Primary Division MD Newsletter
August 14, 2020
The beginning of the school year is our favorite time of year! We have been working hard the past few months weeks to prepare ourselves and our virtual schools. We all know how getting the school year off to a strong start is important in setting the tone for a successful school year. This great start will be the catalyst for the energy and commitment that will be needed to make sure that learning is happening every day. This year more than ever, we are on a mission to prove the possible. We are all here because only those who can see the invisible, can do the impossible! Thank you for your input, dedication, and willingness to push yourselves to new limits! At some point over the next 3 days, please take a moment to think about the great work that you are doing. For us, it is a pleasure to be working with a strong group of leaders that are guiding our future leaders to help change the world.
Yasmin, Priscilla, and Kecia
Panorama Survey
The Panorama survey will be administered to all 3rd-12th grade scholars according to each division’s SLA schedule, on both August 18th and September 4th, 2020. Students in grades 3rd-12th grade who miss the survey on either of these dates should be allotted an opportunity to complete the survey at the teacher’s discretion but ideally no later than from 8/19 and 9/7. Our network-wide goal is to successfully administer as many surveys as possible.
All scholars will take this survey on a computer, tablet or phone. This document contains survey administration instructions, proctor instructions, a mini vocab lesson for scholars, FAQs, and information on next steps. Please ensure that you and/or your campus designee read this document in its entirety prior to survey administration.
One extra provision for teachers that needs to happen prior to the survey (which is referenced in the Director User Guide below) is to obtain all Scholar ID numbers in PowerSchool and provide them to each individual scholar.
If you have any questions about survey administration, please reach out to Nicholas Pascale at npascale@uplifteducation.org. This Thursday, Nicholas will be available to review these directions and help answer questions during our Director Call at 2 p.m.
For Campus Leadership:
Director User Guide (contains instructions and all information to administer the Panorama survey)
For Teacher and Survey administrators:
Teacher letter (contains links to proctor instructions, a survey slide deck for scholars, and primary mini vocab lesson).
Teacher Coordinator Toolkit with User Videos
Warmly,
Yasmin on behalf of Dr. Gasko
A note from Nicholas Pascale
To further support our Campus Admin teams I will be hopping on during Thursday's Uplift Weekly All Call to answer questions from Directors around the Panorama Survey. As I am thinking through how to best support this, I thought that I would reach out to you, our amazing MD's, for an ask. Please encourage your AD's to include the above-mentioned user guides and training to staff before next Tuesday's survey. As always, I will support any of our Directors who need guidance on how to make this survey go as smoothly as possible. Please do not hesitate to give them my cell phone number as I already gave it out in the chat during our training today.
Postscript: Thank you for all that you do for our scholars and families!
Keep Your Distance...In a Very Friendly Way
MAP Testing
The Assessment Team is putting together the following information for families. For the initial rollout this month, the site will include the following for MAP:
1. MAP
a. General description and video for remote testing
b. Remote testing guidance
c. Guide for MAP Growth
d. Test session sign in
e. Troubleshooting guide
Once the page is fully built out, the page will include a general description of the assessment, parent resources for each assessment (e.g. STAAR Portal) and tips for preparing scholars for remote assessment. The content has been provided to our External Affairs team and we will let you know when it’s available (target date is 8/17). We want to ensure that there’s no duplication of effort by campus teams and Assessment
Fundraising
Earlier this summer, Development/Finance shared that we would be launching Livingtree, a new platform to approve third party crowdfunding projects (DonorsChoose) and also directly collect online donations at the school level. From now until the launch of our Livingtree platform (early fall), teachers may post DonorsChoose projects for any classroom materials they need with the exception of technology purchases. We are not allowing technology requests in order to focus on the central work the IT team is doing to manage device purchasing and distribution given current circumstances.
More explicit guidance will be provided on our new donation procedures, including the management of DonorsChoose and solicitation of donations at the school level, when the Livingtree platform is ready to launch in the next few weeks.
Teacher Pulse Check Surveys
The Data Team sent placeholders for the beginning of the year teacher surveys. As a reminder, Campus Leaders are responsible for providing the context and the space/time to complete the survey. Please review the survey by accessing the link before you give context to your staff.
Translation Services
A note from Stephanie Aughinbaugh
I know translation services will be in high demand this year, so I had one of my ESL staff look into Language Line. (Vendor that provides live translation via phone and video, pay per minute) We were surprised to learn that Uplift has a pre-existing Language Line network account dating back to 2016 (under Ann Stevenson’s name) with a bulk/discount rate. It looks like some schools have used it pretty consistently (Heights HS, Luna MS) and other schools haven’t used it at all. We also found that some schools have set up a separate Language Line account without benefitting from the discount rate on the network account.
Guidance for Virtual Instruction
The purpose of this document is to provide teachers and administrators with clarity on the creation and implementation of virtual lessons. The guidance in this document is meant to be used in conjunction with that provided in course visions and the hybrid/virtual learning scheduling information guidelines to ensure that virtual lessons align with Uplift’s commitment to IB instruction. In this document you will find information regarding recommended teacher moves for all virtual lessons along with recommendations for specific subject areas.