Staff Memo
Monday, April 13, 2020
End of School Week 4 of Covid 19 Shutdown
Time to tackle our next week of Remote learning with our students. We know that this will be an evolving and improving process as we go on and as we learn what works and what is not working so well.
As I shared in my email on Saturday, starting this week teachers in K5 through 8th grade will assign material only Monday through Thursday. Friday will be a day for catching up for both students and teachers and day for additional conversations and relationship building. It is not a four day school week, it is a five day school week but with no new material on one of those five days. Please use this day to provide extra help to those who need it, grade and plan, and communicate. You can schedule class meet and greets on Friday, but no new lessons please. Pre-K teachers should continue to share new materials every day.
All teachers must come up with a schedule for live lessons, done on the same days and the same times every week. We need to give the kids a regular schedule so that they and their parents can plan around it. Early morning times do not seem to be preferable. I need for you to email me your days and times for your regularly scheduled sessions so that i can create a master schedule.
Please note that live lessons are not an option, they are mandatory. Kids need the interaction. I am seeing some great stuff going on and some fabulous homegrown Youtube instructional videos as well as other great materials that have been found online. This is awesome and I admire your resourcefulness and creativity, but we still need the face to face connection.
2nd through 8th grade, you now have Google Meets in google hangouts as an option for live instruction. You do it right through your google apps. We may wish to transition to this but I need for a few brave souls to test drive it and report back. As you have heard, there have been some security breaches with zoom. You can lessen the chances by using a password and waiting room as outlined in the pictograph below.
1st and 2nd grade teachers, I am setting up a zoom meeting for tomorrow at 10:30AM to discuss grading as per our chat last week. See you then.
I am trying to utilize our instructional aides in a meaningful way. If there is something that an aide can do for you remotely, please call me tomorrow to discuss. I will be at Holy Cross.
We have just gotten the green light for One on One Learning to begin providing Title 1 services again remotely. I do not know how this will look quite yet, but I will have a better idea by tomorrow at this time. I think that we will start by each teacher in K5 through 5th grade identifying their title 1 students who are really struggling and not getting their work done and emailing me those names please.
We had some problems with our filtering software (Go- Guardian) but it is up and functioning properly again. However, if you hear from students that something you are sending out is being blocked, please let me know so that I can make the necessary adjustments.
As of this moment, there has been no change yet in the return to school date of May 1st however I will be surprised if it does not. I'll keep you informed if I learn anything new.
If you hear of families that are really struggling financially, we do have some Publix gift cards to distribute so don't tell them but do let me know.
I presently know of several Covid deaths that are connected to our school. Arrielle and Alexandra have both lost a family member. Cameron and Chyle Pierre lost an Aunt. Giovanni Ahmir's mother lost a cousin. Unfortunately as time goes on we will probably hear about more illness and death, sadly. If you do, it is important that you let me know.
So, here are your action items to address and respond to:
1. Send me your live instruction/ meeting days and times for the master schedule
2. Let me know if there are tasks that our instructional aides can do for you remotely
3. K5-5th - give me the names of Title 1 students who would benefit from intervention by One on One learning
4. Let me know if any of your material is being blocked by Go Guardian.
5. Let me know about any issue that you may hear about with one of our families including health or financial issues.
6. If you try out the Google meets/hangouts please let me know how it worked out.
7. Keep up with your grading, using the criteria and the codes that I set up. If you don't know how to use them, please call Renweb using the number provided last week.
Thank you for all you are doing. This will be a year to remember forever. We have the best staff around!