Thank you, everyone for your hard work these past few days. A special thanks to Tim, Rob and Scott! We made some significant progress on creating more space in our limited storage areas and moving some furniture today thanks to their efforts.
Class Lists – your class lists are active in synergy now. Shawna and I decided not to go public with these yet, because it’s best to give you all a chance to see them first. We plan to post these to ParentVUE on Tuesday unless we hear about any issues from you. (1 day earlier than promised, I might add!!!)
Materials Distribution – latest document with our guidelines for distributing materials, including home visits.
Learning Kits – ELA kits have arrived and are in our hall. Math kits are coming by the 21st (I think?) maybe with markers, maybe not…(=
One Teacher’s Trash is another Teacher’s Treasure – Let’s do a supply swap! As you clean and pack up your room and you come across some materials that you don’t need or have a surplus (extra scissors, or extra pens, etc.) Anything that can still be used by another teacher or student please bring to the gym. I will place out a row of the foldable tables and you place your unwanted items there and shop for your own needs. If you see something you can use with your class then take it. We will leave these materials out for the next week and they are up for grabs. Anything left over after Friday 9/11 will be discarded. Please be sure to wash your hands often during this entire process.
WebEx Update – Try out the new WebEx features, including breakout rooms, at: bls-preview.webex.com Sign in to our TEST environment with your regular Bend-La pine credentials and you can test the all new WebEx. The features in TEST are scheduled to be available in the production environment on September 14th. Please keep in mind this is an active test/development environment and things could shift a little over time. Access to test will remain until the features go live in production.
Recording Lessons – During Comprehensive Distance Learning, some teachers may elect to record lessons. After consulting with legal counsel, student voice, student image, and student name are ALLOWED to be recorded and uploaded/shared within your Google classroom or Seesaw classroom. So you may, if you choose, record the first lesson launch you deliver live (in Webex), save that recording to your desktop then upload it to Google Classroom or Seesaw. Keep in mind that recordings on Webex can not be viewed for 24 hours.
Attendance (From Skip) – if you have questions about attendance please refer to the documents I had in last week’s blog. These are live documents so a new information arrives or changes it will be included. In nutshell, students will be automatically considered “present virtually” unless a teacher goes in and changes that. Again, refer to that document
From our Excellent District Nurse – Many thanks to Tami Pike and her nursing staff for creating a twenty minute Covid training video – click here to access the directions. We are requiring all staff to complete this training (along with the google acknowledgement form) prior to September 11th but encourage you to do it sooner if possible.
Startup Week(s) Plan;
- Wednesday 9/9 (Day #191) – District Training Day
- Training opportunities – below are the optional training opportunities on September 9th for teachers and educational assistants. These are available to EAs. This will not be your only opportunity for optional trainings. We will offer additional sessions later in the month. Sign up for these classes and future classes will be available on Performance Matters on Wednesday, September 2nd. All courses will be on Webex
- Kindergarten Lexia 8:00-9:30
- 1-2 Lexia 9:45-11:00
- 3-5 Lexia 2:00-3:30
- Lexia for Educational Assistants 8:00-9:30
- Lexia for specialists 12:45-2:00
- Seesaw for Beginners 8:00-9:30
- What is new to Seesaw? 2:00-3:30
- Effective Synchronized Math Lessons K-2 11:00-12:30
- Effective Synchronized Math Lessons 3-5 11:00-12:30Screen Recording. 9:45-11:00Using Webex More Effectively 11:00-12:30
- Google Classroom 3-5 12:45-2:00
- and more to come….
- Training opportunities – below are the optional training opportunities on September 9th for teachers and educational assistants. These are available to EAs. This will not be your only opportunity for optional trainings. We will offer additional sessions later in the month. Sign up for these classes and future classes will be available on Performance Matters on Wednesday, September 2nd. All courses will be on Webex
The sign up in Performance Matters is open for the Optional Professional Learning Opportunities on September 9th.
Two Ways to Access Performance Matters:
- Go to the calendar icon in the upper right corner. Select the 9th, and it will show all the classes available on that day.
- Go to “My Courses” under search, type in “Optional.” Two courses will appear. Select the 9/9 one. Then to see all classes, select “View all sections” in lower right corner.
Here are the options:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nMihVxo4HTdCAV-JAJtXD6ju4yga_qjCF7yAa8wmVCk/edit?usp=sharing
- Thursday 9/10 (Day #192) – Teacher Work Day
- Phase One Moving Deadline – please try to have your first phase moves completed by the end of this day.
- 8:30-10:00 – Screen Casting Workshop presented by Christie Boen – please email me if you plan to attend.
- RSVP for Attending: Michelle, Marina, Heidi E, Cami, Ukiah, Alicia…
- 10:30-11:30 – Google Classroom – Marina will provide a workshop for anyone needing some help with getting their google classroom. Please email me if you plan to attend.
- Heidi E
- Friday 9/11(Day #193) – Teacher Work Day
- 2/3 Tentative Materials Distribution time TBD
SOP document and schedules (Updated):
20-21 Changes to the Instructional Technology Team – from Brenna Frost
- I will be supporting Elk Meadow, Ensworth, Highland, Ponderosa, Silver Rail, and W.E. Miller.
- John Craft and Dyan Sultzer will work with the remaining elementary schools
- Scott McDonald and Christie Boen will be working with middle and high schools.
Below are a few announcements as everyone prepares for Comprehensive Distance Learning.
- Seesaw for Schools
This has been purchased for all K-2 teachers and their students. When schools complete class lists in Synergy, students’ names will show up in Seesaw. Teachers and students will access Seesaw through Clever this year. No need for badges/codes, etc. More details and support will be available soon. - Google Classroom
3-5 teachers, you can find helpful info on the BLS resource page here. - WebEx reminder
There is a new address when using Webex. It is: bls.webex.com. The old address will stop working eventually. - Loom Video Recording
If you plan to use Loom, you’ll need to use Chrome as your internet browser and you’ll need to add the Loom Chrome extension. The desktop version of Loom is no longer supported and won’t work on our systems due to security restrictions.
Please watch for more emails from me in the near future. Our team is compiling an extensive list of tutorials for you and your students. For now, you can find some tutorials on our district’s page, Tools for Comprehensive Distance Learning. (Please note: some videos still need to be updated/modified. For example, the “Creating a Seesaw Account” video is not current as of today. Our team is working to make these updates as soon as possible.)
Lastly, our team is here for you. We know there are many things you are juggling right now and there’s a lot of uncertainty. Please reach out if we can support you. We can connect via email, phone, Webex, or in-person with masks/appropriate distancing.
Looking forward to working with you,
Brenna Frost
Scaling up to provide Limited In-Person Instruction (LIPI) in your building
The district’s Return To School Core Team (Lora, Katie, Brad, board member Caroline Skidmore, Paul) made some decisions on an entry into LIPI.
- We will start LIPI on September 28th
- We will use a “phased” approach to determine when to scale up or scale back LIPI. The phases will be based on highest priority and highest needs and will be tied to local metrics.
—
| Activities | When start | Metrics | |
| Phase 1 | Evaluations (SPED/ELL) and students with zero connectectivity | Sept. 28 | Building level – No confirmed cases of COVID within 14 days |
| Phase 2 | Above, plus add instructional supports for students based on need (primary historically underserved) | Oct. 5 | Building level – No confirmed cases of COVID within 14 days AND county metrics are below 30 cases per 100,000 |
In order to be ready for evaluations under LIPI beginning September 28th, Sean is asking your school’s evaluation team (nurse, school psych, Speech-Language pathologist, and ELL/Title 3) to develop procedures for in-person evaluation. The evaluation team will use guidance aligned with ensuring section 1-3 of your school’s operational blueprint are met and will share the final proposal with your school safety team by September 23. As your school evaluation team is forming, please feel free to consult and/or participate as you deem necessary.