Student Support Services Department
Roadmap - Week of 10/22/18-10/26/18
IDVA Mission - Building a community of engaged learners.
IDVA Vision - Empowering every student to learn at high level.
SSS Department Group Agreements
- We will be intentional in our collaborative work with school community members to address students' academic needs.
- We will proactively identify and support students' individual needs and accomplishments.
If you have other pictures of the SSS Dept. from the start of the school year, and/or during events, send them to Alex for roadmap inclusion.
SSS Department Kudos!
If you have kudos to share about you or a colleague, send them to Alex.
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An IM from Jenny: "Tree and Debbie do an awesome with our new students."
Great job, Tree and Debbie!
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Jenny sent the following message: "Jesse always believes in his students. He is currently working with a 12th grader and created a heavier schedule and student is having great success with it and this will help the student to graduate."
Wow! Kudos, Jesse!
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Mark shared with me that he had questions on the grad plan, and reached out to Debbie. "Debbie was amazing, and we ended up setting up a time yesterday on BBC whereby she took the time to help and train me in all the areas I had questions as well as share her knowledge of the grad planning dashboard, TVS action searches. I can’t thank her enough for taking the time and always being such a great team player."
Thank you, Debbie!
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An email from Amber: "Hi Lisa, The Howl is so very well done! Thank you for the time and attention you put in to it. I know our families find it useful. The work you do is impressive"
Wonderful, Lisa!
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Jennifer launched her College and Career newsletter and received several quick responses from students, and many responses to the career survey. And, during Jessica's office hours, someone asked about this newsletter!
Important work, Jennifer!
SSS Department Trivia
Week 7 Trivia Results!
WHO AM I?
"I could be dead. I was almost hit by a taxi in the streets of Paris trying to get a picture of 'their' Statue of Liberty."
It is Deslynn Mecham!
Kelly got it right!
Score Board:
Debbie = 3
Tree = 3
Kelly = 2
Bev = 2
Pam = 1Deslynn = 1
Colleen = 1
Jennifer E = 1
Jessica = 1
Lisa = 1
A message and some pictures from Deslynn about her triva item...
I spent a summer in France after I graduated. I was literally in a Paris taxi cab for 15 minutes when I yelled “Arret” (I had to google that. It’s been a while.) I saw the Statue of Liberty and had to get a picture. I just assumed that I owned the road and ran across the busy FREEWAY to get a picture and had a near-death experience w/ another taxi cab. Completely shaken, I ran back to my taxi cab where the driver proceeded to yell at me in French. I think he was lecturing me on being a ‘stupid American’. I’m not sure. I only had 3 years of HS French and we didn’t learn swear words.
Share something about you that your colleagues may not know and you would feel comfortable with them knowing. We will include this as a question in a future roadmap.
Weekly Calendar, 10/22-10/26
Monday 10/22:
- First day for K5 Cohort 4
- Jessica at QPR training all day
- Alex at an ICTF meeting all day
Wednesday 10/24:
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On this date in 1929, "Black Thursday" began the start of the stock market crash in which the Dow Jones dropped 12.8%.
Thursday 10/25:
- On this date n 1881, Pablo Picasso was born.
Friday 10/26:
- Enrollment Approval deadline for cohort 5 (K5)
-
School Pictures – Northern Idaho 10-12 at the Silver Lake Mall (200 W Hanley Ave, CDA)
- New Student Orientation Starts for MS and Vision (Andrea sending completion excel for this cohort)
***Monday 10/29-Wednesday 10-31
- Kelly, Lisa, Bev, Alex (Jenny and Amber) - at a conference out of town
Departmental & School Updates
Time block strategies and a-ha moments - lessons from the field
Below are great examples of how different time blocking and time-saving strategies can be implemented, and the positive impact it can offer.
Remember, there is no magic recipe, nor a one-size-fits-all approach. You have to experiment with things and find what works for you. Nevertheless, the name of the game is efficiency!
Jennifer:
"I have found that blocking my projects allows me to consolidate them into actionable tasks and keeps me from hyper-focusing on one big project. Blocking my time allows me to get to all my tasks every day and nothing falls behind and becomes urgent.
For example, working on the website is a big daily project. I can break it down by tab. I work on the college tab and have a set of tasks outlined for that specific tab. It keeps me organized and helps me to complete the one tab before moving onto another one."
Loretta:
"My scheduling strategy was to not check my email first thing in the morning.... I did find it to be a good idea to get a few other things done first before the scramble to catch up began.
The other strategy I’ve used is to turn off my pop up notifications. I used to be notified every time I received an email which would often distract me from whatever it was I was working on and cause me to get off track. I will continue to schedule specific times throughout the day to check on my email and see what I’ve received. I think that will increase my productivity."
Debbie;
"Most of the time…emails can wait until the time set apart to work on them.
Even though you set up a blocked schedule, you still have to be flexible enough to adapt to emergency or unscheduled situations. I had one of those on Monday with an LC. Took most of my morning... The schedule went out the window multiple times, but…you know exactly what to work on after things settle down. There’s no wondering…what should I do now. Big time saver."
Bev:
"I worked on grouping similar objects and maintaining my schedule. This week, I tried to be better about continued focus on a certain thing until I was finished or at a good stopping point."
Kelly:
"... I have been working on my schedule. I’ve found that, even though it changes slightly on some days, it gives me peace of mind knowing I have time blocked to work on everything that needs to be done. I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to squeeze everything in. I LOVE IT!"
Colleen:
"... the idea to block one day at a time... has helped immensely...
I start my morning by planning out my day and blocking time to complete certain tasks. This helps me to realize that some things need to be moved to the next day. Since doing this, it has greatly reduced my stress levels and increased my drive to complete a task thoroughly."
Grad Plan Tool for High Schoolers
If you are supporting high school students, the graduation plan tool may be very helpful.
The grad plan tool gives students, and the staff supporting the student, a visualization of the credits needed to graduate. All high school supporting staff should have access to this. K12 does not have a user guide for view-only access (which would be the FAST group), but the staff view-only access has similar functionality as the student view. The only big difference is how you log in. Below are the 3 steps to get to an individual student's grad plan. Once you get to the plan, you can use the following student-orientated guide to walk through the information.
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
After clicking on the blue hyperlink student ID number, you will be taken to a new page. Towards the top of the page, you will see the words "Student Details" with a small down arrow. Click the down arrow and select "Student Graduation Plan."
After you select the plan, Use the Understanding Your Graduation Plan document to interpret the plan information.
K12 Updates
EXCEL Trick or Treat
When: Friday, Oct. 26th, 1 pm MST
More information
Join the Data Science team & friends for a Spooktacular afternoon getting pro tricks and treats from Excel super-users. There will be mini-sessions offered for all skill-levels!
RSVP here to receive a calendar invite.
3ET/2CT/1MT
Adobe Creative Cloud
As Teachers and Staff at IDVA, you can have access to an “All Apps plan” with the Adobe Creative Cloud. Here are the steps you need to follow.
1. Go to this link and fill out this survey to sign up.
https://goo.gl/forms/tPcdShxR61F5ubN02
Please Note: If you already have an account with Adobe, use the email that you have with that account. I already had an Adobe account that I used with my work email, so I just used that one and so any Adobe products that I was already paying for that were included in the “All Apps Plan”, I no longer had to pay for, so I turned off my automatic payment. If this describes you, and you have questions, let me know. (tbannister@idahova.org- Tree Bannister). I may be able to help.
2. Next, you will receive an email. Follow the directions from the email to set up your account.
3. Finally, you will be able to use any of the Adobe products from any computer as they are web-based products using an Adobe ID. You will not have to download every product on your computer. You can just log into the Adobe Creative Cloud and access your apps from there with your ID and all your work is saved in the cloud.
Hopefully, it will be self-explanatory but if you come across something you need help with, let me know and if I don’t know the answer, I have some resources that I can get help from.
Thank you,
Tree
Reoccuring/Reference Info
Out of Office Reply Template
Hello,
I am out of the office [date(s)] [optional: add reason – e.g. school outing, holiday]. I will return emails when I return on [date].
Sincerely,
Name
** ADD YOUR IDVA EMAIL SIGNATURE
Professional Learning Communities
As your PLC has data to review, send info to Alex to post for the group.
An ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry to achieve better results for the students they serve.
PLC’s operate under the assumption that the key to improving learning for students is continuous, job-embedded learning for educators.
Four questions to guide PLC’s
- What do we expect students to learn?
- How do we know they are learning it?
- How do we respond when they do not learn it?
- How do you respond when they have already learned it?