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TEAM Teachers

Biology: Liz Brimhall,

Randy Scilingo

English: Karin Kolb

History: Steve Sabbag

Administrator Liaison:

Assistant Principal

Jerry Berkson, jberkson@pausd.org

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What is TEAM? A small Community of 9th Graders

All TEAM students enroll in 3 classes:

Biology
English 9A
World History

TEAM curriculum is rigorous, real-world, interdisciplinary learning. All TEAM teachers collaborate regularly with subject area colleagues to ensure alignment within disciplines on key curriculum; although, we also innovate and try new ideas.

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TEAM means “Together Everyone Achieves More”

Our TEAM values are Trust, Excellence, Altruism, and Meaning

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team vision

The overarching goal of TEAM is the development of a healthy, motivated student community ready to thrive in learning and to find joy at Paly and beyond.

What does TEAM hope to accomplish? The TEAM Program strives to meet the needs of freshman students so they can:

1) work hard to achieve academic excellence through organization, prioritization, and diligence

2) gain leadership and teamwork skills by being a member of a community of teachers and learners

3) experience real-world learning opportunities outside of the classroom through community service and field trips

4) make a smooth intellectual, emotional, and social transition to high school

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Teacher/Counselor Collaboration

TEAM teachers have a common period to meet and collaborate, and also occasionally meet with counselors

Weekly meetings allow teachers to:
discuss best practices
coordinate and collaborate on curriculum, field trips, projects, activities, etc.
strategize in working with individual students and with groups of students

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Student Leaders

Returning students contribute to the TEAM activities and build relationships with the freshmen. They serve as role models and accompany students on field trips within TEAM. Student leaders enroll as Teaching Assistants can help out in the classroom, too.

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Field Trips

Quarterly Field trips offer:

experiential learning
integrated curriculum
community-building

Off-site leadership and service learning activities help students, sometimes for the first time, understand their own strengths and create bonds with peers and adults.

Typical Trips: Foothills Campout, Yosemite, Monterey, Paly Service Day, Leadership Overnight

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parent Involvement

Parents are an integral part of the TEAM!

Parents volunteer their time and talents to help the teachers plan and execute TEAM activities and share the TEAM vision at home.
Parents who volunteer to go on field trips will need to get fingerprinted.
Parents help with fundraising:

TEAM typically asks for a $2000 tax-deductible voluntary donation to cover our costs.
See TEAM Financial Handout - payment plans and partial donations accepted as well
NO student is excluded from TEAM events based on donations.

Donations info from Jerry Berkson:

Hello Paly Teachers,

Many of you are working on, or have already sent out your “asks” of donations for the year. It has been a few years since we covered this, but I believe we need to shore things up a bit.

1) EVERY ask letter should contain the following verbiage: This is not required for your student to participate in this activity.

2) If it’s needed to participate in an educational activity, you can’t charge for it. In other words, if it is something to make a program more robust, you could be OK, but the basics have to be covered by the district. Think standards…

3) Do not call an amount a “suggested” donation, emphasize “voluntary” donation. “A voluntary donation of (this) will help us go beyond the basics and provide us with…

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Social Events - Student (and Parent) Collaboration

Special student and/or parent initiated activities and social events throughout the year strengthen bonds among students, parents, and their teachers.

Social events offer students an opportunity to build their own learning experience.

With COVID, we held some Zoom Game nights, etc.

Examples from the past include movie nights, going to Giants games, speaker panels, etc.

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Fall Field Trips:

Foothills - We Need Some more Parent Chaperones; All chaperones need to complete distric LiveScan if not done in a previous year. If we have sufficient funds, we may be able to add the overnight component for Wednesday night.

Yosemite (Nov 10-14) - look for online Registration link to come out via parent square soon - due by 9/11.

For more info, visit our website at team.paly.net

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Foothills Field Trip

Camping Monday evening 9/15, bus leaves 5:45pm , returning Tuesday 9/16 5pm *Chaperones come 5:30
Recommended: sleep under the stars
Behavior Expectations
All Chaperones - Fingerprinting Requirement
Medical Forms on Schoology
Extracurricular Conflicts
Parent Lead: Josephine Chen
Return ALL forms to English Teacher - Due Back Th 9/4