The Spark
National Teacher Development Newsletter, April 2020
National Update
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are working diligently to support families, districts, and especially students whose education has been disrupted. K12 is offering to help and equip you with some great resources that you can utilize and share with friends, family, and your social networks.
- Events (webinars)
- #K12Cares Resource Share
- Make sure to follow our Facebook and Instagram pages to watch our live and recorded K12 Cares talks
- COVID Information and Resources
- Going through change comes with its own set of challenges as well as opportunities for growth. Please watch Joel Medley's inspirational K12 Talk on change, where he shares his thoughts on "learning like there are many tomorrows."
We all want to help. We all want to stay strong. Let's accomplish this together!
SNHU : Growth and Recertification
As we all are taking time to care for ourselves and families, many are eager to take advantage of opportunities for continued growth and the chance to exercise one's mind from the ease and comfort of your own home.
We are happy to share with you two graduate level courses housed in K12Training:
EDU 625 Data-Drive Teaching Practices and EDU 630 Strategies for Online Instruction.
These courses can be taken and used for recertification and continued growth purposes. If you are interested in taking these courses but are not sure you want to complete the entire M. Ed. program through SNHU, then completing the courses through K12Training might be the right option for you. Additionally, taking the courses through K12Training provides a jumpstart to the M.Ed. program through SNHU; your credit can be transferred upon successful completion. Both courses are offered during a summer and fall cohort.
To take advantage of these courses, please visit K12training.com and search "EDU 625 Classroom" or "EDU 630 Classroom". You will then be able to enroll in the summer or fall cohort for either course.
Please reach out to talentdevelopment@k12.com with any questions.
Christine Spalding
Building Community
This challenging time offers our Virtual Teaching Community an opportunity to support our brick and mortar counterparts! .
How can you help?
Brittany Churchill
Teacher Highlight
OMHS Enhancements
Saturday brought some exciting enhancements to the OMHS. Be sure to check the SharePoint page for details on the new features so you can use them in your classrooms.
New Functionality Released:
- Ability to display authoring information on announcements
- Option to define self-enrollment start times for groups
- Ability to import questions in the new quiz builder for non-Summit courses
- Anonymous marking supported in the Quick Eval tool
- Confirmation display when publishing content for incompletely scored rubrics
Learn Know & Grow
The Learn, Know & Grow information sessions, offered by the Product Development team through May 21st, are an opportunity to help you prepare for the upcoming school year. Join the sessions to learn about new, to be retired, and enhanced courses, see demonstrations on course changes, learn more about existing products and features, and ask questions of the product experts. Make sure to check with your manager and enroll using k12training.com. Here’s what you need to know:
- Sessions are offered every Tuesday and Thursday.
- Generally, the Tuesday and Thursday sessions will cover the same content; however, there are a few exceptions, so please check the Learn, Know & Grow SY20-21 Series category in k12training.com for the entire schedule.
- For those sessions where we are covering the same content, pick the one that works best with your schedule.
- Tuesday sessions start at 11:00 a.m. EST
- Thursday sessions start at 4:00 p.m. EST
Here are some of the Learn, Know & Grow information sessions that are coming up:
- March 31st and April 2nd: Learn about the Credit Recovery course options that exist.
- April 7th and 9th: Learn about AP® course offerings and details you need to know as you plan for the upcoming school year.
- April 14th and 16th: Join to get a product overview of the new product to support students who need reading remediation.
- April 21st and 23rd: Learn more about formative assessments and teacher graded assignments within the new grade 3 Math and ELA courses and how these can help evaluate student performance.
If you've missed a session, don't worry! The session recordings, presentation materials, and handouts are available on the Content tab of the Learn, Know & Grow SY20-21 Curriculum within K12Training.com
Learning Continuum
Promising Practices 2020 Highlight
This year’s February conference was a huge success! We want to say thank you to all our presenters as well as the 3,000 teachers that enrolled and participated. Check out the session that almost one third of participants saw in action: 3 Steps to Engagement: Easy as Pie. If you already attended this session and/or would like to view additional recordings, click here or search in K12training for “Promising Practices Conference (Feb 2020) Recordings”.
The conference materials are all available in the Promising Practices Dropbox as well: http://tinyurl.com/PPFeb2020.
Teacher's Lounge
We are happy to see you here! Normally in the Teacher’s Lounge, you will find powerful and quick-to-implement resources for your work with students. This month, we are changing it up a bit and using the Teacher's Lounge to relax and remember to take care of ourselves during this unprecedented time.
Remember to take care of yourself during this stressful time in our country. You cannot pour from an empty cup!
Teacher's Toolbox
Please watch this video for tips on how to use the tracker.
Design Tip
Kristine Scull
Newsletter Team
Adam Blaylock
Chelsea Wilson
Christine Spalding
Newsletter Organizer & Editor