November 6, 2020

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• Teachers encouraging students who have been working on making good behavior choices by consistently following their behavior plan and celebrating their progress.  I love seeing the pride in their eyes when they have a great day!
• Teachers communicating with parents with student concerns and successes frequently.
• A 4K student walked up to me and said, "Excuse me, Mrs. Huelsman" without any prompting from anyone.  So polite!  
• A student that has been out of school for a number of days was so happy to be back and see his friends.  He said, "I missed seeing my teacher and friends in person!"
• A substitute teacher told me today how impressed she is with Dodgeland and all the things the teachers are doing to keep others safe and provide an education to kids every day.

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday, November 9
• New Teacher mtg in Room 315 @ 3pm

• Tuesday, November 10
• Complete the blended learning survey by 7:30am (see below)

• Wednesday, November 11
• Veterans' Day (See below for resources)
• Workout Wednesday 
• Elementary Staff meeting (9203861003 on BlueJeans)

• Thursday, November 12

• Friday, November 13

Nitty-Gritty

• Veteran's Day
• We are unable to hold our annual Veteran's Day assembly, but there will be a video that will contain the traditional elements of our assembly shared with you through email.  Because it is a video, you can decide when it best fits into your schedule for the day.  In addition, below are two short video links that were shared with me that you may find helpful for your class.
• Veterans Day Thank You!
• Bet You Didn't know: Veterans Day History

• Prodigy Update
• This week I met with our partner school team members from Prodigy online.  Lisa (the trainer from August) shared with me that our students have answered 67,200 questions so far this year.  85% of the questions have been answered outside of our school hours and teachers have created 31 assessments for students.  WOW!  
• In the coming weeks, there will be some opportunities for students and parents.  Watch for more information regarding a virtual Parents' Night put on by Prodigy team members online for our families to learn about prodigy.  
• Also, in December we will hold a Prodigy Tournament for students.  More information will be shared later this month.
• Finally, our internal Prodigy support teachers are Taylor Huso and Niki Stanton.  If you have specific questions about Prodigy, please reach out to them or myself.

• Blended Learning
• More and more students/families are choosing to participate in blended learning in the last couple of weeks.  I have heard from some of you about how blended learning is going in your own classroom.  I'd like to have some feedback from all of you about how blended learning is going in your classroom.  Please complete this survey before Tuesday at 7:30.

• Ipad Reminder
• Please remind your students to clean and sanitize their iPads frequently.  Remember the spray needs to be sprayed on the towel, then used to wipe off their iPad.  Especially because the iPads go home, it might be an addition to the start of the day routines or end of the day procedures or both.

• Dodgeland Strong Fundraiser for Ava Finger
• Here’s your opportunity to order Dodgeland gear and support a good cause. Order HERE November 2 - November 18th. 
  All proceeds will benefit the Ava Finger family to help support the many financial needs that have come from her tragic mountain biking accident that caused paralysis. We know that Ava is working hard in her recovery and we want to support her and her family with our #DodgelandStrong support. 

• Dismissal Information
• Not that you could tell this week, but it is November and it will start to get colder soon. When it is colder or is raining, the number of parents picking up students increases. One concern that is brought to our attention is the number of cars that are backed up onto Hwy. 26. This has the potential to be a safety concern especially on snowy days. One way to address this is to make sure that the buses are moving the MS/HS side on time. This means that it is very important that students riding a bus get outside with all of their materials right away. If the buses have to stay longer in the circle drive, we can not start moving our parent pick-up line on time. We don't want this domino effect to cause unsafe situations for our parents either. Please dismiss students outside right at 2:30 and remind them not to dawdle. :-)

• Link to my Calendar
• If you want to see my calendar and set up a time to meet with me, please do so. HERE is the link.

PD Spotlight

As the number of positive cases rise and the holidays get closer, the more anxious I become about the pandemic.  The mental war in my head about how much I miss my family, and yet not wanting to jeopardize any of their health is exhausting to think about.  I'm sure many of you are in the same boat.  Jessica shared this article with me and I found it exceptionally thought provoking.  How am I sharing this anxiety with my children unconsciously?  However, it also made me think about all of the routines that we have in our school.  We have sanitizing routines, we have limited supply sharing, we have a different room set up, etc.  We also have this amazing group of teachers that share sincerely and positively how sometimes we can't do exactly the same things as last year, but reframing it with what we CAN do.  The other part of this article I liked was the video that accompanies it to share calming strategies.  I hope you find it as helpful as I did.

Friday Funny