a school that teaches with two teachers in class all day. We have worked during the summer to plan and have become very excited and energized by the possibilities that having two teachers working together in a classroom will afford. We believe that working together in a collaborative manner, sharing the planning and delivery of services while expanding our professional expertise, will enrich learning opportunities for all students. We also believe this approach to staffing our classroom is consistent with our Ten Foundational Principles of Progressive Education, particularly the following principles: teacher and children using time and space in a flexible manner, respecting diversity among children and variation in development, value ongoing reflection and self-evaluation by children and adults and viewing our school as a center for teaching and learning of all ages.

One of our goals this year is to help each child discover his/her individual passions and strengths and how to develop those qualities. It is important to us to not only work hard but to build a classroom community that is caring and cooperative. These first weeks of school will be spent laying the foundation and establishing routines that will help each child be self-motivated, independent, responsible and kind.

We will begin our school year by doing some getting to know you games, community building activities and beginning routines. We’ll be writing, reading, doing word play and having some science fun the first week.

We will have a class blog this year. You can find "Tales from 211" at http://talesfrom211.blogspot.com/

In addition, you can contact us at:
Shawna McEvoy: smcevoy@uaschools.org
Tammy Slater: tslater@uaschools.org

We are looking forward to getting to know both you and your child and to a very productive, fun and hard-working year!

Shawna McEvoy and Tammy Slater