The coutdown has begun!

The Henley faculty returned this week to continue preparations for the 2007-2008 school year. The level of energy that I'm feeling from this staff is truly phenomenal! There is no doubt that this week is one of the most hectic, stressful and exciting times for everyone involved in public education. We're all sprinting toward Wednesday morning trying to get our rooms ready, to meet new faculty members and to get our minds out of summer mode and back into school mode. The dedication of the teachers at Henley is clear in every aspect of what they are doing to prepare for a great year.

Our teachers this week have been focusing on a number of different areas. One of the big areas of focus for everyone this year is how we are going to take some of the theories behind the concept of professional learning communities and put them into action. We have had many discussions about the conference I attended with Rick and Becky DuFour and we are quickly developing plans based around what the DuFours believe are the essential questions we must ask ourselves for effective collaboration:

• What do we expect our children to learn?
• How will we know if they have learned it?
• How will we respond if they don't learn?
• How will we respond if they already know it?

In my mind, the third question in this list is the most important. When we have students who don't learn what we expect them to learn, how will we respond? One of the key pieces to the answer to this question at Henley this year will be our STING period. STING is a period that meets at the end of each school day and is designed to provide an opportunity for us to help our students who aren't achieving at the levels we expect. To start the year, students will be placed into STING groups based solely on their grade level. As we gather data on student achievement and identify students who are struggling in different classes, we will be forming specialty STING groups that focus on different core subjects. This will enable us to provide directed remediation, rather than invitational remediation, to some of our students who need it most.

As with all new programs, I'm sure we will experience some growing pains with STING as we take risks to discover what will work best for our kids. I feel confident that this will be a key piece of the puzzle to raising the level of achievement at Henley even higher. More detailed information about STING will be coming to parents through this site and our school website. Students will be learning about STING from their teachers next week.

I can't wait until Wednesday! Here's what's happening at Henley over the next couple of weeks:

• Henley Open House: Monday, August 20, 10:00 a.m.-12:00 a.m.
• First Day of School: Wednesday, August 22
• PATSO Meeting: Monday, August 27, 7:00 p.m.
• Labor Day Holiday--School closed!--Monday, September 3
• Back-to-School night: Wednesday, September 5, 7:00 p.m.-9:00p.m.

I hope to see many of you at these events! Go Hornets!