Week Ahead: March 16-20

| March 12, 2020 | Week Updates | No Comments

For each of us, we are going to have ups and downs during this stressful time. For me, I’ve had a few harder days this week.  I found relief in finding something to laugh about (usually a trip to the faculty lounge provides the needed experience) and something to celebrate with others (Ryan’s birthday lunchtime softball game filled the bill).  Remeber to pay attention to the signs of stress that your body and mind may be trying to get you to pay attention to.  What’s happening is a lot.  A. LOT.

The article Catriona shared with us is a great way to really help process all that is happening as well as great suggestions for how to respond:  “10 Strategies on Educators’ Wellbeing: A Handbook for Schools During the COVID-10 Outbreak” from Ellen Mahoney of Sea Change Mentoring.  I really recommend reading it if you haven’t already had a chance to do that.   Please also read through the information sent out by Jacob Humes via email.  It also includes resources that you can access.

Here is what’s up next week:

Sunday, March 15
Happy Birthday Ryan Pool!

Monday, March 16
Day 5, CDAB

Tuesday, March 17
Day 6, GHEF

Wednesday, March 18
Day 7, DABC
*Last day of Q3

Thursday, March 19
Day 8, HEFG
*First day of Q4

Friday, March 20
Day: Special A-H Schedule

Saturday, March 21
Happy Birthday David Rynne!

Upcoming (on the radar)

  • March 23 Comments/Grades due, 3:00
  • March 24 Verification reports due 3:00
  • March 25 Report Cards distributed to parents
  • March 30-April 3 Spring Break

Schedule on March 20:  As Student Led Conferences have been cancelled, March 20th has been shifted to an A-H schedule.  We will follow the schedule set by the HS (to accommodate our teachers who teach in both divisions).

  • 08:00 – 8:40am  Block A (40 minutes)
  • 08:45 – 09:25am  Block B (40 minutes)
  • 09:30 – 10:10am Block C (40 minutes)
  • 10:10 – 10:20am  Break (10 minutes)
  • 10:25 – 11:05am  Block D (40 minutes)
  •  11:10 – 11:50am  Block E (40 minutes)
  • 11:55 – 12:35pm  Block F (40 minutes)
  • 12:35 – 1:30pm   Lunch (55 minutes)
  • 1:35 – 2:15pm  Block G (40 minutes)
  • 2:20 – 3:00pm  Block H (40 minutes)

Video Plan:   Okay – so my plan to get video myself didn’t work out ….  So, here is Plan B:
Please pick one or more of the segments on this document (by yourself, with a friend, as a group), and send me the video.  It’s best to video with a landscape view. But I’ll take any video you have. I’ll mash it all together for an excellent video to send to our students.  I’d love to have 2 versions / clips for each of the segments.

Here is the video again:   Vietnam Hand Washing Challenge TikTok

Case Management of High Intervention Students:  As case managers continue to work aggressively to assist students in getting caught up, please remember that there are many strategies at our disposal.  Thank you for your work with case managers on behalf of students. it is important to get these students moving forward productively as we continue virtual school.  This means that case managers may come to you to discuss what can be set aside for now for a particular students.  This would mean marking the assignment exempt (and unchecking the missing flag).  The plan is to get these students moving forward and address the assignments that have been exempted later (if possible).  For students who have gotten themselves into a huge, huge hole, this is the only way out.  If you have questions about this process, please see me or Roxanne.
Review of Student Q3 Grades:  As you review the final grades for Q3, there are a few things to keep in mind:
  1. For all but the exploratory electives in G6, this could be considered a progress report as the grades continue into Q4 as a running total building up to the semester 2 grade.  In that sense, all students have opportunities to improve their achievement.
  2. You may find that current grades are not actually reflective of the student’s typical or normal work.  Your professional judgement should be used to ensure that the grade reported actually represents achievement.  This is not to say that you need to “prop” up grades or mis-represent poor achievement duirng virtual school.  However, if a student was not successful in completing assignments leading up to a major assessment, project or paper, BUT was successful on the summative work, you could adjust and/or exempt those lead up assignments.  There are many other unique situations that might require your professional judgement.  Please reach out to your grade level team, your department members, and/or Roxanne or I if you want an opportunity to talk through some of those situations.
  3. Grades and comment deadines were adjusted to give additional time.
New Tech Tools/Software/Website Services:  Lots of free products are being offered to schools to assist with online education.  Partially altruistic and partially capitalistic on their part.  Regardless of their motive, we have a process for adding any tech tools / software / products / website services to our systems.  This is still in place.  Just because it’s free doesn’t mean we can just use it.  If you want to introduce a new product / tool / website account service in your course, you MUST go through the process.  No exceptions.  This is one of those situations where I would have to come in and tell you to take it down / stop using it / etc. if you don’t go through the proper process.  Here is what that process is:
  • First step, see David Rynne.  He will be able to tell you what the process is – and whether the particular thing you are thinking of using is / has been already submitted.
  • Second step, see David Rynne.  He will tell you if we’ve already decided to use a different product that does the same thing.
  • Third step, see David Rynne.  He will help you check through things like compatibility and all the privacy issues related to students using online tools.
  • Fourth step (… can you guess?), see David Rynne.  He will help you find the correct paperwork that needs to be completed and start the approval process (which will take a few days at a minimum).
Checking for Late Work:   Roxanne continues to develop the system for supporting students who are missing assignments.  Please contribute by checking for late work every day.  For all assignments being submitted through PowerSchool Learning (and almost all should be), you can simply open your gradebook and see which students now have a paperclip by their name for that assignment.  Then uncheck missing and check collected.

Other Shared Items: 

Teachers may NOT require Google Meets for an entire class so that a lesson can be taught.  We have students all over the place right now.  You CAN require certain students to attend GMeets if they need intervention and you want to work with them specifically to help them better understand the topic.  If you use this option, you need to send both an email and a Google Calendar invitation to the student and cc the parent.
Use Haparra when sending out documents to students.  This ensures the students have their own document, located in the right place, and with naming conventions that you and the student can remember.  There really shouldn’t be any times when we are using the “make a copy” of this document method.
Chunk out assignments into smaller parts.  Having 1 assignment with 3-4 actual parts that need to be completed over the week seems to be a stretch for our students.  Whenever possible, break assignments / lessons into components that can be completed individually.  This also has the benefit of you being able to check in on their learning before they are all the way through with the larger assignment/project.  You can still put out the assignment/lesson all on one day … just break it into individual PS assignments for the students.

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Ms Principal