FRL Forms

 

We need your help! It’s critical that we receive ALL Free & Reduced Lunch (FRL) forms back. These forms provide us with a great source of funding. To try and motivate families, I informed them that every student that has the form completed by Friday, September 11 will be entered into a drawing for a $100 gift card. In addition, any class that has 100% of the FRL forms turned in, the teacher will receive a two jean passes and lunch. Please help Stephanie by reaching out to families, as necessary.

Shout Outs

 

Keystone Staff for persevering the first week of school. A lot was thrown at you, but you made it through!   

Sarah D for providing a location for our staff to use during lunch and prep. Thanks for inviting us into your space.  

Jamie, Ashley, and Sarah D for providing resources to our families under the awning.  

Robyn for making sure the staff room was all set for our interviews.

Jen and Deb for decorating for August PD.   

Sarah D for creating our NWEA schedule and getting feedback from your colleagues.

Tully, Tracy, Jen D, and Sarah Z for providing assistance with the NWEA schedule.

Andria, Cindy, Ellen, and Andrea for starting Aimsweb and DIBELS benchmarking the first week of school. It’s impressive that you got so many virtual students done.

Stacey, Robyn, and Jamie for spending HOURS fixing attendance. I appreciate that no matter what comes our way, you never complain, and you do whatever it takes! I’m honored to be on the same team as you!

Ashley A, Jessica, Amelia, Ashley B, Jenaca, and Laquanda for being great additions to our staff!

Robyn for providing guidance and clarification to the K-5 teachers around Scope and Sequence and Week at a Glance.   

This Week

 

Monday, September 7:

·    No School-Labor Day

Wednesday, September 9:

·    Staff Meeting 3:15-4:15

·    Staff Meeting Snacks-8^th Grade

Thursday, September 10:

·    Board Meeting 6 PM

 

Friday, September 11:

·    Family Connections Due

School Goal

 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.

August PD

 

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 Update

 

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. 

Attendance

 

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. 

Core Values-Behave With Care

 

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.  

Duty Free Lunch and Preps

 

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.