April 24, 2020

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• Teachers and specialists reminding students often about what times BlueJean meetings/classes are to help them keep a schedule and predictable routine, including teaching them to set alarms and reminders for themselves.  What a great life skill!

• A parent shared with me that when it was announced that school would be closed for the rest of the year, the child said it wasn't that bad because he still got to see his teacher and class everyday. This speaks to our dedication to our students emotional well-being along with their achievement.

• Kindergartners are doing really well using BlueJeans and using the iPad camera to angle it in a way that you can see them and not their toys, pets, ceiling, etc.  

• Staff helping each other out with all of the tasks to prepare for the end of the school year in the building, even when we really just want to see our students again in the building.  Your strength and compassion with each other is inspiring.  Thank you for all you do at Dodgeland.

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Friday, April 24 (today)
• 2pm - Virtual keynote speaker, Adam Welcome, on BlueJeans. (772807416)

• Monday, April 27
• School Board Meeting @ 6:30

• Tuesday, April 28

• Wednesday, April 29
• NO Virtual STAFF Meeting 
• Self-Care Academy @ Noon (See below for more information)

• Thursday, April 30

• Friday, May 1
• The last day for staff to prepare your rooms for summer cleaning.  If you need more time or help, please let me know.

Nitty-Gritty

• Virtual Learning
• Now that we know that virtual learning is going to be taking place for the remainder of the school year, I wanted to evaluate on how things are going for our students, families and for all of you.  Click here to see the results from the survey, as well as a summary of some general guidelines for virtual learning for the remainder of the year.  Our families/parents are overwhelmed, as are some of you.  However, most everyone I speak to is overwhelmed because they want to do the best things for their kids. I am hoping this will help everyone feel a little bit less overwhelmed. This will be shared with families in a separate communication.

• Bridges Math Curriculum Update
• After a lot of research and conversations and thinking, I have decided that it is NOT a good time to start a new math curriculum for our elementary students.  However, this does not take away from the fact that the trend of our math data is not where any of us want it to be.  Coupled that with the loss of instruction from the pandemic, we will have a very important year ahead of us.  It does mean that I will be exploring other ways to address the math achievement of our students. At some point in the future, it is my intention to revisit this decision regarding Bridges.  I do still believe it is a strong curriculum that our students would benefit from.  Just not in 2020-21.

• Future Virtual Dress-Up Days
• We will have 2 more weeks of Dress-up days for students.  One is the week of May 4 and the other will be the week of May 18.

May 4 Week: 

May 18 Week:

• Milk Calendars
• Cathy Lamb needs the completed milk calendars for the months/days that we were in school.  Please complete them as soon as possible and share them with her or complete them in the google drive sheets she created for this.  It is important for us to receive reimbursement for the milk that students already received.  If you have any questions or need the document shared with you again, please let Cathy or myself know.

• Self-Care Academies
• Kalise and Pam will be guiding 3 virtual self-care academies starting next week.  See their email on April 23.
• If you’re interested in joining us, please click here to sign up, at least 24 hours in advance, for one of the following sessions:
• Wednesday, April 29 at 12:00pm
• Monday, May 5 @ 3:00pm
• Tuesday, May 6 @ 8:00am

• Budget/POPS/Activity Account dollars
• If you have receipts for things that you purchased for students during the virtual learning or before the school closure using POPS/Activity account funds, please submit them as soon as possible.  Marie will be in the building next week to take care of these.
• If you have receipts for things from your general budget, please submit them ASAP.  Unfortunately, we are unable to purchase things from our budget because school is closed and it is the end of April.  Auditors will flag it as forward spending at this point.

• End of the Year Questions
• A comprehensive document that provides explanation/clarification for many pressing important questions will be coming soon.  Many of you emailed me questions about these things:
• My Learning Plan - EP process
• Alt. Comp document
• Budget planning for next year
• Personal Day
• Etc.
• Please let me know if you need help or have any questions as you prepare your room for summer cleaning.  The maintenance staff will begin waxing classrooms on May 4.
• Don't forget to hand in any technology to the tech dept before you leave. See Brad's email for more specifics.

• TpT School Access
• I had contacted the rep for the TpT school access site.  She increased the number of licenses available.  Each of the 10 groups now have a total of 20 licenses (up from 12).

PD Spotlight

As I write this, it is the day before what should be a celebratory day in our family.  However, it will be more a day of memories.  This adds stress to my life every year, but this year it seems even more stressful.  I know I am finding myself to be more moody and irritable.  I found the video on the compassion resilience toolkit to be just what I needed to hear.  There are some things that I can do to manage stress and to feel better.  In addition, the video reminded me of the science of gratitude.  In case any of you need to hear this too, click here.  Take care and Be safe everyone.

Friday Funny

I used to watch this show all the time with Matt.  If you've never seen it, it is a pawn shop in Las Vegas that people bring in all kinds of stuff to find out the value of it and sell or pawn for money.  At this point, these items are VERY valuable!  :-)