Quote to Consider:
Thanks to Joe for sending this along:
During his presidency, Barack Obama was asked how he paced himself and managed the stress of the job. His reply (edited slightly): “Our job is to stay focused on what we can get done every single day to advance the vision and the values that brought us here.”
To Dos:
STAFF SAFETY CHECKLIST:
– We’ve added this Regular Visual Symptoms Screening Instructions document to our staff safety checklist document.
– To-do reminder: we need all staff to be aware of all the items on the safety checklist document; please review and become familiar with its contents.
COMMUNICATION TO FAMILIES:
– Please continue to send out POSITIVE communications (without family action items) as often as possible; we know that building positive, trusting relationships with our families is tightly correlated with student growth and success.
– Advisory teachers: to support our bi-weekly communication home to families from advisors, the family outreach will continue to put out this template every other week. Please make a copy, then personalize, and send out to your advisory families. Thank you so much. In addition, if you get a message back that a parent email is not working, please make a comment in the CDL contact form so we can try and update the information.
– When a student is struggling/unengaged, content teachers should continue to connect with their families early and often. Loop in the student’s grade level counselor and advisor when there are ongoing concerns.
STUDENT ATTENDANCE TRACKING:
– Here is our revised student attendance tracking document.
– Teachers are taking attendance and tracking for their own records, but this tool is designed as a snapshot for Advisory teachers, counselors, specialists, and Admin to check on the attendance of their students overall as needed. Heather P will continue to update this document every Monday and input/highlight red all students who have missed three or more days of CDL during the week. – We are asking advisory teachers to check this list every two weeks and make contacts home via phone call to students who are highlighted NPV for the two most recent weeks, update notes as needed, and send concerns to grade level counselors, admin and IEP/ELL case managers (if applicable). As issues arise, please include fan advocate Jamie Neill when necessary.
MAC TRAINING INFO from FAN advocate Jamie Neill:
– All staff need to be MAC trained; click here to access the online training.
– Use this link (password: MAC2020fan) to access video from the spring that will help your training go smoothly.
– When you have completed the online MAC training you will receive an email to confirm that you completed the training. Please keep that email in case there is an issue, and your training is not recorded properly.
– If have further questions, please let Jamie know and she can do a Webex to walk you through it.
– MAC brings about $500,000 into the district and helps keep FAN in our buildings. Thank you for supporting FAN and the families we work with!
Bits and Bobs:
CANVAS COACH’S CORNER:
– Some students are stressed about seeing lots of assignments on Canvas and not sure which should be completed and when. We suggest making it clear on all assignments, activates and pages if kids should just be working on them in class or outside of class and over what time frame should they be completed.
– To further streamline the student experience we’d recommend simplifying the navigation bar for your course so students can just see home, modules, grades and announcements. Some people are using the syllabus page too so that’s fine.
– We have found the most efficient way of using speed grader is using the teacher iPad app and would recommend checking it out.
– Just to keep you updated regarding the Synergy/Canvas synchronization: IT are going to turn it on for Canvas coaches in the next couple of days. If everything works well for them they’ll be pushing it out to everyone at some point next week.
– Reminder: Canvas Coach’s Office Hours hosted by Ingrid and Martin from 1:30 to 2:30pm on Wednesday in Ingrid’s WebEx room.
COVID-19 ADMIN GUIDELINES: From the district’s health services supervisor Tami Pike: “When a staff member cannot report to work due to illness, or becomes ill while at work, the employee needs to notify their direct supervisor.” Here are the admin guidelines we will follow if a staff members reports COVID symptoms.
SAFETY TEAM INFO:
– The safety team has approved the Life Skills team’s Limited In-Person Instruction (LIPI) safety plan for having LS students in the building starting on Oct. 5th. This is our second phase of LIPI.
– Our third phase, starting in the coming weeks, will be to identify and invite non-Life Skills students that need LIPI to the building. The safety team, in conjunction with the admin team and student case managers (SRC, ELL, counselors, etc), will be using this district instruction/guidelines document to guide our next steps in this process. See the safety team notes for more info.
– FYI: This document is our HDMS specific school safety checklist; unlike the staff checklist above, you do not need to know all the info on this dense document. We are sharing it as an FYI.
DISTRICT RESOURCEs:
– Canvas demos are available on the district’s website (available in English and Spanish).
– Learning Supports webpage has a ton of additional tech tips, videos, and troubleshooting items relevant for families (available in English and Spanish).
Reminders:
WEDNESDAY ATTENDANCE:
During CDL, teachers must post 20 minute assignments/activities in Canvas every Wednesday. As you know, students submitting completed work for this assignment will be the way teachers take attendance each Wednesday (for students who do not attend a support session). If a student contacts a teacher on Wednesday with issues accessing the assignment on Canvas, please consider counting this as “present” for the that day. Advisory classes do not “meet” on Wednesdays, therefore there will not be an activity/assignment for attendance on Wednesdays from advisory.
*We have shared this information with our families through multiple channels (SynerVoice, counselors, office staff fielding phone calls, etc), and we recognize that many families still have questions and are confused. Thanks for continuing to respond to these questions with positivity; consider copy and pasting the above information in your response.
GENERAL ATTENDANCE: In CDL schedule, teachers will be able to override the PV code with a NPV code. At 11:00am, the auto dialer will place calls to parents for the previous day’s NPV absences school wide. Therefore, a particular day’s attendance must be updated and completed by 8:00am the following morning. A student is considered present if any of the following occur:
– Participating in a video class
– Communication from the student to the teacher via chat, text message or email
– A phone call with the student
– Posting completed coursework to a learning management system or web-based platform or via email
– Turning in completed coursework on a given day
PROFESSIONALISM DURING CDL: As you know, teachers are likely to be under more scrutiny during CDL as they are teaching “in students’ living rooms.” The district shared, albeit vaguely (specific schools were not mentioned) that there have been a handful of families voicing some concern with a few teachers’ professionalism (specifically attire- eg: teachers in PJs). It is important to continue to hold ourselves to professional standards as if we were in the building.
SENDING MASS FAMILY EMAILS: Due to privacy concerns, please remember to use the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) function in Outlook if you are sending an email to multiple families at once. Putting your email address in the “to” field and all the different family’s email addresses in the “BCC” field hides email address from all recipients while still allowing you to send one email to multiple families. Reach out to Nole if you need help with this function in Outlook.
STAFF SOCIALS: Review, sign up, and/or host a staff social (while distanced) activity here.
HDMS Highlights:
