As I mentioned during August PD, you are a critical component of us achieving our school goal to establish a professional culture of excellence. We look forward to everyone implementing our enhanced school initiatives-Keystone cash, Level 2 Behavior reports, Moral Focus grades, and dress code policy.
We covered A LOT during August PD (school goals, policies, online platforms, curriculum, safety, meeting student needs, etc.). We appreciate your willingness to embrace your adventure this school year.
All the August PD presentations and documents that
were discussed are on the U-drive in the 2020-21 Teacher Document folder.
Blocksi is a tool with many different functions. We will continue to use Blocksi to:
·
Monitor
student Chromebooks in real-time
·
Provide
content filtering to ensure students are accessing only appropriate
content
·
Enforce
specific websites or content for students to help ensure on-task behavior
·
Allow
teachers/staff to connect with students through private chat options
·
Allow
teachers/staff to allow/block websites as needed for their own classrooms
·
Use to
administer assessments, such as NWEA, in a secure environment
Blocksi also
provides a synchronous instructional tool (or conference mode) to perform live
sessions with students. At this point in time, this feature
of Blocksi is not performing consistently for all NHA schools.
Because of this, NHA recommends that schools use Google Meet,
especially for synchronous sessions with more than 10 students. If you try Blocksi for synchronous sessions and don’t experience any issues,
you can use Blocksi. The synchronous or conference feature will continue
to be available.
Teachers should
continue to mark student attendance daily
in the myNHA Attendance module. However, a 24-hour window should
be utilized to mark a student absent based on lack of participation. We want to
ensure that all families have an opportunity to complete necessary
participation requirements prior to receiving an Absent
status.
Instead of
marking a student absent for that current day, if they were unable to
complete participation requirements before 5 p.m., leave their attendance
status as BLANK. Leaving attendance blank will ensure the family does not
receive the School Messenger absence notification. Return the following
day to mark attendance as Present or Absent.
Additionally,
the AM School Messenger absence notification will NOT be sent to students in
any school operating in remote or hybrid scenarios. The PM School
Messenger will be sent daily at 6 p.m. for any student marked as
Absent that day.
A school will have a 7-day grace period
starting from their first day of school for which School Messenger
notifications will not be sent. This period will allow staff time to adjust to
the new expectations and processes.
One of our Core Values is "Behave With Care." We want everyone to focus on building positive relationships
with students and classroom routines/procedures during the first few weeks of
school.
One way to build positive relationships with your students is to
greet your students. We expect all teachers to greet their students at the door
every morning starting at 7:40 a.m.! This will assist with safety by monitoring
our students in the hallways. But most importantly, it helps you to gauge your
students’ moods so you can be proactive instead of reactive.
Please position yourself in a way that you can still see inside
your classroom and have a Do Now posted to avoid unwanted behaviors from
occurring within the classroom.
We are excited to be able to
provide you with duty free lunch and preps every day. This was due to the deans
being creative and working diligently to provide you with this valuable time.
Since specials and lunch will be in your classrooms, we wanted to provide you
with additional space, along with the staff lounge, to ensure social
distancing. Thank you to Sarah D for volunteering the computer lab! Please feel
free to use throughout the entire day!
Please note that we are asking
teachers to stay in their classrooms during lunch for the first week of school.
Keystone Staff for your participation, engagement,
and enthusiasm during August PD. I’m always proud to be a part of the Keystone
team!
Stacey, Robyn, and Jamie
for all the 12-hour days, laughter,
exhaustion, creativity, and positivity. No one will ever know the personal and
professional sacrifices that you have made all summer long preparing for this
upcoming school year. I don’t have the words to describe how grateful I am for
each of you. This school year will be great because of your contributions.
Tully, Mechelle, and
Michelle for presenting about our new digital platforms. Your knowledge and resources will not
only benefit your colleagues, but also ALL our students!
Nikki for the joy
you brought me all week long. Thank you for the countless times of laughter and
joy!
Michelle for being
my wingman with the Y5-2 room. You have no idea how much I appreciated being
able to count on you without me even asking.
Sarah D. for being a Chromebook guru. The
amount of hours and organization that you put forth ensured that our Chromebook
distribution was flawless.
Jen
H. for taking care of our staff
t-shirts.
Stefanie for organizing three enrollment
events in two weeks.
Jen
H. for assisting with the staff lounge every
day. I love your “see a need, fill a need” attitude.
Stephanie
for making sure that we had breakfast,
lunch, snacks, beverages, and candy during August PD.
Stephanie for ALL the things that you have
done the past month to make sure that our August PD went smoothly.
Ashley
H. for taking on the task of class
schedules with a smile and positive attitude during difficulties.
Ashley
H for volunteering to help with material
and Chromebook distribution. You constantly amaze me how you offer to help in
many different areas.
Steve
for providing us with audio during
our two family events.
Tracy,
Kari, Anne, and Michelle for
hosting during August PD.
Deb,
Tabitha, and Gary
for making our school beautiful! I walk around our school with pride.
Deb,
Tabitha, and Gary
for taking on additional tasks the entire school year to ensure our school is
safe for students and staff.
Deb
for always going above and beyond to
help me with so many things. I love how you jump in without me asking and
ALWAYS anticipate my needs.
Monday, August 31:
·
First Day of
School-Group A
· Y5-8 ORF Benchmark 1 (weekly event)
Thursday, September 3:
·
First Day of
School-Group B
Friday, September 4:
·
Staff Reference
Guide Acknowledgement Form Due
·
Leadership
Catalog Due
Teri: July 8
Stacey: July 12
Sheila: July 20
Ashley A: July 20
Melanie A: July 20
Jeanne: August 1
Laura: August 4
Cindy Conti: August 10
Jena: August 10
Diane: August 10
Stephanie: August 17
Tracy: August 20
Christina: August 25
Anne: August 26
Andria: August 29
Jenaca: August 30
There is a special gift
in the mailboxes of all the people who celebrate their birthdays in July and August.
Please view the right side of the blog for important dates in
*If you have an event to add or something has been forgotten, please
let me know!
