MONDAY MEETING TO REPLACE WORDS ON WEDNESDAY!
With the start of LIPI this week we have agreed to move our all school weekly get together to Mondays in the 2nd half of Crew. Please have your Crew leave Crew and come to my room at 12:05PM.
11:45 Crew starts. I suggest you make it clear that you are taking attendance! At 12:05 please come to my room for Monday Meeting! It might be good to post this in your Canvas so if a student arrives late to Crew, they know to go to my room!
I know you will have to make adjustments to your Crew plans on Monday… you now just have 20 minutes… it might be a good time for a check in and and sharing “academic plan” for the day/week?? THANKS ALL!
LIPI SET TO BEGIN THIS WEEK!
(aka: “The Triumphant Return of Students to Our Building After Seven Month Absence“)
Under the guidelines for LIPI we will be bringing students back on site this week! YAHOO!
We have 5 cohorts of students on Wednesdays… two of them from 8AM -10AM and the other three from 10AM-12PM. Thanks to Berit, Karla, Kat and Steph for getting this dialed in – it is NO SMALL FEAT…. we are bringing close to 50 students back to school 🙂
We also are inviting our seniors on campus (in TWO cohorts) for support sessions from 2:00PM – 3:30 PM. Cohort one on Tuesdays and Cohort 2 on Thursdays. Thanks to Jen and Michelle for their “bias to action”… they saw a need and have stepped in to get this rolling. Thanks also to Anita and Zach who (I think) will be helping support some of the Thursday cohort. This will begin on THURSDAY this week.
Jennifer is our COVID coordinator for LIPI – thanks Jennifer for dialing on the details. Teachers… Jennifer will be sharing more details with you on Tuesday, but in terms of “symptom screening” you can watch the 1st 2 min of THIS VIDEO and get details. Bottom line… if a kiddo reports or is observed with ONE of the symptoms on our list, they should be sent to Jennifer for further screening!
This session will include:
Wed Oct 28th, Wed Nov 4th, Wed Nov 18th (no school on Nov 11)
We will re-assess after TG Break!
MAKING THEIR TRIUMPHANT RETURN… TRIUMPHANT!! How? With Your Help!
I have an invitation for you! I would love to invite any of you to campus on Wednesday to help us celebrate the return of students. We will be setting up a bit of a “greeting line” for students when they arrive at 8AM and at 10AM. Students will receive a bag and any of us in the greeting line will have “items” to drop into their bag as they head to their LIPI room. These include raffle tickets for a draw that each of our LIPI teachers will be able to do at the end of their LIPI session on day 1!
I will have breakfast treats for any staff who feel inspired to join us. We hope to make their 1st visit to campus one that makes them feel hopeful, welcomed, and supported! ANY ADDED IDEAS WELCOME HERE!
STAFF MEETINGS CLARIFICATION & CAL/SCHED
Last week (or was it the week before?!) we launched a revised staff meeting plan in accordance with both the BEA temporary memorandum governing prep/meeting/instructional time through Nov 11th AND in light of our Wed LIPI sessions.
I have posted our regular staff meeting schedule on the Outlook Staff Internal calendar. They can also be seen here on our CDL schedule under the Revised Staff Schedule tab or screenshot below (staff meetings are in pink).
It is important to know that based on the current addendum negotiated by the BEA and effective through November 11th, the following applies with respect to the pink staff meetings I have scheduled: “If a staff member is unable to attend due to professional or personal obligations, they will communicate with the building administrator. The staff member will request meeting notes from a meeting attendee“ The intent here is to provide a way for a teacher who is super stretched to not attend and not feel that there will be any consequences if they need to miss one or more of these meetings.. Please feel free to read the full text of the MOU here.
I want you to know that if you ARE super stretched and these meetings feel unsustainable, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I am doing everything I can to make sure tour meetings are efficient, effective AND oriented to the work that matters most to s as a school!
START AND END TIME CHECK IN SURVEY
Back in August the majority of staff preferred 8:30 – 4:30 as our “standard hours” as opposed to the District’s normal 8-4. Please know that based on our current staff schedule above, and the fact that we are now in CDL, I am pretty flexible about when you start and end your day. However, I said we would check back in after 6 weeks… AND we now have LIPI starting at 8AM on Wednesdays meaning that our supported ed and office team needs to begin and end their day a little earlier! Supported Ed team.. I imagine you will likely need to adjust your Wednesday hours to 7:30 – 3:30?!
So, given that, it makes sense to hear from ALL OF YOU about where you’d like the hours to land from now until HYBRID (when we might actually want to check back in again?!). You can see what the staff schedule would look like in an 8-4 scheme here.. it is pretty much the identical to the 8:30 to 4:30 scheme!! Please take this quick STAFF HOURS SURVEY.
GETTING CLASSROOMS & CAMPUS READY FOR HYBRID
Folks, I don’t know when hybrid is going to start, I have lost me abolity to predict the future (ARGH!). HOWEVER, what I do know is that we MAY NOT get a lot of lead time once the decision is made, so, I think it is SMART for us to begin getting our campus and our classrooms (AND OUR MINDS) ready for the eventual shift to hybrid.
My request is this:
- Find some time in your next week or two to come in and start to organize your classroom for the potential arrival of students.
- If there is old work on the walls, consider removing it and refreshing it with something more current or topical – a HUGE shout out to Michelle who has been laminating some of our past student work and has been showcasing it on bulletin boards (with help from Karen and Jennifer).
- If you discover, in doing so, that you need some furniture, equipment, materials, please let Jennifer and I know and we can try and help!
CANVAS TIPS FROM LAPINE HIGH SCHOOL
I have noticed and heard from folks at our school that we have a fair bit of “variability” still in how people are using Canvas to post asynchronous work and assignments. To some extent, this is OK, though we want to make sure we are listening to our stduents and noticing what is working best and or not working well so we can adjust.
Here is a set of questions that LPHS is asking their teachers to be able to answer clearly as they analyze their own Canvas techniques and use patterns:
Questions Teachers Should Be Able to Answer:
- Do my students know what to expect for the week?
- Where can students find information for the week?
- Do my students know where to go each day?
- How do my students know what they need to complete each day?
- Are my directions clear?
- How can I add bold, italic, highlighting, or bullet points to clearly direct students?
- Can my students complete the assignment in 3 steps or less?
- Do my students know my class expectations in regards to: turning things in, organization, office hours, accessing help, grading, etc.?
- How much time do I expect my students to work each day? Is this too much?
- Are my assignments purposeful and do the students understand the purpose?
- How do I know that they know this information? How often do I remind them of this information?
- How often do I check the “Student View” and Student App side of my course, pages, assignments, etc?
- Can I help students via the student side?