Our Mission
To improve the learning outcomes and well-being of all children and youth by providing services and leadership in partnership with families, schools and communities.
Our Goals
• Increase learning growth for students
• Decrease the gap in achievement
• Increase annual graduation rates
• Increase gateways to post-secondary success
We’ve extended the deadline for completing the Denison Organizational Culture Survey to May 18! Our agency participation rate currently stands at 68%, and we know we can DO BETTER! So if you haven’t already completed the survey, refer back to an email from April 23 with a link to the survey and please complete it by this Friday.
Remember we encourage you to respond openly and honestly to the survey so our agency receives accurate results. Your responses are completely confidential and will only be presented as part of our agency’s overall organizational profile or as part of a subgroup. Your views and insights are critical in helping our agency achieve its goals. If you’ve already completed the survey, thank you for your participation!
If you need a refresher on the background of why we take the survey, you can catch up via this Connection article from April 16.
As you all know, the past several years our country has seen an increase in school and workplace violence. As our agency learns more from the experts who have studied these events, our Emergency Response & Safety Team has made several recommendations that have been enacted across the Agency to help keep us safe in the case of an emergency.
As Heartland AEA continues to make improvements in our agency’s safety and security, we are now asking that all staff complete the ALICE online training once a year. By the end of the 2018 calendar year, all Heartland AEA staff members should take the hour-long online training to become familiar with the ALICE program and the techniques it teaches in response to an armed intruder event.
ALICE stands for:
- Alert: Get the word out! “Armed Intruder in building” instead of “Code Red,” or “Bring the purple folder to the office.” Use clear, concise language to convey the type and location of the event.
- Lockdown: Good starting point. We will continue to lockdown in secure areas.
- Inform: Communication keeps the intruder off balance and allows for good decision-making.
- Counter: Apply skills to distract, confuse and gain control.
- Evacuate: Reduce the number of potential targets for the intruder and reduce chances of victims resulting from friendly fire when help arrives.
In short, using the ALICE method will give you more tools to use in the event of an armed intruder/active shooter. We want to provide you with the knowledge that if faced with a life or death situation there are methods that can be applied to enhance your chance of survival.
Again, you are expected to complete the ALICE online training by the end of the 2018 calendar year.
To access the training:
- Visit the AEA Learning Online Moodle site.
- Click on the Login with Your AEA Learning Online account, this is the same site that you have taken Mandatory trainings as a Heartland AEA employee.
- Once in the site, find the banner named "Individual AEAs and Partners" and look for the Heartland AEA logo. Click on the logo, and you'll be taken to a page where the ALICE logo is shown.
- Click on the ALICE logo to be taken to a screen where you can then click the "Enroll me" button to be enrolled in the training.
- If you need assistance with accessing the site, contact Shelley Christensen or Britini Jones at ext. 14702.
If you have any questions about the training or the ALICE program in general, contact Dustin Gean, Operations Manager, Emergency Response & Safety Team Lead and Certified ALICE Trainer.
As you may recall, in October 2017, the Heartland AEA Business Office and Human Resources Department asked for your feedback on a survey to help them better serve their customers (you!). Over the past six months, as part of the departments’ WIGS (Wildly Important Goals), they’ve taken your feedback and focused on improving processes, services and communication to you.
As you may recall, the Business Office and HR want to serve you with the following goals in mind:
- Be proactive and help gain efficiencies by improving processes, procedures and programs.
- Contribute to a positive and collaborative culture.
- Decrease the amount of stress and time you spend on items that don't directly relate to your work (e.g, benefits, expenses, technology, etc.) by interacting in a caring and supportive manner.
With that in mind, they would like your help to again provide feedback and let them know if they’re meeting their target goals. You can do that by please completing this short, four-question survey about the Heartland AEA Business Office and Human Resources Department.
Your answers will be submitted anonymously. Complete the survey by 4:30 p.m. on Friday, May 18, 2018. Thank you for your feedback!
The May 2018 issue of the Each and Every Child newsletter from the Iowa Department of Education is now available.
As we begin to wind down the school year, we want to remind you of the requirements that must be met to complete this year’s Wellness Program. If you haven’t yet completed three of the five challenges, you’ll want to register for the upcoming Water Challenge! You have until June 30, 2018 to complete all the requirements and submit them on the Wellmark Wellness website.
To complete the 2017-18 Wellness Program, you need to complete:
*All Baseline Items
• Biometrics
• Health assessment
• Dental screening
• WebMD assessment
• Annual physical
• Volunteer time (at least 1 hour anytime/anywhere)
*Three Activities in each Activity Category
Preventive
• Hearing exam
• Eye exam
• Flu shot
• Self exam
• Ergonomic challenge
• Wellness assessment - cancer, cardiovascular, chronic fatigue
• Current age and gender-specific exams
Community/Social/Emotional
• Attend Wellness Champions Lunch & Learn on (Face-to-face/Zoom)
• Nutritional/Weight loss programs, e.g.: Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig
• Watch a Ted Talk
• Create a goal on the WebMD Online Healthy Coach
• Donate blood
• Stress management – EAP
• Web assessment – Anxiety
• Attend Lunch & Learn w/ Dr. Aaron Rector (Face-to-face/Zoom/recorded)
Financial
• Savings challenge
• Attend financial Lunch & learn
• Download a financial app
• Use Wellmark cost savings estimator
• Donate to local school
• EAP – Financial
• Watch a Ted Talk
Physical
• Achieve 10,000 steps per day for 14 consecutive days
• Participate in an organized walk/run/bike event
• Download a fitness app
• Attend a nutritional Lunch & Learn (Face-to-face/Zoom/recorded)
• Ergonomic challenge
Career
• Recognize another staff member in the Heartbeat
• Use EAP - Career development podcast
• Volunteer 4 hours on behalf of the Agency
• Read the Agency Playbook
• Read career-related book
• Complete the Strengths Finder
• Watch a Ted Talk on career/purpose
*Three of the Five Challenges
• Ready, Set, Move
• 5 to Thrive
• Stressless
• The Invitational
• Water
Reminder:
• New staff hired in 2017-18 will earn a Fitbit and $100 cash for completing the entire Wellness Program.
• Staff hired prior to 2017-18 will receive $225 cash for completing the entire Wellness Program.
Water, water, everywhere! Get ready to get your drink on May 21-31!
How to Participate in the Water Challenge
You will record your daily ounces of water by your participant number that will be assigned to you when you register. Deadline to register is the end of the day on May 18. After you register, Juliette Houseman will send you a form where you will record your daily entries.
Incentive!
If you drink at least 75 oz. of water on a daily basis, you will be entered in a drawing for a gift bag of Heartland AEA logo items. (You are not required to drink this amount every day to participate in the challenge as a whole.)
How much water should you drink?
Daily recommended water amount: drink 1/2 ounce for every 1 pound of your weight, every day. That’s .033 liters per 1 kg you weight.
Examples:
Half of 150 lbs. = 75, so 75 oz./day
Half of 250 lbs. = 125, so 125 oz./day
Half of 68 kg x .033 = about 2 liters/day
Half of 90 kg x .033 = about 3 liters/day
Why drink water?
Resetting your body is all about undoing years of bad habits and less than perfect health choices. As you’ve heard a thousand times, drinking lots of water is critical. As part of the Wellness Challenge, you can earn your points while flushing your system and creating more energy!
What's the big deal about water?
The Earth is 70% water. Your body is 80% water. It stands to reason that water is some pretty important stuff – right? Water is the body’s transportation medium. It’s how it moves EVERYTHING around to different parts of your body. Water is used to move nutrients to the 100 trillion cells in your body. Water is used to move waste and toxins from your cells to your kidneys, to leave your body. Water is used to wash fat from your body. These things have to get out somehow—they don’t just evaporate away! So water moves good things around your body, and water moves waste, toxins and fat out.
Several questions have come up regarding district-based team (DBT) participation in 2018-19. The Agency expectation is staff who serve school districts will participate in one DBT meeting each month. Staff serving only one district are asked to please participate in that district’s DBT. Staff serving multiple districts (e.g., OTs, PTs, TDHH, etc.) may either (1) choose one DBT in which to participate across the whole year or (2) alternate among the DBTs of the districts in which you work. In other words, staff may not opt out but do have a choice in which DBT you participate in each month.
If you have any questions, contact your regional director.
It’s finally spring! Please take this opportunity to go through and purge, recycle, upcycle or send to the warehouse any items you no longer need to have immediately on hand. If you need any boxes or labels for materials being taken to the warehouse, contact Jason Elliott or Steve Howard in the Operations Department.
If you need to shred a large number of documents, you can box them up and send them via van mail to the Johnston REC, Attn: To Be Shredded, and they will be put in the shredding bins for a large pick up on June 1. You can send boxes anytime between now and May 28.
Thank you for taking the time to clean up and clean out our agency workspaces!
Upcoming training sessions will give a number of you your first glimpse into the new statewide AEA Professional Learning Registration System. If you will remember, this is the system that each AEA will be using for professional learning course registration and payments, course proposals, instructor tools, transcripts, etc. -- the whole professional learning experience. It is scheduled to launch in each AEA throughout the spring and summer of 2018.
This initial training will introduce you to the system, show you how to log in, and specifically, how to enter a vita and create a course proposal. Course proposals for courses beginning after Aug. 3, 2018, will need to be submitted through the new system.
Important: At the training, you will be asked to login to your own account on the AEA Professional Learning Registration System, using the same login you’ve used to access online trainings through AEA Learning Online (e.g. Mandatory Reporter and Bloodborne Pathogens trainings). Going forward this login will begin being referred to as “AEA Login.” If you can't remember your email and password, contact the Professional Learning Office.
Vita & Course Proposal Training
Audience: Staff who teach courses
May 23, 2018
1 - 3:30 p.m.
Johnston REC, Conference Rooms 152 A/B/C
Available via Zoom (Session will be recorded)
Vita & Course Proposal Training
Audience: Staff who teach courses
May 29, 2018
9 - 11:30 a.m.
Johnston REC, Conference Rooms 152 A/B/C
Available via Zoom (Session will be recorded)
Vita & Course Proposal Training
Audience: Professional Learning & Leadership Consultants at their meeting
May 29, 2018
12:30 - 2 p.m.
Johnston REC, Conference Rooms 152 A/B/C
The Iowa Department of Education allocated Title I School Improvement funds to Iowa’s AEA this past November. Due to the timing of the allocation, Heartland AEA was only able to use the funds to hire one position for the 2017-18 school year.
The Agency is funding 2.5 positions with the funds in 2018-19 and will be using some of the remaining funds for 2017-18 to support Certified staff serving K-12 students the opportunity to participate in one day of learning focused on literacy or math. Participants will be paid one day of addendum pay for this voluntary opportunity. (It is not required.) The deadline to register for one of the sessions is Monday, May 21. A description of the sessions, dates, locations and registration links are below.
Cognition-Based Math Assessment and Instruction (June 15 or June 20) (Grades K-8) Participants will learn how to administer and score assessments from the series Cognition Based Assessment and Teaching by Michael Battista. These are appropriate for grades K-8 students. Most of the content is K-5; however, these will be appropriate for older students who are struggling, as they will help determine the student's areas of need. The assessments are designed to work with any curriculum, and Cognition-Based Assessment and Teaching will enable you to better understand and respond to your students’ learning needs and help you choose instructional activities that are best for them.
Effective Literacy Strategy Instruction (Grades K-12)
The purpose of this session is to provide professional learning around effective literacy strategy instruction that will include the following areas: Elements of Effective Literacy Strategy Instruction, Effective Phonics Instruction - Grapheme-Phoneme Mapping, Effective Instruction in Building Words with Morphemes (prefixes, suffixes and roots), Effective Instruction in Vocabulary - Frayer Model and Effective Instruction in Comprehension - Text Structure. These strategies complement any curriculum and are appropriate for students K-5 in universal instruction and for struggling students at the elementary and secondary level.
The Agency has heard from a number of you that we need a better way to make requests for new equipment and/or technology, so we're trying a new process. When you (any staff member) are interested in the purchase of equipment and/or technology for professional use, you are asked to complete the new Technology Request Form. The form will be routed to the new Heartland AEA Internal Tech Advisory Committee, which will meet monthly to review requests and make decisions about purchasing. The new committee and form will help the Agency monitor staff interests, identify trends, know if/when something needs to be scaled for larger implementation and respond to requests in a timely manner.
If you have any questions, contact your supervisor.
