Hello Everyone! Sorry for the late send this week. I think that the first day back after a long break is one of the hardest of the year…and there is a lot to share so thank you in advance for reading all of the way through this!
I hope your break was filled with whatever you had hoped for and that you are ready for the crunch leading up to the end of first semester. For those that would like to share, I’ve created another Padlet wall and linked it here for winter break photos. Please post if you’d like! I know I”m not alone in enjoying seeing what others have been up to.
I also hope you were able to enjoy a bonus 2 hours of something fun or relaxing this morning. I noticed on the hit counter that people did refer back to our December 13th Newsletter for snow day procedures last night and this morning. Please let me know if there is anything there that was unclear, or needs to be updated for the future.
Youth Truth Survey. This year Bend-La PIne Online will be participating in the YouthTruth Survey as our own site.
WHY? Research shows that student perceptions are empirically linked to academic outcomes. YouthTruth allows educators to hear directly from students about how they are experiencing school. YouthTruth data can be used for strategic planning, and monitoring how big changes – like our curriculum, technology, or new learning models – are affecting students, and for professional development, just to name a few use cases.
This means that we will survey:
- all of our full time online 6-12 students
- all staff-OSSM’s, Teachers, Mentors and Chris! I will send you a separate email with a link and directions.
- one adult from each household of a full-time online student, K-12. We will discuss our ideas for distributing the family survey during our meetings this Wednesday and follow up with directions.
The survey is open January 3rd through January 28th. Our goal is to survey 100% of staff, at least 75% of our students, and as many households as possible district-wide. Our brick and mortar schools have guidelines for administration during the school day. We can be more flexible in how we administer the survey, what is important is that we get to our participation numbers. I will meet with our staff who work with our full time online 6-12 students tomorrow after our regular 10:30 meeting to come up with a plan.
New Copy Codes: Chris sent this out to our North Star-based staff yesterday, reprinting here for reference:
- Copying: All BLSO staff will need to enter 5252 when copying.
- Printing from your Computer: Add the code into your settings on each of your computers.
- Instructions: Just in case you need them, click on the link.
On a little bit of a sad note, over the years many of you have probably worked with Sally Harada from our IT Help Desk. Sally is the rock in our IT department who has been there forever and has helped many of us through our technical dilemmas time and time again. She is currently experiencing some health struggles. Her daughter has created this Go Fund Me page where you can learn more, and offer a little support if you are able.
Schedule for the next few weeks:
- Wednesday, January 5th:
- Elementary Meeting at 9:30
- Secondary Meeting at 10:30
- No afternoon meeting.
- Wednesday, January 12th:
- OSSM Meeting in Amy’s Webex at 7:45
- Elementary Meeting at 9:30
- Secondary Meeting at 10:30
- District “Educator Network Sessions” in the afternoon, attend on the same topic as October
Looking beyond the next two weeks, we will have a staff meeting in the afternoon on Wednesday, January 19th to continue our site planning and design work. The afternoon of January 26th is a work day for catching up on your end-of-term grades. All day February 2nd will be our report card work day for the end of second semester, and you can use February 4th as a planning day for second semester. February 4th is a non-school day for students. Note that in contrast with the brick-and-mortar teacher schedule, we have swapped the work day and report card day at the end of the term to allow BLSO staff to complete report card grades before students transferring back to schools for second semester are redirected in Synergy.
Have a wonderful week!!