COVID 21 5/15/20

Scheduling Update

You may notice that your schedules have been populated with some new information about your students with disabilities. Thank you, Alyce, for taking care of this compliance task for all of us!

Parent Meeting

We had our first family meeting this week. We had a small group of parents which was my fault for not publicizing more. Our equity roundtable will be very involved in planning our next session. I think that will make it a more valuable and robust experience for all involved. These are the questions that our families asked (thank you Keri!)

• Are there dos and don’ts for the Chromebooks? What tips would you have for safe chatting and online interactions?
• How will the end of the year look? When’s the last day? What will happen with remote access over the summer to apps like Zearn, Lexia, etc?
• Is it an option to withdraw from ESY if the online platform is not going to be the best fit for the student?
• Will teachers be able to do some kind of evaluation and let parents know what to work on over the summer?
• What support might be available after two months of free internet access runs out?
• What are the dos and don’ts of using the Chromebooks?
• How are attendance numbers being recorded/reported? Who’s looking at the data?
• If this continues in the fall, can we switch kindergarteners to Google Classroom? I don’t think the SeeSaw platform is user-friendly for kids.

These may be some good questions to address in your regular communications with families. 

Clarifying Expectations

We will talk more about what our practice looks like when we meet on Wednesday but here are a few things that I want to make sure are happening in EVERY classroom.

• Have a clear, quick way for families to identify essential classroom activities. 
• There should be at least 1 essential activity aligned to priority standards in ELA and 1 Essential Activity Aligned to priority standards in math each day                        
• Weekly individual check-in calls or texts to families should be continuing even though we are no longer tracking. 
• The district expectation for this contact is every 3 days. Once a week should be sufficient
• Communication should be streamlined.
• Plan and communicate remote learning content in weekly doses. 
• Planning and organizing lessons, assignments, and meetings one week at a time instead of day-by-day will allow students and families to plan time for schoolwork within their own daily routines and needs.
• Send out one communication with assignments and meeting times by the start of the school week.
• Support students and families in finding to-do lists in remote in Google Classroom or SeeSaw for tracking assignment completion. 

View from The District

The following was cut and pasted from a newsletter sent to principals from the office of academics:

Academic Acceleration in COVID Summer 2020: Summer needs to look very different this year, and needs to focus on rigorous, fun, academic acceleration. We want to engage you in finding the best solutions for our students and as such we are asking you to fill out a brief survey to help us in the planning process. As usual, there will be multiple programs running, but we are taking a much more district-wide, academically focused approach this year. Andrea Zayas looking to school leaders to help identify both teachers and students for summer learning. In terms of selecting/identifying students for the summer, please continue working your usual SST processes, and identifying students who will absolutely need to be invited to summer learning. Specifics and more information are forthcoming for all programs.

• I will fill out the survey but I am curious about your thoughts on the questions. Please share your thoughts with me by Thursday 5/21/20 so that I can complete the survey. 

High-Quality Instructional Materials as a Key Equity Move: I'm thrilled to announce that the incredible work done by the Selection Committee to reach a recommendation for literacy curriculum was approved and is moving forward. Please see this memo for details. This decision impacts transformation schools initially. If you serve grades K0-8 and are not in transformation, we welcome you to join us in this adoption process, as we are absolutely certain that with top-notch training, ongoing support and coaching, and these high-quality materials (standards and CLSP aligned), we can make a remarkable impact in teaching and learning. HUGE gratitude to all who put their eyes and hands-on materials, talked with vendors, reviewed units and modules and rubrics, and particular thanks to the Selection Committee who invested countless hours across many months bringing this important equity work to fruition.

• This really has no impact on us. Some of us may want to look at Wit and Wisdom just to stay on top of what the District is looking at for best practices. 

One8 Foundation grant opportunity to implement the DESE supported ST Math platform:
Excited to share this amazing opportunity with you. The One8 Foundation, in partnership with DESE, is offering us access to, and professional learning for, ST Math during summer 2020 and school year 20/21 at no cost.

Our district will apply together for all interested schools by the One8 Foundation’s deadline - no later than 5/22 (next Friday!). If your school is interested, please fill out this simple google form, which includes identifying school leads and committing to summer and 2020‐21 implementation.  For more information about implementation, and grant expectations, please see this information sheet.

ST Math is already used in many of our schools with promising results. It provides a highly-visual, game-based platform that can be easily aligned with Investigations or Eureka pacing. Andrea Zayas used it as a school leader when she implemented a whole school blended learning model, and saw sustained math gains across grade levels.

• Brian LoBue and team please review this information and make a recommendation to me by Wednesday 5/20/20 if we should participate. 

Appreciation

Even though we are not in our physical classrooms and building this poem continues to apply. Thank you!