Community Building
Gratitude - Feeling grateful? Tina Palmer thought it might be good to hear from one another by learning what we are grateful for. Please do add to the document she's shared with "all staff". It's called Gratitudes!
Video Shorts - Want to send a short video out the students and staff? Feel free to send something short to Carolyn Rutkowski, crutkowski@ssvotech.org. She's agreed to put something together for us. She'll keep us posted on details and an expected first publication timeline.
Mentors for Students - As we move into the 3rd week of our school closure we are developing mentoring groups for our students. We will be engaging counselors, paraprofessionals, special ed liaisons and administrators in this effort, and to decrease the size of the groups we are seeking teacher volunteers too. Many of you are already playing this role with your students, your coordinated efforts could really help us ensure we are reaching all of the students.
The purpose of the mentor groups is to provide regular check-ins with all of our students. There is no way for our 4 counsellors to reach out regularly to the entire school population. The mentor will provide regular remote student check-in’s
Weekly mentors will communicate with students via email, or a phone call (using *67). In communication, the mentor will
- let the student know why they are reaching out
- ask the student how they are doing
- reiterate school expectations
- if the student is not fully engaged in courses to learn why
After the communication, the mentor will
- Fill in notes on Google Sheet provided
- Communicate with the student support team as needed
Please reach out this week to sbaldner@ssvotech.org or kberry@ssvotech.org if you are interested in serving as a mentor for the duration of our school closing.
Translation Communication Supports:
Google Translate - use the website or add the extension.
Google Document - Type your text. Click 'Tools' then 'Translate Document.'
Gmail - Go the 'Labs' tab under settings and enable the 'Message Translation Option.'
Phone call - please reach out to Katie. We have a translation phone support service available.
Senior Team Meetings
With parental permission and more thought, we may hold annual meetings virtually to support our senior timelines. Stay tuned!
From the Vocational Office
It is with great sadness that I report both the State and National SkillsUSA conferences have been canceled for 2020.
From the IT Office
- If you have not completed both of your PS training modules from last week, please reach out to me so I can re-enroll you in the training. Remember, if you completed the 1st training but it isn't showing up in your PS profile I do have a list of everyone who completed it. I'm working with PowerSchool to get your profiles updated with this information.
- The Cybersecurity training is due by May 1st. If you have not yet completed that please make sure you do so before the 1st.
- Interested in more training? Consider becoming a Google Certified Teacher! The training is free, self-paced, and geared specifically to how teachers can use the suite of Google products in their courses. To get started, click here.
- Staff Survey on Remote Learning: Please click here to take a brief survey. We would like all teaching staff, including aides, to complete this survey.
- PLC Meeting Time: We have created a place for departments to sign up for weekly PLC meetings. Please click this link, which will open a page on our intranet and provide you with a calendar where you can pick the time for your department PLC. You need to pick a time slot for each week - the calendar goes out until our anticipated return date. Only one person from each department should do this, either the department head or a person the department designates to do this.
- Student Confidentiality Reminder: Teaching students remotely brings up a whole new level of confidentiality concerns we all need to be cognizant of. All of the district-provided apps/programs we provide are FERPA compliant, but if you find an app/program you want to use with your students please run it by me first so I can review their privacy policy to make sure it meets FERPA requirements. There is a TON of free stuff out there, but before using any of these we need to be sure that the program will not compromise the privacy rights of our students. You also need to be sure not to record any Google hangouts where students are present. In addition, in order to protect your own privacy, be aware of anything that may be viewable in the background while you're doing a google hangout with your students.
- Be sure to check out the Remote Learning Center on our intranet. We have put together a host of useful information that will help you as we transition to this new way of working with our students. A great place to start is Google's "Teach From Home" center. We are adding new information to the Intranet on a regular basis so please make this a page you visit frequently. If there is anything that you would like to see added to the site please submit a ticket and let us know!
- The IT department is here to help! We have a process set up to connect remotely to your machines to help with any technical issues and are available to answer any technical questions you may have. Please continue to use the help desk whenever possible by using Mojo or emailing techsupport@ssvotech.org. If you are unable to do that you may call or text me at 781-222-0919.
- SST Game Night - The IT department would like to organize an SST game night. There are a lot of interactive online games we can play together to help us keep in touch and have some fun. We've been testing out some of these games and have had a lot of fun doing them! If you're interested in joining, fill out this quick survey and we'll use the information provided to pick the best time and game.