Shout Out to NAES Educators!
You are the best!
A Letter of Gratitude from Mrs. Sowa to Our Staff
We love our staff members! I hope you've been able to enjoy them daily on our Facebook page! Every day there is a new video for students to watch! It's been a confusing time with all we have been asked to do and not to do for our current year's distance learning plan. I am part of each online classroom, SeeSaw, Dojo, Bloomz and Google Classroom, and have am proud of each and everyone one of our staff members for doing all they can for our student body! The way teaching changed overnight and the adaptability of this staff to change everything, including what they know to be best practices in the classroom, to make sure our district stays united and equitable has been outstanding.
We are diligently preparing for whatever next year brings our way! Rest assured that finishing the school year distancing learning is very different than what the future of education will look like when we begin school again in September. We are preparing for anything! Did you know that this time of distance learning accounts for 2% of your student's K-12 education? Don't forget, through all of this our students are still learning. They are learning real world lessons in empathy, resilience, problem solving and so much more. We will make the 2% of classroom learning up to them, but may not have been able to teach the life lessons they are learning with you at home during this time.
Each staff member is participating in at least two ore more Professional Development courses to help transition into the education of our future. These courses are being taken on top of their other responsibilities! The Professional Development course topics include, Google Classrooms, Distance Learning, Online Resources for a Hybrid classroom, CORE reading, Mindfulness, and many more! They dedicate themselves to these classes several hours per week in order to be ready for quality online and hybrid education next school year if needed! All this is being done with two less work days per week as GAPS works through furloughing educators for the remainder of the year.
This week teachers have not only been assigned their Professional Development courses, they may be working through a series of safety protocols with quizzes, packing up their classrooms for year, maintaining their online classrooms and participating in committee meetings to wrap up the school year.
Our staff have also been helping in the community! We have staff members serving lunches, delivering lunches, delivering books to little libraries, dropping off food supplies to families, helping pack care packages to be delivered all over the community, dropping off care packages to families, working with FACT to deliver supplies, food or other essential items to families in our communities.
We are all in this together and are here to show support and love to our community, families and students. This staff is everything I could ask for in a team.
Thank you NAE Staff!!! Thank you NAES families for all of your support and kind words to our staff members as this life changing, unprecedented global pandemic changes the way we know education, changes the world as we know it and gives us the opportunity to redesign education to benefit our future.
Thank you all,
Mrs. Sowa