Social Distancing reminder whenever on campus.

1. Stay 6 feet apart.
2. Wash hands often.
3. Wipe down the surfaces you use.
4. Know you can report anyone to me who is not observing these guidelines.

Community Work Space:  The library is set up for a community work area allowing for social distancing.  If you need a way to work without the isolation, then feel free to set up an office at one of these spaces.  

Meetings:

• All Staff  – Wednesday 3:00-3:30 
• Grade Level Check-Ins – Please feel free to email me questions, discussion items ahead of time.
  • 4/5 – Wednesday 1:00-1:30
  • 2/3 -Thursday  1:00-1:30 
  • 1st -Thursday 3:00-3:30
  • Kinder – Friday 1:00-1:30

Abuse Reporting-  Abuse reporting remains critical, especially during these times. A fillable form is on the portal so teachers can complete and submit electronically.  We received the following from the KidCenter: “Last week, the Oregon Department of Human Services released data indicating that calls to the child abuse hotline have dropped by 70 percent since the mandated closure of K-12 Schools due to the coronavirus. These closures mean that most children no longer have daily interaction with teachers and school personnel who are required by law to report concerns of abuse and neglect. When we also consider social distancing mandates, it is even less likely that children will have much interaction with adults outside of their home who might be able to identify and report signs of abuse. These factors are compounded by added emotional and financial stress the coronavirus pandemic is bringing to many families, all of which is likely to place more children at increased risk for abuse or neglect in their home environment. We know that as the pandemic continues to evolve, it is a matter of time until the real impact to children becomes known and reports of abuse and neglect begin to skyrocket.” 

Should We Worry About Kids Getting Too Much Screen Time?

            In this New York Times article, Andrew Przybylski (University of Oxford) and psychologist/author Pete Etchells say that with most schools closed, children’s screen time is going through the roof. That can be a blessing for parents cooped up with their kids 24/7, but wait a minute: isn’t this video game binging and smartphone indulging harming young people? In the last few years, say Przybylski and Etchells, we’ve been hearing that excessive screen time “melts our children’s brains, shrinks their attention spans, and weakens their social skills.” Digital abstinence for young children was the message from the American Academy of Pediatrics until quite recently. 

            Worries like these have a long history, with parents fretting about each new wave of entertainment technology – radio, movies, TV. But is viewing time all that damaging? For starters, say Przybylski and Etchells, “the evidence linking screens to harm is, in reality, paper-thin.” Recent studies have downplayed negative effects, including on adolescents’ sleep. In fact, they say, “a couple of hours of screen-based leisure is associated with improved peer relationships and increased sociality. Gaming meets our fundamental needs for exploration, competence, and social connection. And games often improve rather than undermine our reasoning abilities.” As for concerns about kids getting isolated, the Internet “is the world’s best tool for distanced socializing.”

            So parents and educators needn’t fret too much during the coronavirus lockdown, conclude Przybylski and Etchells. But they should monitor what kids are watching and playing, sometimes playing and watching with them, and steer kids toward “brainy games,” age-appropriate educational videos, documentaries available on streaming services, cooperative and team-oriented video games, and timeless films “that don’t just entertain, or distract, but teach ineffable lessons about life, love, and family.” 

“Screen Time Isn’t All That Bad” by Andrew Przybylski and Pete Etchells in The New York Times, April 7, 2020, https://nyti.ms/2KkHYGw; Przybylski can be reached at [email protected]

Distance Learning Resources

Julie’s Weekly Update from Friday 4/17/20

0417 Weekly Update

a little something to reflect on from Kid President!

Brene Brown’s new podcast “Unlocking Us.” recently had an episode that spoke to first time experiences and challenges and the best way to approach them:  (https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-on-ffts/).

She gives some great steps for dealing with “FT’s.”   

1. Name the FT: For example, the one we are in now “global pandemic”. When we are in a new FT, we feel out of control and like we don’t know what we are doing. But when we name and own these hard things, it gives us power. It doesn’t give the hard thing power but gives us power to effect change.
2. Normalize It: Because this is new, we don’t know what we are doing…we can’t draw on history, we can’t draw on experience, we can’t say this is the way we did it last time…because we are FTing. It is okay for things to be wobbly and messy! 
3. Put it in Perspective: Know that this is not permanent! When we look back on this we will say ‘remember when that was so hard?…That was a crazy time! But we also grew.’ When we stop growing, we stop living.  
4. Reality Check Your Expectations: This is a heavier lift than we thought or expected and that is scary…everything is going to take twice as long and be twice as hard…that is not comfortable. 

Here are some Ideas from Schools/Teams:  

• Remember to upload your great ideas to share with others here. The smallest ideas are helpful from grade level packets, to SeeSaw posts, to links to great activities!  Don’t be shy! We need to use our collective geniuses! 

• One teacher has her students take a picture of their math journal and give feedback to each student.  She says, “It is a lot of work, but worth it to be able to give each of my students individual attention.”
• Website idea and Template videotape example
• Weekly Schedule Idea 
• Using Google slides to organize your instruction

Creating offline assignments for those w/o connectivity

• K-5 need to make packets or other resources available for families that do not have internet

Print shop

• Running at about a week out…plan ahead at least week or you can make copies at your school if needed (check with your admin)

Remember to visit the Daily FAQ page for updated information

Formative Assessment and Feedback Ideas

• Priorities for Literacy Feedback and Assessment  
• Math Priorities for Math 2-5 with Feedback and Assessment ideas
• Math Priorities for Math k-1 with Feedback and Assessment ideas
• K-1 Feedback and Assessment Ideas
• 2-3 Feedback and Assessment Ideas 

• Gary Timms and Lora Nordquist are making a plan for report cards. Expect that the week of May 4th.  In the meantime, let’s focus on taking the opportunity to give feedback and work on ways to formatively assess students and engage them in daily positive interactions. 

Professional learning opportunities moving forward

 If you haven’t already taken the survey, please do so here.

Lexia Updates

• As a reminder any Lexia problems need to be reported here.  Note:  The LexiaCore5 app is taking a long time to download and some users are reporting it is failing to download.  The fix right now is to just try it again….we will keep working on this,  
• Refer here for troubleshooting.

• Core5 is for k-5 students
• PowerUp is for 6-8 students
• MyLexia is for teachers

Clever Updates

• If your students are struggling with their Clever login, consider printing their Clever Badges instead.  Directions are here.  You can either send them with this next round of packets or send through BLSend.

Dreambox Updates

• Dreambox is hosting Webinars for Families! (english only, sorry) Share this information with them: 
  • Dreambox Parent meetings are every Tuesday at 9:00 am Pacific. 
  • Sign up here:  https://www.dreambox.com/parent-webinars
• DreamBox One-sheet for Parents
  • How to print the information that parents need to set up an account
• DreamBox Resources for Home Learning
• Set up Parent Access on a School Account

Link to update

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MLx5MZmg5001SlOPIDUDPObc8HUhbLPkZumJycmNzYM/edit?usp=sharing

Putting the Pandemic in Historical and Epidemiological Perspective

            In this New Yorker article, Michael Specter describes the scientific events that have shaped the career of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Since 1984, he’s been director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and he’s currently at the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis. Specter’s article lists some previous epidemics that wreaked havoc through history:

–   In 430 BC, Athens was struck by a plague that killed as many as 2/3 of its residents.

–   Beginning in 165 AD, smallpox contributed to the downfall of the Roman Empire.

–   In the 14th century, the Black Death killed more than half of Europe’s population.

However, by the middle of the 20th century, improvements in antibiotics and sanitary conditions led many scientists to believe it was possible to eradicate, or at least control, infectious diseases. Fauci, who had specialized in this field at the start of his career, worried that he’d chosen an area that was going to become a sideshow. 

            Then several deadly diseases changed the game. AIDS has killed more than 30 million people, and tuberculosis infects about a quarter of humanity, killing 1.5 million people in 2018 alone. “But the greatest threat that humanity faces, by far,” says Specter, “is a global outbreak of a lethal virus for which no treatment has been found.” And indeed, COVID-19 has forced billions of people into lockdown, and another pandemic like this will inevitably appear – maybe next year, maybe in a decade, maybe in a century. 

            “We live in evolutionary competition with microbes – bacteria and viruses,” said Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist Joshua Lederberg. There are countless viruses in animals and humans, most of them harmless. For a virus to pose a worldwide threat, it has to meet three critical conditions:

–   It emerges from animals and humans don’t have immunity to it.

–   The virus sickens and kills humans (the vast majority of viruses don’t).

–   The virus spreads efficiently – e.g., through coughing, sneezing, or handshakes. 

For years, Fauci and others have been concerned about a virus that would punch all three tickets – new, deadly, and infectious – and that’s what we have in COVID-19. 

For most of human history, a virus with all three characteristics would afflict many people in the community where it emerged, but then stop spreading. But as human mobility increased, pathogens could spread more widely. Nowadays, someone can wake up with an infectious virus in China and fly to America, spreading it intercontinentally the same day. According to one analysis, at least 430,000 people have arrived in the U.S. on direct flights from China since the coronavirus outbreak began.

Lederberg and others have advocated for greatly expanded early-warning systems, particularly in the developing world, as well as stronger measures to respond to microbial threats. Unfortunately their alarm bells were almost completely ignored. In 2004, a year after those recommendations were made, a highly pathogenic form of avian influenza, H₅N₁, leaped from waterfowl to chickens to humans. This time, the world was lucky – it was deadly but not very contagious. Five years later, a new influenza virus, H₁N₁, infected nearly a quarter of the global population before vaccines were developed – but again we were lucky: it was highly contagious but not nearly as deadly as most strains of influenza. Dodging the bullet twice fostered complacency and made it more difficult for scientists to create a sense of urgency. 

A somewhat hopeful development is that genetic engineering has made it possible to respond to an epidemic much more quickly than in the past. After the COVID-19 outbreak began, it took scientists less than a month to sequence the genome of the virus; by the end of February, the instructions were on the Internet and the virus had been recreated in labs around the world so that scientists could seek treatments and vaccines. The problem is that treatments and vaccines will be virus-specific. Each year scientists try to scope out newly-evolving viruses and create vaccines, but it’s hit-or-miss: in the 2017-18 flu season, the vaccine worked for only about one-third of the people who received it. And scientists are playing whack-a-mole with each new virus. “We keep trying to develop a vaccine for one thing – usually the last one – and it’s a waste of time,” says Fauci. “Every time we get hit, it is always something we didn’t expect.”

            Fauci has long advocated for developing a universal influenza vaccine that would provide lasting defense against all strains. “Similar to tetanus,” he said, “a universal flu vaccine probably would be given every ten years. And if you get one that is really universal, you can vaccinate just about everyone in the world.” This would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and test, and to date, that money hasn’t been raised. Perhaps that will change now. “To plan a coherent biological future, rather than simply scramble to contain each new pandemic,” Specter concludes, “will require an entirely new kind of political commitment.”

“Annals of Medicine: The Good Doctor” by Michael Specter in The New Yorker, April 20, 2020, https://bit.ly/2KpmZSB