Week of 3/23 - 3/27

Hey Panda Family,

Week 29 & Week 2 Online! Y'all are doing an amazing job. Enjoy this beautiful weather - hope you were able to rest and relax this weekend! Here are the updates from the week.

Baby Panda: Meet Baby Panda Jana! 🐼 Congratulations to Deana and her husband. They got home safely yesterday and are doing well. 

Stay-at-Home Order: Effective Monday, March 30 the school will be closed to all staff and families except for those considered essential by the district (Landreth, Jose, Gardner, Willis, and Elkins). Please let us know if you need anything. 

Positive Phone Calls: At the beginning of the year, we ask everyone to make positive parent contacts. This may be a good time, if you are not already, to make a positive student phone call. I challenge you to make a couple each day so your students can hear your voice and you can pass along some encouragement! I know they would be so excited to hear from you :) 

Grading: Continue to grade assignments. If a student has not turned in an assignment please mark it as "Incomplete" for now. You can continue to input grades into PowerSchool. At this time the district has not decided on a firm date to cut off grades for 3rd quarter. When I have that information I will most certainly let you know. If you are beginning to teach 4th quarter standards I would suggest recording those grades on paper and not inputting them into PS at this time. 

Daily Assignments: As discussed this past week, please make sure your PSL page Elearning assignments are broken down into daily requirements (Monday do..., Tuesday do..., etc.). 

Work From Home logs: All classified staff should email your WFH log to Ms. Willis by the end of the day on Monday (this is for your work from the prior week). Certified staff should continue to fill out your log each day. Certified log goes through April 3 and will be turned in afterwards. Contact Mr. Elkins with any questions. 

Field Trips 2020-2021: As we look ahead to next school year, start talking to your team about field trips. Reach out to organizations to get dates and then let Ms. Gardner know so she can request buses.  Remember, October is a popular month and dates get blocked quickly. Reach out to Ms. Gardner if you have questions. 

Teacher Working Conditions Survey: Thank you to everyone who has completed their TWC Survey. When you have completed it please email or text Terri Ball letting her know. If you need any assistance with the survey she is the contact person for our school. It is due this Tuesday, March 31. 

Virtual Technology Training (from HR): As you are planning meaningful tasks for your staff, please forward this information for hour-long virtual technology trainings that take place at 9am OR 1pm on Mondays.  Here is the link to register - bit.ly/wsfcstechintro.  The training includes Microsoft Office (Outlook Calendars, Excel, etc.) and Google Drive (creating docs, managing folders, creating forms, etc.).  Once you sign-up for a course, you will receive an email from technology (Sunday at the latest) inviting you to join the training via Microsoft teams which is already installed on your laptops.  When it is time to log in you will select the option to attend on the web.  This should take you straight into the training.

Virtual Career/Transfer Fair (from HR): We want to ensure our students have the very best district employees to support their growth so we are going to move from an in-person to a virtual career fair!  We will host a virtual career fair for teachers, operations and central office staff on Saturday, April 25, from 10am-2pm. More details to come! 

Retention: Any considerations for retention need to be shared with me and Ms. Gardner. I am seeking guidance from our Instructional Superintendent, Mr. Hall, on how retention will look considering the current circumstances. 

Staff Spotlight: Thank you to Ms. Ceglowski and Ms. Landreth for organizing our Panda Parade! And thank you to everyone that joined in on the fun. Your students and families loved seeing you, and it was very uplifting for everyone 😊

Thank you to Ms. Gardner and the whole staff for working hard to get a perfect rating from the Fire Marshall! 🚒🧯

Teacher Tuesday Spotlight: Our school Facebook page is highlighting a teacher each week! Our spotlight this past week was Ms. Seely. Check it out! 

IF Updates

IReady: if you are interested in getting your students into IReady, please let Jayne know. We have a free trial with them so now we are able to offer reading and math to all K-5 students. In order to get your students started, you will have to watch some training videos but I will be happy to send those your way!

ISIP: As of right now, students are not able to take ISIP at home. If this changes before Wednesday, I will let you know. I would not mention it to parents at this point. The State is concerned about testing environments, who is taking the test, etc and we don’t want to worry parents with this unnecessarily. 

Contacting families: if you need help calling families for specific IStation questions, I’m happy to help. Nearly everyone I talked to was very thankful to receive a call! 

K-3 teachers: Don't forget to register for this Istation webinar: 

Part 2: April 7th 3:00 to 4:00
Please register for WSFCS - Driving Instruction with Istation's Reports and Resources! (Session 2) on Apr 7, 2020 3:00 PM EDT at:
https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4439656834656947213

Upcoming Dates:

March 30 - Teacher Workday (RS)
March 31 - TWC Survey due
April 10 - Holiday (Good Friday)
April 13 - 17 - Spring Break
April 25 - Virtual District Career/Transfer Fair 10:00 - 2:00

Here is another good laugh for you....(Just in case you are feeling the same thing 🤣)