Monday, September 7 2020

Hey Team,
I hope that after drinking from the firehose last week that you were able to have some fun and relax this weekend! I appreciate your positivity and your focus on making the best of our situation!

A few notes for the week:
1) Students will pick up materials this Thursday, the schedule is below and it would be extremely helpful to have you helping during your time slot–not to mention how much the kids will want to see you! Please have all your materials ready to go by your scheduled time. EAs will be at school Wednesday and Thursday to help.

Materials Pick-up Schedule:
2-3pm: Kinder and Grade 1
3-4pm: Grades 2 and 3
4-5pm: Grades 4 and 5
5-5:30pm: For anyone who was not able to make it earlier

2) Teacher letters and schedules need to be sent out Wednesday morning before noon. Please be sure your note covers all the important information:
*First two weeks
*Building stamina
*Materials list
*Break times
*Acknowledge concerns, fears, grief and loss
*How you plan to do groups
*What partnership will look like
*How best to communication with you (email, text, phone, etc)
*Platforms you will be using–might be good to do a test run with families on SeeSaw and Google classroom
*Re-read your note a thousand times before you send it–check to be sure it’s not overwhelming! I have already read a few drafts shared with me and I am happy to read as many as you’ll send me. I think it’s always helpful to have another set of eyes have a look at a big, packed email.

3) Community Meeting on Webex, Thursday 6-7pm. I am hoping you can join me for this meeting with families. It’s an opportunity for them to get some updates and ask questions. It will be super helpful if you can attend and help with monitoring the chat for questions. As this is traditionally the evening we would do our Watermelon Social I am encouraging families to bring some watermelon to the chat–feel free to do the same!

4) Work days and times. I’m hoping you all have some sense of what days/times you will be at school so that we can plan on all being at school at certain times. Having lunch (and a little therapy) on those days will be really therapeutic for all of us, and it would be nice to have SIW/staff meetings in person if possible. I’m am still waiting for direction on SIWs and will share as soon as I have it.

5) Friday Art times: In looking at the schedules, I don’t think 30 minutes is going to be enough time for art on Fridays. I am hopeful we can make a small adjustment to Friday schedules to add an additional 15 minutes to the art period. This does not really impact K/1 but it will mean that 2-5 have to dip a little into SPED/ELL time just on Fridays. Art (and PE and music) will start the second week of school. I realize this ask may require us to get more creative than simply adding an additional 15 minutes–just let me know and I’ll work with you to figure out how to make it work.

6) Happy Hour at Frans’ place on Friday, hope you can make it.

Upcoming
September 9: Emails and schedules from teachers go out, by noon
September 10: Materials pick up at Northstar, 2-5:30pm
September 10: Community Webex Meeting, 6-7pm
September 14: First Day of School!

Lastly, I hope that have your full support in terms of being a solid front of stability and positivity for students and families. This has been such a challenging time for all of us, and it can be easy to slide down into the rabbit hole of disappointment and frustration. However, we have children and families really counting on us to shine bright and be a positive guiding force as we navigate this next chapter of distance learning. Let’s stay positive and lean on each other for support when needed!

A quote to share as I sign off: Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain! (Vivian Greene). I think this speaks very clearly to our goal of thriving, not just surviving! Looking forward to dancing in the rain with you!

Andy