April 6, 2022
Welcome Back
Dear Educators,

Welcome back! We hope you enjoyed Spring Break and are returning to your buildings feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the rest of the school year. Reflecting on the year thus far, we want to encourage and uplift you to keep up the good work. This year has been challenging in many ways, but thanks to your dedication to our students, we have been able to keep our schools open to support students’ learning needs. This is a huge feat. Thank you for never losing sight of our Shared Core Value of Students First. 

As we head into the last two months of the school year, know that we are here to support you and cheer you on to the finish line.

Many thanks,
Tamara and Mike
This Week's Top Things to Know
Adjusted Teal Days in August and September
Teal Days have been adjusted to allow more frequent touchpoints for district-provided sessions and school-based planning and development. The adjustments are based on feedback the Professional Learning Team received around challenges posed by the length of Teal Day sessions and their placement on the calendar. In particular, many educators must complete pre-service compliance, for which a full day in August will eliminate strain on these educators and honor their time. To balance this full day in August, the September Teal Day will be a full day devoted to school-based learning and planning, providing a more consistent cadence of sessions for the 2022-23 school year.
Save the Date for the 2022 Biliteracy Conference
The fourth annual DPS Biliteracy Conference is happening in person Aug. 10. This year's conference will include several learning strands and sessions catered to dual language, world language, secondary, elementary and preschool teachers and leaders. Topics will include teaching for language transfer, planning for the strategic use of Spanish and English, ELD, ICLD, Spanish Language Arts and more. Registration details will be shared soon. Find more information about the conference in this one-pager.
Join the Achieving Excellence Academy Summer Pilot Program
Are you passionate and knowledgeable about racial and cultural identity? Are you skilled at teaching ethnic studies and incoming ninth-grade students? Teach or lead at the Achieving Excellence Academy! The Achieving Excellence Academy (AEA) summer program is an in-person immersive four-week pilot taking place June 21-July 14 at Denver School of the Arts. AEA will serve as a cultural identity and ethnic studies program especially for -- but not exclusive to -- Black/African-American and Latinx families, students and educators to learn more about these experiences and ancestral histories. Learn more here.
Required Initial LEAP Observer Training for New-to-Role Observers
New-to-Role LEAP Observers can now register in Learning Space for the following Initial LEAP Observer Training (iLOT) session. This training, and the certification assessment, is required for all new observers.
 
Registration is open now for the Spring PLC-style training, which will be facilitated in 2.5-hour blocks over four days, with an additional two hours of asynchronous prework. Note: You must be able to attend all dates and times in order to become certified.
 
Additionally, eight-hour days of training will be offered on Aug. 4 and 5 to accommodate new Senior Team Leads and Team Leads hired for the 2022-23 school year. If you have questions, email [email protected].
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