- Bethel is the best community ever and I couldn’t ask for more support or better people.
- Explain Plan B Option F: HCS didn’t make it up…it was one of the options the state provided. It was chosen with both safety and flexibility in mind. Start out remote with the plan of moving to 50% capacity face to face at some point. September 21 is a target date but not set in stone.
- Remote only will be an option that parents have even after students come back 50%. In other words, when a date is decided upon for students to return, parents will have the option to keep their kids at home to continue with remote learning.
- Explain the difference between remote learning and homeschooling.
- Explain the difference between what we did in the spring (emergency remote learning) and what we’re doing to start off the school year (true remote learning).
- Per the Department of Public Instruction, we are required to take attendance everyday, remote and face to face. That does not mean that if a kid isn’t on the live google meet they are marked absent. It means that if they’re not on the live meet, they don’t watch it later that day, they don’t turn in any assignments, and their parent doesn’t communicate with the teacher…they are marked absent. COMMUNICATION IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE!!
- Similarly, we are required to take/give grades this year. This is a HUGE difference from last spring when assignments were optional and grades could only go up from March 13 to the EOY. Again, communication is a huge part of this!! Up until this year, we could use an agenda book to communicate daily back and forth between school and home, now we can’t do that.
- The whole school system is going to begin using the Remind system so all teachers and principals will be moving to that. I will also be putting information on the website more often and I’ll be using the email list I’ve created this week from the forms y’all filled out. I also post things to my Facebook and then set that post to public and ask people to share.
- What does BOY look like? Teachers come back “for real” next Tuesday (although many of them have already been here, some of the time for pay, some of the time just because that’s what we do). We have our BES meeting Tuesday and all day HCS staff development on Wednesday. They will be calling parents to schedule family school visits that will occur the week of August 17-21.
- The visits will be scheduled in 30 minute time slots (maybe 45 minutes for students with IEPs and perhaps for Kindergarten). Teachers will clean the tables/desks between each family. One of the admin team (HH, AW, AW) will be taking temps at the door. All have to wear masks to come in for these meetings. Masks are NOT a political issue on our campus; they are a rule we have to follow. Personal feelings regarding wearing a mask have to be left in the vehicle. This applies to staff and families.
- What will happen at the family visit? For 1st-5th grades, they will hand out agenda books (?), discuss devices and check out one if needed, get info regarding internet access, make sure that parents know where to access the free lunch form, make sure that parents know where to go online to complete BOY forms (or have parents without internet access sign those forms), make sure parents are signed up for the Remind messages, give a daily schedule and tutorial for online learning, etc.
- For K, it will be all of those things plus a very short, simple assessment of K readiness skills. Kindergarten visits will be scheduled Mon-TR and then the teachers will look at the data they gathered during the visits and put the kids into classes. The teachers will call or message parents to let them know who their teacher is.
- Having said that, it is REALLY important that everyone understands that the teacher whose class the student is in right now may or may not be their teacher when we get to the face to face 50% portion of the school year. When we get to that point we will have to see who is choosing the remote only option, who needs to be on which week because of transportation (which we will have to coordinate with BMS and PHS). When all of that is figured out and we will see how many students are actually coming to school, we’ll check numbers in each teacher’s class and move students around the best way we can. We will always make decisions with the best interest of the kids in mind and I know that it is hard to “switch teachers” midstream, but we can’t have a teacher with 5 students in her face to face class and another teacher with 15…it’s a space issue when we start looking at the 6 feet of distance as well as an instructional issue. Anyway, we will cross that bridge when we get there. The grade level teachers have been encouraged to teach remotely as an entire grade level during this first part of the school year. That way the kids won’t get locked into “this is my teacher” and they can get virtual instruction from every teacher on the team. As a parent, you will primarily have contact with the “teacher of record” but will have the opportunity to get to know the others as well. Grade level teams will have evening office hours and I’ve asked them to divide it up so that different teachers are “on call” on different evenings.
- Devices for remote learning: We are in the process of going 1:1 with student devices. That means that we will have an iPad to check out to each student in K-1 and a Chromebook for each student in 2-5. The school system is helping us with funds for these devices. We have 47 more iPads coming (to give us enough for K-1) but they will not be here before the family visits so we will delay checking out iPads to K until they do get here. We are only short about 15 Chromebooks so the teachers (especially 4th and 5th) will be asking parents and students if they already have one that worked well last spring. If so, the personal device can be used. If not, we will check out a device to each student who needs one.
- Short term lunch info. Anyone that came through today to get lunch got food for this weekend and all next week. There won’t be any drive through lunch service at any schools next week (August 10-14). The weeks of August 17-21 and 24-28, lunch will be given out drive through style M-F each week just like it has been all summer. The grant that has made these lunches possible runs out August 31 so if we’re able to keep providing lunch after that, I will put that info out in all of the normal ways…plus via schoolwide Remind.
Share This
- Bethel Elementary School
- Amanda Watson, Principal
- 4700 Old River Rd., Canton, NC 28716
828.646.3448