Staff Memo
Friday, March 20, 2020
End of Week 1 of Covid 19 Shutdown
I am so very proud of all of you and how you have stepped up and really helped each other out.
We have come a long way in a short time. Thank you Matthew for leading the way with google classroom, and thank you to everyone who lent a helping hand to a colleague or two. Thank you to everyone who came and cleaned and disinfected our classrooms as well. We are definitely smelling bleachy around here. Our cafeteria staff has done a great job of keeping children fed and we definitely have the cleanest kitchen in town now. Our office staff has more than done their part to help and assist and keep things running as smoothly as possible during this time. Jhoel, Penny and our janitorial staff are making great use of this time to clean, paint, fix and spruce things up around here. Thank you everyone.
There are a few housekeeping issues that we need to take care of. First and foremost, attendance. We need to take it. So, for each of your homerooms if you are a homeroom teacher, go back into Renweb today and mark attendance for all of your students. Mark them all present every day for this week. If you do not remember your Renweb password because it is saved on your phone, email Lisette Rogers and have her reset it. lrogers@holycross-nm.org.
Beginning on March 30 and moving forward, you need to take attendance every day. There needs to be some type of contact between teacher and student daily. Time of contact and method is not really important. Please send out a message every day to your homeroom to elicit a response and be persistent with those that do not respond. I have also enabled google hangouts so that you can set up chats and try and connect that way. Log in to Renweb and mark attendance every day. However, you will need to use common sense and discretion before marking anyone "absent" and really try to connect. This is your responsibility as a teacher.
Now on to the issue of work and grading. Again, this is where common sense and discretion comes in. In the public school system in Miami-Dade County, teachers (elementary) have been instructed to GIVE NO GRADES. I have no direct contacts in middle school or high school so I don't know about those grade levels. Teachers are to provide instruction, assign work, give feedback, interact and to give encouragement. However, nothing that the students do or do not do will be held against them because nothing that they are doing will be officially graded. To me, that will lead to some students who figure this out and will do nothing because it doesn't really matter.
I do not want to go that far. However, we must have a similar mindset. The purpose of online instruction versus a long vacation is to keep the kids engaged and learning. Everyone needs to have that as their goal the learning and the interaction, not the grade. Collaboration, understanding, patience and leniency must be the mindset that we are operating from.
I have had so many interactions this week with extremely stressed out, confused and even dazed parents who are still trying to work so that they can support their families while suddenly being put into the position of instructional liaison. others have suddenly found themselves out of work with no idea of when they may again be employed. Many are ill-prepared for this with poor techno skills or even lacking internet access. Many are working during the day and their kids are home alone without supervision or staying with friends and relatives. Their lives and schedules are topsy turvey. We at Holy Cross need to be sources of comfort, connection, love and caring, not the source of stress, worry and angst. This is the mindset that we must all have. No matter how hard this is for us, remember that is much harder for our families.
Middle school teachers and specialty teachers... you in particular need to have at the back of your mind that you know what you are assigning but you have no idea what others are assigning. This can lead to students having a dozen assignments going on at one time. Quality of instruction over quantity of work.
Thank you to those staff who made a story-time video. It is well received with each video having well over 100 views. If you did not, it's not too late. Just take a video of you introducing yourself and your story and reading your story and upload it to Youtube and send me the link. I have 8 more days worth of videos but I will need more after that.
A little something to make you smile...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpN9CGrK6IQ&feature=youtu.be
Have a restful spring break and stay healthy!
Sherry