January 29, 2021

Honey-Do List- February

January 29- Read the Hive. Tell your friends to read the Hive.

January 29 (Noon)- Complete shout out trackers

January 28- Provide Jodi a copy of your most recent schedule

February 1- Small humans return to the building

February 1-5 -Black Lives Matter at School Week

February 5- Let Jodi know if you are interested in riles-based reading training

February 26- Last day for teacher leadership grants

Data Meeting Reflection-

• I have really enjoyed the data meetings that have happened 1:1 so far.
• Having time to connect and focus with individuals is so wonderful it helps to feed my soul
• I get to learn about your successes and challenges and think of how to best support you
• We will be holding these meetings every 6 weeks as a way to connect.

Daily Cleaning Procedure Student Surfaces

• The following is the procedure that we will use for cleaning the surfaces that students are using.
• This procedure should be done at the beginning of the day and the end of the day
• Student or teacher wipes surface with soap and water at end of the day 
• Teacher sprays surface with disinfectant (10 minutes minimum dwell time but can be left on longer or overnight).
• Student or teacher wipes surface with soap and water in the morning to remove chemical residue

Most Things Reopening

• The staffing template found here has multiple tabs including duty assignment, lunch schedule, and contingency staffing plan
• Please familiarize yourself with this document. The information in it is important
• The contingency staffing plan is not great but it is what we have. I welcome any suggestions to make it better

Specialist Schedules

From our remarkable and brilliant scheduling genius Ms. Purple

• Jodi and I talked this afternoon and it seems to make more sense for specials to continue when the whole class is remote. 
• This would allow for some consistency in the specials time for the kids and would avoid us trying to learn a new schedule with twice the amount of synchronous specials (one for the remote group and one for the hybrid group). 
• When I originally made that extended schedule, I think I didn't anticipate it would take us until March to roll out the full hybrid model. It feels late in the year to launch into a completely new schedule. 
• Instead, I'm proposing a few swaps to the music and science schedules (for the 3/1 start, NOT next week) so that music and science would be live on the day the class would not have hybrid students in the school (aka the day when the whole class is remote). 
• For the February HIPP period, we would continue with the specials schedule as they have been the last months. 
• The very few kids who are in school in February can zoom in to the sessions from the classroom, either on their own Chromebooks if they're bringing them to school, or the teacher/para could project the zoom. 
• This would be the 3/1 full hybrid start. Next week and throughout February the schedule would remain the same as you've been doing. 

Documenting in Panorama

• Everyone is doing such great family outreach and support work. It is such a strength for this team
• Please remember to document any outreach and response to student/family challenges in Panorama
• The district checks this frequently as one of its data points and we should get the "credit" for all of the great work that we do. 
• Prioritize documenting those things that you do as family/student support For example:
• "I send R a text every morning reminding him that it is time to attend school" 
• "I spoke with J's mother today about the benefits of having her return to school in person."
• "I started taking P in a small group 2xs week to support foundational reading skills"
• Thank you to those of you that have kept this up during the year. 

Rules-Based Reading

• We need to increase our capacity to offer rules-based reading instruction to our students. 
• I am looking for volunteers to be trained in rules-based reading
• Please let me know by 2/5 if you would be willing to go through training
• When I was teaching it was transformational professional learning for me and I highly reccomend it

COVID Testing

• Our COVID testing site will be Tech Boston which means that we can walk to our testing location. 
• I am grateful to the district for moving our site so that it will be more convenient for all of you. 
• Sam will be sharing more information about scheduling etc. as it becomes available.

Black Lives Matter @ School: 

Black Lives Matter @ School Week is Next Week!

• List of demands for the nationwide BLM @ School Week of Action are: 
• End zero tolerance
• Mandate Black history and ethnic studies, 
• Hire more black teachers 
• Fund counselors, not cops
• More information can be found here: BLM @ School
• Age-appropriate activity ideas for next week are: 
• Listen to "Glory" by John Legend and Common
• Read "Black is a Rainbow Color"  by Angela Joy
• Have a virtual poetry slam
• Write and draw about what makes each of us special
• All the resources for the above activities are located in this PowerPoint

 Teacher Leadership Fund Mid-Year Grants  

• The Teacher Leadership Fund is happy to announce a new midyear grant opportunity for this year only.
• We know that now more than ever educators are innovating and creating to address the immense challenges that our students and schools are facing, especially those that have been created or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Applications are accepted on a rolling basis until February 26. Email tlf@bostonpublicschools.org with questions.

EL Stipend

• For those of you that are teaching students with ELD levels 4 and 5 in your classrooms please send me an email that you agree to accept the stipend for this school year 2020- 2021 and next 2021-2022
• As a reminder, you have the choice to accept the stipend or we have to hire an ESL teacher
• We ask you to accept the stipend as our budget cannot withstand the addition of another FTE. 

Material Kits

• The Early Childhood and STEM departments partnered to provide home kits for students in grades K-5th for spring 2021.
• The materials included in the kits can be reused, so students and teachers can complete more than one challenge and use them for individual content area projects.
• The kits are pre-assembled and will be shipped directly to schools in quantities corresponding to the school’s student capacity which in most cases is a lot higher than the actual enrollment numbers.
• Delivery to schools is expected to start on February 8th.
• Legos for K2 kits will be distributed separately by the Department of Early Childhood the 2nd week of February. Details will be added as we get close to the delivery date.