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May 15, 2020

 Good afternoon-

It was so nice to see many of you in person this week. I am missing the connection with all of you so much. If you signed up for times next week but have finished you can remove yourself from the list. Please make sure to leave your sign-out sheet and book cards in the blue recycle bin on the table in the lobby. Any folders, books, materials that were left in the lobby for the enrichment period should be returned to your rooms.

If you would like to share a short message with seniors wishing them luck please have them to me by Friday, May 22nd. I am anxiously awaiting the Governor's guidance on graduations. He will be sharing that on Monday. At this time faculty can not be present when the students actually receive their diplomas on June 1-3. We do hope to have a plan for faculty to be present for the parade on June 7.

I know that the volume of email has been overwhelming to keep up with. My inbox has never looked the way it does and I have missed things.  I am hearing frustration about the time you need to spend inputting students into the Student Wellness Survey and the Credit Survey. The are important as a way to make sure all administration and counselors are on the same page. We are all overwhelmed and need to work as a team to make sure students are safe, first, and are keeping up with work, second.

Please review the guidance from the Commissioner as well as the Power Standards. You should not be attempting to complete your entire curriculum during this time. Please take that pressure off yourself and recognize that students are feeling equally overwhelmed in some cases. A 9th grade student sent me pictures of her to do list the other day, begging me to ask teachers to slow down. She is a high achiever and can't keep up. Please remember the expectation is that you do not expect daily work from students.

This is unprecedented. If we are still out of school in August, things will have to change to keep students engaged. We all know that. But right now we need to give ourselves, our colleagues, and the kids a break.

Several people have not put grades into iPass per the system we shared two weeks ago:
(Sent April 30) Starting this week please use iPass to record assignments and your assessment of completion of/participation in the assignment. After much discussion on what would work best we agreed to use the following scale, which I shared with parents on Friday:

1- assignment completed
0.5- assignment partially completed, student can revise/redo using teacher feedback for growth
0- assignment not completed, student can pass in at any time

Your assignments should be entered into iPass at least every two weeks, as per the current contract. You can and should continue to give feedback to students through Google Classroom, email, etc.

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