March 12, 2021

Posted on March 15, 2021 by Lisa Birk

Good morning everyone!

As you may have heard, there will be an update to our Ready Schools, Safe Learners guidance sometime this week. We DO NOT know what this guidance will give us; however, if the distance guidelines move from 6′ to 3 ‘ AND the square footage changes from 35 ft2 to 17 ft2 AND the cohort size increases from 100 to 200 THEN BLP will be bringing students back into the buildings very soon. The timeline for this would be very near conferences although this has not been determined. I will keep you up-to-date as I learn more.

We will be having our 8th grade fire drills this week as well as our Stand-Up Meeting on Wednesday from 9:30-9:40 in my room. Please remember to give reminders constantly to students regarding distancing, hand-washing, and wearing masks. They continue to do a great job in classrooms but once leaving, it becomes more difficult. Finally, it is our first track meet this week so please cheer on our Eagles!

ACTION | Canvas Modules & Assignments Update: Upon our return from spring break, ALL PCMS teachers will employ a “Weekly Guide” format for Canvas in order to better support our families and provide consistency between all of our courses. If you want some help knowing how to embed docs, google slides, or interactives directly into assignments, pages, announcements or anything, please send Amanda Redmond an email. She would love to set up a Webex if needed! Refer to these resources:

  1. Go to Canvas commons and import the “PCMS hyperlink weekly guide- template” into your courses. 
  2. In each box link the assignments, pages, or external tools students will need that day by clicking 1. Insert-> 2. Link -> 3. Course Link 
  3. Add your office hours into the appropriate boxes with links to your Webex room. 
  4. Make sure that your assignments/pages are published! Also put the instructions to the assignment into the assignment itself so that it’s a one stop shop! 
  5. Bonus: title your assignments/pages with the following emojis. Ex: 🏡📝Density Homework 
    • Assignment done at school: 🎓📝
    • Assignment done at home: 🏡📝
    • Wednesday assignment: 👨‍💻📝
    • Page used at school: 🎓📘
    • Page used at home: 🏡📘
    • Wednesday page: 👨‍💻📝
    • Extension work: 🚀 

ACTION | Conference Information: On Thursday and Friday of this week, students will begin to complete their April Take Home conference slides for their classes in Periods 1-3.

  • Students will upload the Take Home Conference PDF to Notability during Advisory. Mandy is sharing this with all Advisory teachers but if you need it, HERE it is.
  • During the day, students will complete the corresponding page for periods 1-3, including Artifact upload and reflection. This should be reflective and quality work as it will demonstrate the learning that has occurred and will continue to develop during the year in this course.
  • Invite Only Conferences will happen from 5-7 on Wednesday, April 14th. If you have a student who you want to make sure you have a scheduled conference with, please add their first and last name to THIS LIST along with your own name. Please include any students from Eagle Weeks who fit the bill as well. We will organize these names and get ready to communicate to families for the following week. Please have names uploaded by Friday, 3/19.
  • There is a video that you will show to students during Advisory about the process. Ryan is working on this now and will share it with you prior to Advisory on Thursday.
  • Teacher/Classroom Video: Detailed instructions and requirements for these videos can be found HERE. Please add your video to the folder HERE. If you want to do a Loom recording for your video, Jane Ward made a slideshow to accompany her video that serves as a nice and easy-to-replicate model.
  • Additionally, there are TWO quick questions for you to answer on this Google Form that will be part of what we share with families around conferences. If you need help filming, would like to borrow a microphone, or have any other questions, see Ryan.

ACTION | Team & Teacher Budget Spending & Forecasting: Refer to Deb’s email sent 3/12 for more details. Teachers and teams, please complete the PD | Add’l $150 | Wishlist | Curriculum workbook. New deadline to spend and forecast is Friday, 4/2.

ACTION | Message from Todd Wells, American Fidelity: With all that we have been through this last year, many of us have a renewed interest in benefits, whether it is saving money on out of pocket expenses or protecting your income from an illness or injury. For the safety and health of all, your benefits review appointment is online! Schedule Your Appointment Now ► and select Pacific Crest MS – Tuesday, March 30, 2021. In your benefits review, your account manager will look at your existing plans, help you understand your available benefits, review options and answer questions. All completed enrollments will be entered in a drawing for a Starbucks virtual gift card.

Welcome Video from Todd Wells
Learn More About Your Available Benefits

  • Todd Wells, Account Executive
  • [email protected]
  • Office: 877-293-1090 ext. 13
  • Fax: 877-295-1091

Quarantine After Vaccination: If you are wondering about guidance regarding travel and quarantine post-vaccination, please refer to these travel recommendations.

Electronic Confidentiality: Don’t forget 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.

Important Links:

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