BHMS Staff Remote Learning Page
March 16-?
Purpose of This Page
We will send this link to you via Remind and Email so that we can keep a running thread of happenings for the Remote learning. Here Greg and I hope to share our expectations for our school and also summarize directives from Central so we're all on the same page. This will include updates and frequently asked questions that we will populate based on feedback we receive from the staff and fact finding of things that we didn't anticipate. We hope to use this page as a warehouse for everything related on the BHMS staff end for this remote learning. We've established one for the families as well. I believe the district will use email as the primary means and your supervisors will communicate with you in their established means. You all have been awesome as this is uncharted territory, and we're all learning together.
The important thing here is be safe, take care of you and your families, and not over complicate this if we can. Things will be different for the next several weeks. Things will not go according to plan, so flexibility here will be key.
Check out the short video if you have time. It's what makes us have the ability to persevere in this uncertainty. Always proud to be part of this Bunker Hill team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdEjL9bVcCM&feature=youtu.be
We wish everyone the best of health.
Important....to view most links, make sure you're logged into office365 as well as school wires.
Mike's cell phone number is (302) 562-3622.
Greg's cell phone number is (856) 577-0289.
WebEx Replaces BHMS Faculty Monday Zoom Meetings for More Security and Password Protections
To access the recordings and agendas of the Zoom Meetings, click the following link: WEBEX Recordings and Agendas
Schoology Support from Liz Pitel
Also, go to this link: Liz Pitel's Template for Parents Regarding Switching to Schoology for assistance in discussing with parents regarding your move to Schoology and how the parents can support their children. Important note, once you click the above link, the template will immediately download
In the template letter for you, she also included various links for parents and students on how to navigate it. Be sure to check it out. It's invaluable.
Procedure if Students Aren't Communicating or Doing Work
Student Work Logs
Grade 7
Grade 8
As usual, Liz created a video and links with expectations
LIZ ALSO PROVIDES TUTORIALS DAILY TO ASSIST CHECK EMAILS DAILY TO ASSESS THE TIMES OF THESE TRAININGS
Check out her PD pages: https://wtps.schoology.com/course/2380002474/materials
BHMS Remote Learning Expectations for Staff
Remember to try not over complicate this. The less rigidity we have with the better. We are dealing with a very imperfect situation.
- Staff should be prepared to create 20-30 lesson segments per day.
- Staff should email students each day. Indicating the learning for the day and where to access the learning. If you need to call parents, use *67 then the phone number to block your caller id
- Deadlines should be fluid with a range of due dates. For example, "Your Sadlier is Due by Thursday." "Your test needs to be completed by 3/25/20." etc. This is because the elementary siblings in the middle school students' house will have to share the laptop. Not only that, you may have breaks in wireless services with tons of people online.
- You should not expect to have lessons in real time. You all have families and your own children that you will have to watch, feed, play with too. It's unrealistic to demand a certain time to be online.
- You don't have to provide direct instruction each day. Think about regular class, sometimes you provide schema on two days, then the last three the students work independently. You can do something similar in the virtual world.
- Post videos if you feel you need or desire to deliver notes or feedback that way. No live streaming though.
- Allow students to use Flipgrid or other video feature to ask you questions if necessary
- Ongoing feedback to the students is going to be paramount. You need to establish how you will facilitate learning and comments to the students to help them showcase learning. This can be different for each teacher.
- Do not grade everything...grading everything will be impossible...again you have families too. Our suggestion would be to break assignments into bare bones like initial instruction, student practice, feedback/reteach, quiz (grade), feedback, test/project (grade)...again with fluid deadlines and essential information. Grading should be relegated to just quizzes, tests, projects, essays.
- Mike will oversee the following: 8th grade issues (Parents and Kids), Central Office Communication, 504s, and contact with the CST regarding IEPs (504s & IEPs regardless of the grade level).
- Greg will oversee the following: 6th and 7th grade issues (Parents and Kids), I and RS (regardless of the grade level), and student discipline.
- Mike and Greg will partner on main office and school counseling questions and Cyberbullying offenses related to the online learning.
NEW INFORMATION 3/16/20...1PM
- CST meetings will still occur during the school closure via phone conference. It is imperative that general education and special education students involved with these meetings reply in a timely manner to emails regarding your attendance. You will be asked to participate via a phone conferencing tool. More information to follow.
NEW INFORMATION 3/16/20...2:30PM
- From Steve Gregor: "Just to confirm, Ts may simply paste the contents of their daily emails into OnCourse to be monitored by the Supervisors." Your daily emails to kids are your lesson plans.
NEW INFORMATION 3/18/20...7:30PM
- Mike and Greg are working out plans to triage some concerns that we're seeing crop up. Counselors, CST, Admin, and Team Leaders are working behind the scenes to devise some communication plans to help us continue to all be on the same page.
NEW INFORMATION 3/22/20...3:00PM
- Students are not to get homework. Consider this model: Direct teaching-student practice-reteaching-student practice-test
- Remember not to grade everything. Not all practice has to be graded
- You have permission to and are encouraged to provide recovering of learning...This means flexible deadlines and retesting opportunities
NEW INFORMATION 4/1/20...7:00PM
- Students are permitted to turn in work late without penalty.
- When giving a retake on assessments, you take the highest grade. You don't average the two.
- Remember 1 or 2 skills per week. What takes you a day in class will take you a week in the remote setting.
Staff Questions
- Q: Do we have to email students and parents each day? A: Yes, that's the directive
- Q: What about IEP Meetings, 504 Meetings? A. If you are requested to be at a meeting is expected you participate virtually at the time alotted. We can't say we're not available. We will try to give advanced notice, but for instance, if a meeting is at 10am, the expectation is to participate remotely at that specific time.
3/20/20...Questions
- Q: How fluid are our deadlines? A: Your deadlines are fluid/flexible until you can certify readiness for your students. If you test and a student doesn't hand in the test or tanks it. It is highly recommened that you email assistance and provide an opportunity to retest. Realize you shouldn't be grading everything all the time.
- Q: What do I do if students aren't doing assignments or getting back to me? A: Consult the chart earlier in this SMORE "Procedure if Students Aren't Communicating or Doing Work". Also consult with your team leaders
3/22/20...Questions
- Q: What about SGOs and Summatives? A. Right now that's not even on the radar. Some of you have gotten your second or third observation. Before we process these, we need to make sure we have directive from the state. The superintendent is getting clarifying information.
4/15/20...Questions
- Q: I'm looking for a little advice as to how to move forward with a student who, I believe, cheated on a test. The student not read 3 of the 6 Nearpods that I constructed to chunk a story. He read the first three, then nothing. I contacted him to remind him to catch up prior to the test last Thursday. On Thursday he took the test and scored a 95. I emailed him while he was taking the test on Socrative and told him to make up the reading before he continues with the test and I would reassign it. I heard nothing. Once he finished with a 95, I emailed him and his mom and asked him to contact me because I'm a bit confused about how he could read only half the story and score a 95. I've heard nothing. Any advice? I'm updating Powerschool now and was going to enter a zero with a note to contact me, but I thought I'd get your input first.
A: Wow there are so many layers to this...
First, the easy road...I've actually sat in on National Webinars over the last 4 weeks that say there is nothing you can do to combat cheating. So let it go. I feel we could take that road, but that may be a little passive on our part.
You put the zero in and reach out...good idea. You have a coversation with the mom. If she gets bothered by the fact that you feel he cheated, frankly I would let him go. If mom is going to enable that situation, we're in a lose lose...there's no way to motivate that learned behavior at that point since you're not physically with the kid. If that's the case, I say then move on. It will catch up to him anyway, then give him the grade reflected that he got by cheating.
If you get support, I would give the student a whole new test with more open ended responses and analysis. Seriously like four or five questions which require deeper thought and opinion. This way you send the message that the learning matters rather than the grade and he may be ready to know you mean business by wanting him to do authentic work.
Thanks for the question...that's really good. Let me know how it goes.
4/16/20...Questions
- Q: I have a number of students who did not turn in current events or take their unit tests. I wanted to know if, by May 1st, students still have not turned in these assignments, if I could give them a grade of 'excused?' Under normal circumstances, they would receive 50's for me. However, we are definitely not under normal circumstances. These are major assignments and, as I only have 4 for the marking period, giving them a grade of 50 would almost certainly result in D's and F's for some of these students. Let me know your thoughts. If you are okay with it, I will mark them as excused in the grade book?
A: Great question...Here's where I stand on the issue
You need to certify that the students grasped the material. If you as a teacher can stand behind the fact that they met the standard/learning, then you can make a judgment on that. If the test is the thing that needs to certify the learning, then you give the test. I'm concerned about learning here, not how many assignments they do.
By not having them do the test, you run the risk of them not taking things seriously in the 4th mp. But, these students you see everyday, so you would be the better judge of the fallout.
If you choose not to excuse the test because you feel they haven't learned the material, you could place a zero in the spot where the test should be. The students see their low grade and you email the parent to let them know what the grade is. If by May 1 they don't do anything you can put a 60 for the mp grade or give an incomplete. Again, this is all based on your own data if the students got the material or not. If you've gotten no work from the kids, I wouldn't excuse anything because they haven't mastered the learning targets.
Superintendent's Message Regarding Subs
Superintendent's Message on 3/31/20
In addition to the praise you received from him, his letter includes information on:
- Spring Break
- MP3 and MP4 Dates
- Grading Floor of 60
- Cancellation of Final Exams
- Mandating Communication to Teachers' Classes Daily by 9:30 AM
- Last Day of School.
Go to this link: 3/31 Superintendent's Letter to access the full text of his correspondence
Parent Accolades
- Thought the team would like to see the nice email from Jimmy Bennett's mom: "I just want to say that BHMS and every one of your teachers and staff have been amazing and helpful and very focused on the success of our students so thank you and everyone at BH for all of your efforts."--Georgeann Bennett
- Next accolade is from Mrs. Schick; "First and foremost, thank you. You and your staff have been wonderful and supportive with such a quick turnaround to pull this remote learning together. I have three children in your school and I have been every impressed and grateful for the specific instruction’s being emailed out, as well as follow up emails and phone calls in some instances. As a working parent, I am also under work pressure all the while helping my boys navigate their school work, your staff has made this very easy."--Kathryn Schick
- Accolade from Mrs. Leonard, mother of Christian. "Thank you so much for all you do!"-Becky Leonard
- Accolade from Mrs. Lanoza, mother of Isabella. "We just wanted to thank you for all your hard work. Teaching from home must be very challenging. Hopefully we can all get through this with our sanity intact."-Jeanine Lanoza
- Accolade from Mrs. Richetti, mother of Tristan who is in Vince Dacquisto's class: "Good Afternoon Everyone,I just wanted to tell you all so please pass this on Tristan is having a hard time due to not having school ! Take this as a compliment! You all (Everyone) has made such a Good Impact on Tristan that I just wanted to let you all know and say Thank You !Thank You! I am very Grateful! Stay Safe ! I hope school starts soon! Also please tell the lunch people because I know my kid he is missing the school food (He keeps reading the lunch menu). So now I have to cook what is on the menu ."-Roxanne Richetti
Two accolades from Matt DiLallo's mother: "Hello! As a parent working from home, as I am sure most, if not all of you, are too. Thank you! Thank you for figuring this out so quickly and thank you for taking the time to reach out to Matt if he needed help, thank you!!!! I hope you all have a healthy and happy weekend!"
"First – KUDOS!!!! I don’t know how you are doing it, but kudos!!!! I’ve been working with Matt all week on Unit 10… Following along with him on everything. We both watched your Powerpoint presentation at least 4 times and even I understood it!! That is saying a lot. He said he was ready for the test and I made him watch the video one more time. He just finished his test – sitting across from me, which is our normal set up now, across from each other at the kitchen table working… He let out a big “YES”! HE is so excited for himself! He did work hard!! He had some notes in front of him and he referred back to a few of them, he looked a little frustrated at times and I told him to take his time, look back and try to figure it out. He seemed annoyed with me when I made him write it out.. but it helped!!!
Thank you!!!
This is not easy for any of us and I appreciate everything you are doing!!!" -Jackie DiLallo
Accolade from Sebastian Major's mother: "Hi Mike, ... I just want to let you know that we are very proud and honored to be part of the bulldog family, your staff have been doing a magnificent job keeping the learning and communication going. We are praying for everyone's safety and hopefully soon we can leave this in the past."--Gabby Major
Accolade Jenny Kerfoot Received about Dave Kane and Support: " Mr Kane has been AWESOME!!! I want to put a good word in for him. He makes videos (points his camera on the computer screen) and goes step by step on what to click and how to do things which makes remote learning for digital literacy for Brett so much more relaxing. He actually made a special video for Brett like he was talking to him in person and it helped out A LOT."
Accolade from Jimmy Bennett's Parents: "Thank you and the BHMS teachers and staff for an awesome 3 years for my son Jimmy and before that my daughter Paige who is part of the senior class of 2020. Both are disappointed they could not say thank you and goodbye in person. Jimmy loved being at BH and I was so excited and proud to watch him flourish and his confidence build because of all of the amazing teachers, the staff and also the Team Up program. Paige also loved BH and was sad she didn’t get to come back for Senior Service Day. We all truly appreciate the Bulldog family and are sad as a family that our time with BH ended this way. Stay safe!"--James and Georgeann Bennett
Accoldade to Malika Moore from the Flores Family: "Mrs. Moore,
I absolutely have to give you a Thank You!!
I appreciate all that you do for my girls. I LOVE that you have incorporate mindfulness into your lessons. I think it’s one of the greatest gifts we can teach children in this different world that they are growing up in. Please don’t ever stop providing it. It’s a struggle to get them to try it and use the tools but if it makes a difference in one child’s life it’s so worth it. I have done many of the mindfulness videos you have sent the girls. Madison has done some with me. Miranda I am still working on. Lead by example!!
I hope you are well during this time. We are hanging in there.
We are praying for a strong end to this school year and a blessed start to the next school year.
Thank You for encouraging and supporting your students."--The Flores Family
In Regards to our Road Trip Through Town:
Accolade from Madison Springer's mom: "Madison texted me to say how great it was to see you all. And that everyone knew who she was. That was a really great idea. Thanks for all u do for the kids. We forget to tell you all how great you are."-Kim Springer
Accolade from Talia Morrison's Mom: "A school is more than just a place- it’s a community. We have been blessed with two of the absolute best school communities over the past 8 years- Whitman and Bunker Hill. My children have made bonds with so many of the staff and faculty over the years- even teachers that they never had in the classroom. Thank you for taking the time (during spring break no less)- to nurture the emotional health of our kids while keeping the spirit of the being a Wildcat and Bulldog at the forefront. So many of the staff slowed down to make personal connections with my kids- which means so much to us! You made our day (so much so...we watched the BH parade from 2 locations)! I hope seeing “your kids” was able to fill your cups enough to push you through the perils of remote learning. Thank you all!"-Janine Morrison
Accolade from Connor Hafto's mom: "Just wanted to send a huge THANK YOU! The drive by today was perfect. I even made sure to run home from work for lunch to see it myself. The teachers waving, and the excitement of some when they recognized the kids was just what we all need! My daughter is a freshman in college for elementary education and said she wished she was a teacher, to be able to do something like that to make a difference, she loved it! Stay safe, and thanks again to you and all of the teachers/staff that participated!"-Kim Hafto
Accolade from Ryan and Lainey Palmer's mom: "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you.....
for arranging the amazing staff parade for your BH students. The Palmers were SO excited ALL day and couldn’t wait to catch a glimpse of their teachers that they love and miss so much! How amazing that your staff participated in such a wonderful event during your spring break and their personal time off. What incredible teachers you have at the Hill!!! It was SO special to see everyone and truly warmed our hearts during this very challenging time. Ryan & Lainey’s time at Bunker Hill has been nothing but extraordinary.
The past three years provided them an amazing educational experience that has given them both so many opportunities to grow and learn. They have truly loved going to school each day which is pretty impressive for middle schoolers. I am saddened by the fact that they most likely will not get to spend the end of their 8th grade year together at the Hill with their teachers and friends! They are a part of such an amazing group of students and have truly LOVED being bulldogs!!! Much love and gratitude to your entire staff for the awesome parade and for giving the Palmers such a wonderful foundation as they transition on to high school. You will always have such a special place in each of our hearts!!!
Enjoy the rest of your break!" Warmly, ~Jen Palmer
Accolade from Alyssa Weiserth's mom: "Thanks to all the BHMS teachers! That ws truly above and beyond. We appreciate the spirit. Definitely a moviing experience. It meant a lot to Alyssa and even my older daughter Micaela, a BHMS alumna. Definitely uplifting!" -The Weiserth Family.
Principal's Video Messages
Bunker Hill Middle School: Home of the Bulldogs
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Email: ddijohn@wtps.org
Website: https://www.wtps.org/bunkerhill
Location: 372 Pitman Downer Road, Sewell, NJ, USA
Phone: 856 881 7007
Facebook: facebook.com/OfficialBHMS
Twitter: @Official_BHMS