I recently had a female teacher from one of our high schools reach out to me to share concerns about the “toxic masculinity” she has sometimes experienced in her time as a teacher. As I listened to her describe her situation, I realized that as a female administrator working in secondary all of my career, I have experienced this in varying degrees. This week, Paul Dean shared this article with the cabinet which goes into more depth about what is meant by this term (from this author’s perspective).
As leaders in our high schools, it is important we are aware that this culture can exist in our schools and reflect on how it can impact our female and male staff. This dynamic creates a reality that can lead to individuals feeling marginalized and as though they don’t have a voice or belong.
This is an example of an equity issue that impacts our daily work – and we are in the position to impact the detrimental effects. Our students watch how staff interact with one another and learn what healthy-or unhealthy-interactions look like. Adult role modeling is a POWERFUL part of our social-emotional learning work in schools! As a team, we have spoken about how our boys are struggling. We are in positions to foster healthy cultures in our schools from which students can develop positive interpersonal skills. Consider sharing this article with your staff and reflecting on the topic together.
To Do:
As you know, state testing (OAKS) has been a roller coaster. Oregon has requested a waiver to the feds to not test this year. The feds have said all states need to test students. Currently, we are at a stalemate – with no timetable for clarity. In the meantime, we are required to send out a 30-day notice of testing and provide an opt-out opportunity. Please share these next documents with your families prior to leaving for spring break: Parent message/English and Parent message/Spanish… as well as Opt-Out/English and Opt-Out/Spanish. I suggest you provide parents with some context for these letters – and steal some language out of the letters rather than create a description yourself may make the most sense. Let me know if you have any questions.
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Here is another communication to share with families. This letter is intended to be shared with families who have a child involved with any school-sponsored athletic activity. (This does not pertain to PE classes.).
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This is a “to do” and “reminder”… Don’t forget (for yourself and your staff) to use BLSend whenever you are sharing student information electronically. If information needs to be shared that includes a more than one piece of student information (name, assessment results(s), other identifiable info) then this should not be sent via regular email (Outlook) – but rather BLSend.
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Here is a reminder – and call to action – from IT regarding technology security: Our MFA info can be found at the portal page below.
https://portal.bend.k12.or.us/staff-resources/content/multi-factor-authentication
If admins are using their personal mobile devices for district email, and they don’t get MFA setup by April 1, they will lose that ability until they get MFA setup. I think it’s important to note (as Brad said yesterday) this MFA requirement isn’t just coming from IT. This is something required for district cyber security insurance.
Our Help Desk (ext 1200) and our team of IT field techs are available for MFA support. I’ve also asked the techs to check in with their building admins to see if they need any additional MFA support.
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Please share this with your teachers: At the end of our professional development conversation with Doug Reeves Wednesday, he described the opportunity to participate in a problem of practice series this spring.
If you are interested in joining Doug Reeves and his team at Creative-Leadership-Solutions as you work on a challenge, define a problem of practice, and test out interventions and ideas as you create an action research project, then sign up for the OSU-Cascades class. It is a 2-credit class that is offered in Spring 2021 (see the syllabus for dates and course requirements). Registration is currently open but will close on March 31st.
To register for the class, complete the registration and application form and upload them to this google folder. If you have attended a BLS-OSU Cascades class in the last 12 months, then you do not need to complete the application form. There is an initial $35 application fee which will be billed by OSU-C once they receive your application.
Additionally, we will compensate teachers for the five after school sessions (including May) and the time to prep for the May share out.
If you have any questions, please contact Michele Oakes ([email protected]).
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Information:
Yesterday, we communicated all ACR approvals/denials electronically to our families. Questions or concerns from families about why an ACR was denied begin with the principal. If a parent/guardian is interested in appealing the decision, please have them contact me. I will follow up to get additional information about the family situation. We will review the requests and let the parent know the decision.
We will continue to accept ACR requests centrally. There is no need for schools to continue to collect these requests. Please send any you receive to Amy in OSS so we can enter them into the excel spreadsheet Jo is managing for us. We will NOT be processing any requests received after March 1 at this time and will no longer be approving or denying requests at the school level. A huge shout out to Becky, Jo, and Amy for their amazing work to help us centralize this process. It will take a heavy lift off of our high schools!
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A note from Paul about Indoor Music/Band Rehearsals:
On Monday, I met with secondary admin and music reps to review our safety measures for indoor music rehearsals. As a reminder, here are our requirements. Music teachers who have developed proposals, had them reviewed by school safety teams and communicated information to families are able to begin indoor rehearsals on Monday, March 15th.
Here is the English version of family communication along with their version of safety measures. We are awaiting the Spanish translation of each document and will email them to you and the music teachers when we have them.
Funding for PPE and other Music Safety MeasuresSchools will not be charged for PPE supplies that are requested through [email protected] as we’ve used CARE dollars for these items. Each school has a PPE coordinator responsible for ordering supplies. We’d encourage music teachers to work with the PPE coordinator to order what they anticipate needing through the end of April and then submitting a second-order request to cover PPE items needed for May/June.
If we don’t have specific items in inventory, schools will need to order them and use their allotted operations funds. We ask that building administrators work with their music teachers and, if necessary, boost their yearly budget allotment to support the added costs associated with indoor rehearsal requirements.
Camp Tamarack & Bend Science Station. Because we have established relationships with Camp Tamarak and BSS, they both have district permission to enter schools for instructional purposes and follow all required school safety practices. Their staff has been vaccinated.
New RSSL Update
We understand that an updated version of RSSL will be released next week and may include new language that impacts our ability to offer in-person education – in a good way. Stay tuned….
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Nutrition Services is planning to have 3 grab and go sites (Bend High, MVHS, and La Pine High) on Monday, March 22nd from 11:30-12:30 for Spring Break. They plan to serve 5 breakfasts, 5 lunches, and 5 suppers in 1 bag on that day.
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Please pass on this amazing opportunity to our teachers: There is funding from the Central Oregon Stem hub to train additional teachers for “Exploring Computer Science” this coming summer. We currently have two teachers using this curriculum at Bend High and La Pine High. It is week-long training and the teachers are paid for their time. We want to open this up to our high school staff to see if there is interest at other high school campuses to train a teacher and offer the course Contact Scott McDonald if you have any questions. Here is a link to the ECS curriculum and the sample course description for course catalogs.http://www.exploringcs.org/for-teachers-districts
| For Teachers & Districts – Exploring Computer Science NEW! Unit 5 or 6 Alternative: Artificial Intelligence Students gain an understanding of AI terminology while considering AI’s social, moral, and ethical impacts. Students design smart cities, homes, and schools and learn to build, train, and test an AI system through a NVIDIA platform.www.exploringcs.org |
Here is the sample course description:
Think-Make-Explore Computer Science Computer Science For All and Exploring Computer Science
This class is for everyone – no experience needed. Sign up with a friend! There are lots of opportunities to learn together.
Make web pages, design your own program, design and control devices, learn what artificial intelligence is and why you care, understand how data is captured and used, learn how technology influences your life experience, investigate how technology impacts society, and create your own new technologies instead of being consumed by others’ creations.
Computer Science is changing everything. Entertainment, medicine, transportation, communication, public policy, agriculture, fashion, art, energy, society, and design all rely on computer science. Be part of that change, and have fun doing it!
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Our Instructional Technology Team has some exciting news. They’re doing a bit of rebranding and will now be known as the BLS EdTech Team (to avoid confusion between IT for Instructional Tech, and IT for Informational Tech.) They’re also excited to start sharing a bi-monthly newsletter, BLS EdTech Bytes. You can find the first edition linked here. Administrators who use the web version of Outlook will find it contains an easy & useful tip this week…so be sure to check it out for that and other exciting topics.
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In case you missed it, here is an article regarding our district’s look at grading practices (with a highlight of our schools with standards-based grading) that was published last Saturday in The Bulletin. Shout out to Steve and Stephen for their contribution to this article! Thank you to Roger and Stephen for presenting their grading systems at our last school board work session!
Calendar:
HS Principal meeting @ 10:30 on Wednesday, March 17
Don’t forget to turn your clocks forward one hour this Sunday morning!