Week Beginning April 6, 2020

All Week

Virtual MS Schedule

(times updated to begin 04/06/20)

Advisory 8:00-8:10am 

1 8:15 - 8:50am

2 8:55 - 9:30am 

NEW Brain Break 9:30 - 9:40am with Coach Myah

3 9:40 - 10:15am

4 10:20 - 10:55am

NEW Brain Break 10:55 - 11:05am with Coach Alex

5 11:05 - 11:40am

6 11:45 - 12:20pm

Advisory 12:25 - 12:35pm

Optional Extras

Teacher Office Hours 1:00 - 2:00pm 

Athletics Stay Active Session  2:00 - 2:40pm (starts April 13)

Extended Day 3:00 - 4:00pm (starts April 13)

The Week Ahead

Morning Advisory Slides - WE ARE USING THESE AGAIN EVERY AM

Monday, April 6 - Motivation Monday 

MS Leadership Team Meeting @ 2:15pm 

Tuesday, April 7 - Try Something New Tuesday

• Grade Level Team Meetings 
• Grade 6 @ 2:15pm 
• Grade 7 @ 2:45pm 
• Grade 8 @ 3:15pm 

Wednesday, April 8 - WhatCha Watching Wednesday  

• Nothing extra

Thursday, April 9 - Throwback Thursday 

• MS Faculty Meeting @ 2:15pm 

Friday, April 10 - Fun Fact Friday

• Student Movie with Ms. Strate @ 3pm in Teams. Faculty attendance not required.
• Virtual MS Happy Hour 5pm 

Action Items

• Advisory: This has now shortened to 10 minutes in the morning and afternoon. We are asking that each advisory follow the same format that is stated below to ensure consistency and give some structure, although many of you are already doing something similar. There is also a new talking point each day that will be posted on the Advisory slides. Please ask one or two students to reflect on this and share with the group. Next week, the same talking point but others can add their ideas and thoughts. Advisory slides show this content each day, so it would be helpful to show your screen with this visible each morning to your advisory. 
• Morning Advisory Format:
• Attendance (in myAW)
• Temperature Check in Chat
• Emojis OR Number Scale (1-5)
• Go over new schedule and new opportunities starting this week
• Talking Point
• Motivation Monday - What motivates you? Is there a song that always makes you feel better? A quote that speaks to you? A Ted Talk? A movie? A novel? A character? What is guaranteed to cheer you up and make you feel powerful and capable?

• New Report Outline:  As we discussed, the subject reports can be a less intense than they have been, focusing on positives but also being honest. There is also a new example linked under Q3 in the guidelines that you can refer to. 
• The basic format is as follows:
• Paragraph #1
• Opening positive statement
• Positive PRIOR to going online
• Positive AFTER going online
• Paragraph #2
• Goal ideally related to an area they reflect they need to work on.
• Goal needed reflecting online (this could be the same for many students!). I would suggest that teachers come up with 3 or 4 that they could use and interchange as necessary. 
• Closing upbeat sentence
• Due dates:
• Subject Overview - by 8am Friday, April 10
• Subject Narratives - by 3pm Monday, April 20

• Student Reflections: Ruth has sent out multiple reminders to students but the following have still not completed theirs. Advisors, please prompt your kids to complete this by the end of Wednesday. On Thursday morning, Ruth will collate all this information and create separate tabs by advisory and section. She will let you know when this is complete and ready for your review so that you can use them as needed in your subject narratives.

Grade 6:

Altayar, Esra

Andrew, Rose

Callahan, Kamryn*

Sanders, Natalie

Simpson, Emmy

Grade 7:

Calcote, Raiden

Cook, Katie

Hedges, Elise

Kaliqani, Fiona

Salamone, Alison

Seher, Mia

Stark, Raya

Tiwari, Arun

Grade 8:

Allen, Zoe

Bland, Abby

Buescher, Ava

Daniels Maestas, Adriana*

Dixon, Chloe*

Goncharova, Anna*

Johnstone, Liam

Junior, Kai

Nguyen, Sophie

Oden, Malia

Changes to the Week Ahead, Updates, & Reminders

• Schedule Changes: We have made the following changes to the Virtual MS Schedule. 
• Addition of 5-minute transition time between classes. This has extended the end of the day but not the length of the academic lessons. 
• We have renamed 'breaks' to 'Brain Break'. Mike and his team will now be running an active ten minutes to get all our MS students blood flowing and them moving. The links are the same each day and have been posted on the Teams, under the tab 'Links you may need'. 
• Teacher office hours have been added from 1-2pm each day. This should be a time when you are at your computer and available through email or Teams in case students wish to seek help from you. This may also be a time when you require a student to work with you. If you do request this, please email the student and copy the advisor on this, and if you feel necessary, the parent. 
• Coming next week (April 13), we will add Athletics Stay Active Session and Extended Day as daily optional activities for students. More details will be revealed at the MS Faculty Meeting on Thursday.

• Meetings: We will return to our normal Grade Level Team Meetings and MS Faculty Meetings on the usual days, but with a slight change in their start time. Ruth will edit the calendar invites on Monday.

• Conference Day: Conference Day has now been rescheduled for Friday, May 1 (one week later than planned). Pick-A-Time link will go out to parents in the Flash next week. This will be a non-teaching day so no classes will occur. Unlike past conferences, this will not require the students to prepare a presentation, rather it to be a discussion on how the student is doing with the online format and progress mention in their report. We are hoping that we will be able to facilitate specific questions the parents may have, particularly if they relate to a specific subject, prior to the conference. That will allow the advisor to be better prepared for the conversation. We will talk more about these conferences on Thursday at our MS Faculty Meeting. 

Microsoft Teams Tips and Updates

• The links to Brain Breaks and Math Help meetings can be found in the General channel under Advisory or Subject Classes. By the tabs - Posts, Files, and so on, you should find the 'Links you may need'. This is a word doc that is the same for everyone. I also demo how to find this in the Welcome Back video I emailed to all the grades. 

Updates from Sandra Bush

• Hopefully you were all able to take some time off, relax and maybe even get some house projects done, or explore some new hobby over the last couple of weeks. As we head back into our online learning world, I wanted to remind you of a few resources that are available to you. 
  • First and foremost, I hope you will read again the Faculty Guidelines for Virtual School that we shared at the beginning of this adventure. I'd like to point you, specifically, to points 4-10.  They are helpful to me as I plan and think about my classes and I hope they are helpful to you as well.  
  • Second, please remember to visit the AWS Technology Resources document frequently. In addition to How-to guides, I try to update the file as often as possible with information about free and new resources available to the school due to COVID-19, and based on what I hear from all of you and others. 
  • I have also recently created subcategories for different subject-specific resources as well. I will continue to update those as I hear / find new ones.
  • Lastly, I know that for many of you PD opportunities are the last thing on your mind. And that is ABSOLUTELY fine right now. We can only handle what we can handle. Others of you are craving opportunities to learn more about online teaching, to find community amongst other educators and/or to continue improving your craft, as always. I also know many of you receive notices of PD opportunities directly, so some of this may be redundant. That said, if (and when) you feel you have the bandwidth for some PD here are a few available upcoming opportunities:
  • Have you ever thought about proposing a breakout session for the NWAIS Conference? It's October 9th at Charles Wright. NWAIS announced next year's theme, "Every Student Counts: Assessment for Growth and Equity." You can learn more about the conference and proposing a session here: https://www.nwais.org/page.cfm?id=518&start=03/06/2021&verbose=12011
  • KLING CHATS - These sessions are held with Klingenstein alumni and independent/international school educators to share successes and challenges. They not webinars, but "lightly-facilitated conversations" to help independent and international school educators connect and problem-solve together.  Each conversation will center on 2-3 focus questions.  
  • Tuesday, April 7, 8:00 PM EST - Middle School How might we integrate social-emotional learning for middle schoolers into our online schooling? How might we help our students maintain connections and consult with their teachers remotely? What structures or techniques can be used to help students and their parents manage new schedules and educational tools? Register here
  • From NCGS -
  • April 7th 
  • Addressing Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in Distance Learning: 5:00 - 5:50 p.m. EDT (UTC-4)
  • April 9th
  • Teaching the Performing & Visual Arts Online: 4:00 - 4:50 p.m. EDT (UTC-4)

Absent Students

• Follow this link for Anticipated Absent Students

Kudos / Funny Stuff / Anything other than work...

• Thanks to all who joined in with Will's great idea to connect with kids this week. It is the extra things like this that really make our school a special place.

• We have a very creative faculty and if you haven't checked out Sam's YouTube or Devon's Blog, please do. Just a few more examples of our faculty going above and beyond! If anyone has other cool things to share, please let me know. 

• And I killed even more brain cells this last two weeks watching the following: 
• Tiger King - You literally can't make this stuff up, but I couldn't stop watching. If you haven't seen the memes on the internet, simply Google it... 
• Sex Education - Set in a UK high school in beautiful countryside, this is a witty and topical show that Shelli recommended and that I was hooked on. Thank goodness, AWS is NOTHING like this!
• Ozark - Dark but addictive. All three seasons in two weeks. Yup, I need something a bit more peppy and upbeat next. Any recommendations? 

The Month Ahead

• Stuck in our houses...
• Friday, April 10 by 8am - Subject Overviews due
• Monday, April 20 by 3pm - Subject Narratives
• Friday, May 1 - Virtual Conference Day, no classes