Week Ahead: March 14-18
So this week is starting out a bit better than last – only 5 faculty out as opposed to 12 last Monday. And we have at least 2 subs (working on the 3rd now). In looking at the data, the majority of faculty members have covered 1 or 2 blocks over the past 2 weeks. On Thursday, we only had 2 blocks that needed to be covered by MS teachers, and on Friday we only had 1 block. It looks like tomorrow will be fully covered by subs, the library, and other school personnel. We will keep trying to support the faculty who are sick, on F1 status, or doing other important business/appointments. We will communicate as quickly and efficiently as we can.
MS Student attendance continues to be strong on campus. We are consistently hitting over 70% in all grade levels (and that’s including students who are out of country). Duong calculates this daily.
Omicron has certainly hit us hard – and left some bruises. Current graphs about infection rates in HCMC suggest that it is dropping; and Lisa C mentioned that our rates at SSIS are dropping as well. We have 13 students in MS and 3 MS, MS/HS faculty identified as F0 currently, and about 15 MS students and 1 MS/HS faculty member identified as F1. Even with it dropping, the pressure of concurrent learning combined with everything else continues. Please reach out for help and step back when you need to.
Here is what’s up next week:
Monday, Mar. 14
E-H
Tuesday, Mar. 15
A-D
*Happy Birthday Ryan Pool!
3:15-4:30 MS Leadership Team
Wednesday, Mar. 16
E-H
3:15-4:30 Divisional Time (report writing)
Thursday, Mar. 17
A-D
Friday, Mar. 18
E-H
*Talking Points for SLCs due
Saturday, Mar. 19
*Happy Birthday Bev Giacobbe-Larson!
Upcoming (on the radar)
- March 24-25: Student Led Conferences
SLCs: Thank you for working with your students to link their evidence for your class to their SLCs docs. This week is for students to add the talking points. As advisors, you will check on Friday to see your advisees’ progress. Sign ups for the conferences will start this week. First we will assist faculty members who have children at SSIS. This will happen on Monday and Tuesday (if you have a child in another division, the divisional office assistant will contact you). On Wednesday, we will invite parents to sign up. Please know that for conferences, you may choose to work from school or home on Thursday afternoon and all day Friday.
Comments for Q3: Comments and grades for Q3 are due March 21. I cannot urge you strongly enough to write 3 basic comments for your course based on 3 typical levels of performance and use those in the comment bank. Please, please, please do not spend hours on comments. If more than 1 person teaches the same course, you could use the same set of 3 comments between the teachers.
Feedback from Faculty Survey: We got valuable feedback on last week’s faculty survey. It’s clear that in MS it was a tough week as we had our lowest “overall how are you doing” scores on any survey so far this year. The themes were the stress related to coverage, curriculum documentation, and COVID.
- For the coverage, we are doing what we can to alleviate this by bringing classes to the library, using all available subs (and even finding 3 more that can start this week – thank you Mel Sylvester and faculty members who found them), and by having faculty in all-school positions cover. We are keeping MS data on coverage. Here is what we have tracked. Over the past 2 weeks, 13 faculty members have covered 1 class, 10 have covered 2 classes, and 1 has covered 3 times. By Friday, we were down to only 1 MS faculty member covering for 1 block (the rest was covered by subs, library, and other AS faculty members). We will continue to do everything we can to minimize the impact.
- For the curriculum documentation, we are trying to help clarify and support all of you with this. From the survey, it seems one of the most difficult and challenging parts is the linking of documents and ensuring they are in the shared drive (especially if a teacher prefers to work in MyDrive). We will keep reviewing this and finding ways to support the documentation goals. The next date we have schedule for work on curriculum documentation is March 30. There is no need to do anything related to this until then. I’ll be checking in with individuals to figure out what support would work best for each person.
- For COVID, the biggest concern is about the intense challenges related to concurrent learning, variability in attendance, implementation of DOET and MOET regulations, and overall fatigue.
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