(upbeat electronic music)
- I wanna say up front
that I offer no excuses
for what happened at our fam,
our student forum this morning
with grades six, seven, and eight.
You should have received
an email about it.
I offer no excuses,
and also take full
responsibility myself for,
for that incident.
It's fully under investigation,
and was under investigation
the moment after,
after it happened, but Zoom
is a new platform for us,
and we, we learned some very
hard and serious lessons today.
And, and I want to address
some of those as well.
So first of all, an apology
to each and every one of you,
and to any of the parents
who aren't with us tonight,
who may be listening
to a recording of this.
As a parent myself, I
have four grown children,
I have six grandchildren,
I would, I would be furious beyond words.
And so I definitely
feel your pain on there,
on that side of things, as a, as a parent,
and as a grandparent and as
a, the leader of this school,
I cannot express deeply enough
my regret for what happened,
for our inability to shut it down faster.
And, and some of that was just a lack of,
of knowing the steps, but
not being fluent in them and,
and being able to get, as,
as soon as I was able to pop kids out,
they would pop back in and I kept,
but it was, there's a
setting, there's a setting.
And so Erica, who is
also joining us tonight,
Erica Petrosky, who's our IT Director,
is gonna make sure that we
have deeper training on all
of the security features, and
so we can act more quickly.
But beyond that, I also
want to say that, that,
so we, we bought a very
secure Zoom account,
and each one of the kids will
have their own Zoom account,
and their own AMSA email address.
Now, when school, when classes
are actually in session,
the classes will be taught
through that secure Zoom site,
which they don't have
access to yet, with their,
their AMSA email address.
And that's where the piece
of security comes in,
and they won't be able
to change their names.
So there would be, you
know, no secrecy there,
as far as trying to hide their identity.
Those settings are in place.
Unfortunately at the moment,
the kids don't have
access to their own Zoom,
AMSA Zoom accounts, and that's
where the problem came in.
So they, so every, you
know, folks, we had,
we had 180 something at some
point today, kids, adults,
and people were using their
own personal Zoom account,
with probably their own
personal email addresses.
And then some horrific things were said,
very insensitive, racial,
and sexual in nature,
and your kids never, ever
should have been exposed
to anything like that.
And so we, I sincerely apologize for that,
and we will make sure that it
certainly never happens again.
It's just, it's just, it's
beyond an apology actually,
but that's the best I
can do at the moment.
One of the things that,
that we really pride ourselves on is,
is the fact that we love our kids,
and I say it to them all the time.
So the kids that have been part of AMSA
for the last seven years of their lives,
and your kids as they come in,
they become part of our community.
And they become part of our
community, there's just this,
hopefully this feeling
of unconditional care,
and, and we failed on that today.
So once again, I, I apologize to you.
We will work tirelessly
to get this tightened up.
Thank goodness we have
a week and a half to,
to fix this and hope that we are able
to gain your trust back in
the days, weeks, months,
and years ahead.
So, as I mentioned, there is
a full investigation underway.
Our Dean of students, sixth grade,
six to eighth grade Dean of students,
Anthony Montesion, is, is on the case.
He, at one point in his life,
was a part-time police officer.
He's been a Dean of
students and been involved
in administration for about,
I think it's 12, 15 years.
I've known him for, for 12 years, and,
and I, I trust him to work
tirelessly to figure this out,
and then to, to address
it in, as far as we can.
So I, I want to assure
you that as we go forward,
and Erica can talk about
this a little bit further on
if we have additional
questions, but once your kids,
and you should've gotten
an email several days ago,
to set up their AMSA email
address, once they have that,
and they will soon be hearing
about setting up their own
Zoom account, and those
two things come together,
we won't have the situation that we had.
Any time a student does
something that's inappropriate,
their name is going to be right there,
and it will get reported
directly to the Dean of students,
and the students can be,
can be blocked and pushed out of class.
I tried to do that, as I said,
I didn't realize that
there's another setting,
that when you send somebody out,
you can block it so they can't come back.
So we will work, we will work on that.
I'm gonna just change gears a little bit,
and try to get back a little
bit into the introduction that,
that I had, had planned for tonight.
And then I'm gonna turn the
time over to Brianna and Mike,
and they will introduce themselves,
and they will answer some of the questions
that we had come in.
Typically for our family
forums, for parents,
we ask for questions to
be submitted beforehand,
and then we run through them.
We try to keep the forums to
about an hour and we will,
we do them every month
when there's thing's like,
like this happening.
Typically during the year,
we'll do them every other month.
We really like this format,
and we'll probably continue
offering these this way too,
because it's, we, our
attendance is so much better
than we tried to do these in person.
So they, they will address some of those.
I received a very thoughtful email from,
from a parent a little bit ago with a,
with a list of questions.
And I would, I think I've
addressed some of those.
And the, and the other questions
that are on here are things
that I've already emailed my team,
that we will need to discuss
further and problem solve.
Look at what happened today
and figure out how we can make
sure that it never happens again.
We ask for your, your patience.
We don't, I don't feel like
I deserve it at the moment,
but we ask you to give
us a little bit of time,
so that we can, we can
work this out and make sure
that your kids are protected
and kept safe at AMSA,
because that's why we're here.
We educate your kids,
but you also entrust us to keep them safe,
and so that, we take that
responsibility very seriously.
So that's where we're heading.
I just wanted to, to once again,
welcome you to the AMSA
community in certainly a,
a much more upbeat way than,
than we're feeling tonight.
I love this school I really do,
and I think you're gonna love it too.
This was unfortunate,
and it's not a good
representation of our kids,
or our adults or the standards
that we hold ourselves to,
or the standards that we hold our kids to.
This is particularly
disappointing because of that.
We expect our kids to do better.
And so when they make some
very serious mistakes,
we want to, we want to help them fix that,
but we do, this is a great school.
It really is.
This should not have been your first,
your first exposure to it.
We have a, a school mission and it's,
we talk about educating
kids to an excellent level,
and that we, we educate
kids from all backgrounds
and all abilities, and we,
and we teach them at a level
that will just amaze you,
as you watch your child
grow in our community
over the next seven years.
Well, for those of you,
some of our parents here
have new seventh graders.
I think we have 19 new seventh graders,
and a few new eighth graders
and a few new ninth graders,
so welcome as well.
And then the rest of our
parents are our sixth grade
parents, but, but we,
we really pride ourselves on
having a curriculum that builds
on itself over the years.
And we take kids in from
right now, 34 different towns.
We fill in the gaps, whatever
we feel like they're missing
so that they can access
the AMSA curriculum.
We work with them,
especially in middle school,
to have them ready for that.
And then they are just gonna,
just gonna fly in ways that,
that, that's hard to imagine, honestly,
by the time they graduate from AMSA.
We've spent over a year,
a couple years ago,
creating core values.
And we worked with parents and
staff and kids and our board
to, to look at our community
and try to think about what we
wanted to espouse, what,
who is AMSA and who are we,
and what kind of people
do we wanna be ourselves?
And what kind of,
of young adults do we
wanna graduate from AMSA?
And we decided that our core
values would be integrity,
and that is first because we feel that,
that honesty and transparency
is, is always the best.
And it's the foundation
of the relationship,
kinds of relationships
that we want to develop
in our community and for our
children to understand that,
in being, people of
integrity and honesty is,
is what makes us good citizens in our,
in our country and in our school.
And the second is excellence
because we want students
to be excellent in whatever
it is that they pursue.
So it's pursuing your
excellence, not anyone else's,
but your own, whether that's math,
or whether that's drama, or
art, or it's, it's history.
But we wanna help kids to
discover their passion,
and the things that they are,
that they are great at it,
and that they, they will
love and want to pursue.
And, and then our third is community.
And I think, you know, I
talk about community a lot,
and I want people to feel like
they're part of a community
and part of a family, that you belong.
Everybody belongs here at AMSA.
All of us are of equal
value and equal worth.
And whether, you know,
whether we are any race or,
or religious orientation,
religious background,
or sexual orientation,
or we're all just people.
We're people, and we want
to respect those members
of our community, because we
all have equal value and worth.
So our mission is very important to us.
Our community, I'm sorry, our core values.
And, and then just wanted
to talk a little bit
about our decision to,
to stay with remote learning this year.
For those of you who are
very new to our community,
we are in three office buildings.
They are not optimal.
They're old, they're from the 1980s.
We're in the process right
now of having an HVAC full
airflow evaluation done on
those taking, taking bids on,
on that work right now.
And so we did definitely have concerns
about our HVAC system, and
we wanna know that it's
in condition to be able to
handle the air flow exchanges
that need to, need to be done under the,
to be in place under the
COVID situation that we're in.
We also know that Marlborough and Maynard,
who are two of our core
towns are yellow right now,
if you're following the
state, the state guidance.
Framingham has, has turned red recently,
but that might change.
And these things may change week to week,
but we are following
that very closely and,
and Worcester, and these
surrounding towns, we,
we pull students from all of them,
and our teachers come from
all of these towns as well.
So we feel at this time, until
we know the impact of COVID
on other school communities
that decide to open up hybrid,
if that looks like it's a safe
thing and it works out, then,
then we will, and our
airflow situation is okay,
then we will return on a hybrid model.
We know we have the space to do that.
We don't have the space
to open the school 100%
with the three feet of social
distancing between desks.
So we are monitoring that.
So we felt that the safest thing to do
for all parties concerned,
was to adopt a remote learning
model for the first term,
and that's November 16th.
And as we come closer to that
date, we will make a decision,
give you as much notice as
we can, about the plans for,
for the weeks ahead.
Our goal is,
is to be in the classroom, is
to be in the school building.
We have some amazing, amazing
teachers at our school.
They are passionate, educated,
content driven adults.
They are excellent teachers and they,
the power of AMSA and our curriculum is,
is putting your kids in
front of our teachers.
That's where the magic happens.
And it's not the same to
do it in a remote way.
They can do it.
I have full confidence in them to do that,
but, and they're working hard at it.
They really, really
are, but it's, you know,
we're a brick and mortar
school, right, we're,
we're a blackboard, whiteboard school.
And, and that's what we wanna get back to,
'cause we think is best for kids.
It's just not where we are right now.
So this is the decision that we've made.
So with that, I'm going
to turn the time over
to Mike Nawrocki, our
principal and Brianna Murphy,
our vice principal, and they
can give you some updates
on some of the questions
that you asked beforehand.
- Thank you, Ellen.
Just before I get started, Ellen,
you put it very beautifully.
You know, maybe that's not
the right word right now,
but your, you know,
your apology and ownership
on behalf of the,
I know you put yourself in the position
to take full ownership, but
I was right there with you,
and so was Brianna, and you know,
we're gonna learn from this event
that happened earlier today and promise
that we'll be doing
everything we can to make sure
that something like that does
not happen in the future.
All the parents in here, who
either observed it, you know,
within ear, I know some
parents were, you know,
within earshot of the meeting
today or their children, your,
your child may have reported it to you,
or you may have just been listening,
and in the same room, you have
every right to be frustrated
and upset and disappointed,
but I, I can promise you,
that's not an accurate
reflection of what this school is
about and what our students
are all about here as well.
I'm not sure exactly what happened.
Like Ellen said, we'll
be fully investigating it
to the fullest extent possible.
And you know, based on what we find out,
we'll have to make some determinations.
And if we can identify
who, who did this and they,
they are a member of the AMSA community,
then we certainly, you know, we'll,
we'll consider many different
aspects of corrective action
and education for those
particular individuals
that may have been involved.
So I just wanted to say,
it's not just Ellen out
on her own island here.
I was in there as well,
and so was Brianna,
and Zoom is very new to us.
It's not an excuse, but, you
know, we gotta, we gotta,
we have to tighten up the way we,
that we operate the meetings
and really consider.
We, we could've done a better job
planning this whole thing out.
So again, I just wanted
to, I just wanted to say,
say that before I get started.
So again, my name is Mike Nawrocki
I'm the principal at AMSA.
I'm going into my 11th year with AMSA.
I started out as a special
education teacher, way back in,
I think it was March of 2010.
That lasted for around one year,
a little over one school year,
and I soon became the Dean
of students in late 2011,
and served in that role as
Dean of students for the school
for close to six, about
six, six and a half years.
And in 2017, I was named
the vice principal.
And then in March of 2019,
I was named the principal of the school.
So I really, I love the school
as Ellen, as Ellen said.
I've been here for a very, very long time.
I'm from Marlborough, born and raised,
went through the Marlborough
public school system.
I know the area very, very well.
I also lived in Clint,
I did live in Clinton
for a little while.
I know Hudson quite well,
just from our football
rivalry back in the day,
but I also have many friends
that moved across town lines
and they now reside in Hudson.
I know Hudson quite well,
know many, you know, residents of Hudson,
and Maynard, I'm very
familiar with as well.
So I know those are our core towns,
but just the surrounding
central Mass community,
just, I grew up around here,
and I think that, that really helps me
in developing connections
with the families,
and with the, with the students.
So I'm looking forward to
getting the school year started.
I know it's not going to be, you know,
the greatest start.
It's gonna be an unusual
start to the school year,
going remote, but I'm
confident with our staff.
We have a very tremendous staff,
that's strong and
intelligent, and we will,
we will figure this out and
provide the best possible
education for, for all of our students.
I can promise you that
the effort is, is there,
and we have a very
collaborative adult community,
a very collaborative staff
that is really focused
on helping each other out
and helping each other
to develop and deliver
the most meaningful,
and content rich lessons
that we possibly can.
So please know that we, that is our goal.
That is our mission, and
we are really focused
on that this year.
I did wanna jump into
some of the questions.
I wanna start off with, with attendance.
There are many questions about
that in past family forums,
excuse me, and I mentioned
it to the students
as well earlier today.
With the attendance this year, we are,
we are doing all that
we can to fully, sorry.
Excuse me, got something in my throat.
We're doing all that we can to fully abide
by the attendance policy that's outlined
in our student parent handbook.
We may be able to throw a link
into the chat at some point,
so you have a direct link to our handbook,
but please know that
it is on our homepage.
It's on the AMSA website,
under student life.
You click on the student
life tab, you'll see,
you'll see the handbook
in that menu there.
You can click on there,
and you can read all about
our policies and procedures,
but attendance starts around page 20.
We are looking to abide,
as I said by those,
by those rules and expectations.
So if a student is out
sick and cannot make it
to their remote classes for the day,
you would call in the main phone number,
the AMSA main phone number, absent line,
as you normally would.
We will have staff at the
front desk of the buildings
during the remote phase
to retrieve these calls,
listen to the voicemails,
and accurately input our attendance.
If you have a doc, if your child
or your student has a
doctor's appointment,
dentist appointment, something like that,
where they're going to
miss part of the day,
usually in the past, we
would have, you know,
parents would just show up to school,
under normal circumstances,
and sign their student out,
and we wouldn't necessarily
know about that in advance.
Sometimes parents called an
advance, sometimes they didn't,
but we managed to work
it out under normal,
in-person circumstances, but this year,
I know our Dean of
students, Anthony Montesion,
and Dan Amaral, who works with
the upper school students,
they're putting together,
they're trying to put together a
one pager or a set of
slides for all of you,
so you know how to go about
this attendance process.
But if you do have an
appointment where you need,
your child's going to
miss part of the day,
we, we're hoping that the parents,
it might take a little
while to get used to this,
but parents can call in
advance in the morning,
and let us know, so we know
it, we know ahead of time.
That will make things
flow much, much easier,
hopefully with the attendance system.
Power outages, and just generally,
just losing connections at home.
That's a concern that the students
and parents have brought up.
If there is a power outage, you know,
first, I think the first
thing is, you know,
students shouldn't panic.
You know, they should, if
there's another device available
at home, you know, at the, at
their house, then, you know,
I would suggest that they
try and utilize that device
to get back into class
as soon as possible.
If Wi-Fi is down, or everything's
just sort of wiped out,
and it's, you know, just a
tough little chaotic moment,
and you can't get back into class,
or you miss a significant amount of class,
we just suggest that
the student, when you,
when you regain power or
regain your connection,
student and or parents,
you know, email the,
email the teacher right away when you can.
Let them don't know what happened.
On the flip side of that, we're
also going to be monitoring,
you know, daily attendance,
but also period attendance.
So if a teacher's conducting
a lesson through Zoom,
and they notice that one of
their students exits the room,
and doesn't come back right away,
that will also be
reported to us on our end.
So the attendance team,
we have several people,
we have a whole attendance
team that's dedicated
to tracking attendance
during the remote phase.
They'll probably receive
the information as well,
while the power outage or the
disconnect has taken place,
is taking place.
So just remain calm, please.
You know, if, if you're home
with your child at that time,
or they're home, you know, on their own,
just tell them to remain calm.
We'll figure it out, because
our attendance team will
probably reach out to you,
to make sure that everything's okay.
I just wanted to address that,
because that's definitely popped up.
Switching gears a little bit,
a question popped up about
sports in the athletic program.
I believe there was one
question in that set
that Mr. Finkle sent over
and, as far as sports goes,
more information will
come very soon on that.
We actually have a special
board of trustees meeting
that's scheduled for tomorrow
to review the potential
for the upcoming fall season.
I will say that the contact
sports are quite difficult
to pull off, given the
situation we're in with COVID
and the risk factors there,
but more information will come tomorrow.
If you want to attend that meeting,
it's an open meeting you sure can attend,
or you can just wait for
more information to come out
from Mr. Jones.
I believe he's actually,
he may have already
sent out a pre-notice.
I'm not sure if that went
out yet, but Mr. Jones,
our athletic director, you'll,
you'll see something in writing from him.
And like I said, the board
meeting, if you tune into that,
you'll hear, you'll hear more
information during that time.
One last thing, again switching gears,
we're just trying to address
the questions as they came in,
and then I'll let Miss Murphy go.
Our sixth grade, or
there were some questions
about the incoming new students.
I think this particular
question came from a,
a new parent of a sixth
grade student and the concern
with students developing
relationships with their peers,
and getting to know other students.
I will say, I know
Amanda Morin, Miss Morin,
one of our English teachers,
and also our sixth grade class advisor,
I know she's on this call right now,
I do know that she is
going to be reaching out
to her sixth grade team of teachers,
during their first grade level meeting.
That's a staff grade level
meeting, to discuss, you know,
strategies and ways
for them to collaborate
and open up opportunities for
students to meet each other.
I imagine that we could utilize
our directed study program
throughout the year,
which Miss Murphy will,
can go into the directed study
program a little bit more
in a bit, but we could
utilize certain aspects
throughout our school schedule, I think,
to help grant students
the opportunity to meet,
to meet their peers.
Also at the sixth grade orientation,
I do know that Miss Morin has,
has it scheduled in there that students,
there'll be a get to know
you type of session there,
facilitated by the
directed study teachers.
So that's about, I believe
we have five or six
directed study teachers
in the sixth grade.
They'll be facilitating that
on the first day of school,
on September 14th, orientation day.
And also throughout the year,
I am going to assume that
our school counselors will
continue to run virtual lunches.
For sixth, seventh, and eighth grade,
virtual lunches were offered
throughout last spring,
between March and June
of last school year.
And they, they facilitated
those conversations,
and those went very well
throughout the spring,
during our initial closure phase.
So they're, those are
just an example of some
of the opportunities for your new,
your new students to connect with others.
Of course, it'll be a challenge.
We're remote, you know, things
are obviously much different.
We're looking at each
other in little, you know,
computer screen boxes, but
we will, we will, you know,
put in, put in some
opportunities there for,
for that to happen this year.
So, or during our remote phase,
so please keep that in mind.
And with that, I believe I
covered everything, Miss Murphy.
You can tell me if I didn't,
but I want you to jump in
and introduce yourself,
and answer your side of the questions, so.
- All right, thanks Mike.
So yeah, so my name is Brianna Murphy.
I'm the vice principal.
I'm heading into my ninth year at AMSA.
I was first hired in 2012 to teach seventh
and 10th grade history.
Since then, I've taught,
I've taught sixth grade for several years.
I've taught a variety of courses
at the high school level.
And then in March of 2019,
I became the vice principal.
I do still teach one class, so
you'll, you might, you know,
see me or hear me talk about that.
I'm definitely,
I still identify as a
teacher first and foremost,
that's such a core part of who I am,
and it's great to use
that experience in my role
in administration now, and to
always keep that perspective
as we work with our school
and, and think about, you know,
all the aspects of our school.
I do, similar to what Mike did,
I do just wanna take a moment
before I get to my questions
to address what happened
this afternoon as well.
Mike and Ellen and I
are a very solid team.
We stand together on
everything that we do.
You know, we all equally
share the kind of the horror
and the shock of that meeting.
You know, I've, again,
I've worked with middle-schoolers
the entirety of my time
at this school, and high schoolers too.
I have never even come close
to experiencing something like that.
That is simply just something
our students do not do,
and I think, like Ellen
and Mike both said,
just completely unexpected,
not at all true to our
core values or any of that.
And again, I think that's
definitely why we were so caught
off guard and just shocked,
because we, we've hosted multiple meetings
like this with students and never,
ever has anything even remotely
close to that happened.
Students are incredibly respectful.
We have very strong
relationships between students
and our adult staff.
You know, they're, they come
back and stay in touch with us
for years after they graduate,
even after they graduate college.
So, you know, we really value that bond
that we have as an entire school.
So again, it's just completely
shocking and surprising
to have seen that happen.
I did see a couple of
questions come in, in the chat
about how to address it
from an educational
standpoint with students.
You know, absolutely I thought too,
because you know, one of my thoughts too,
is how do students even
think to use that language?
If you know, if indeed, it was a student.
This is something that
for our new families,
you might not have been as in tune with,
but back in the spring or
the beginning of the summer,
we made a commitment as a school
to directly address issues
around diversity and
equity and racial justice.
This is actually something we're
taking our first few steps,
very direct steps with during our PD
with teachers this summer.
We had a couple sessions
with our staff last year,
before our closure,
kind of revamped and
renewed our commitment
to this work over the summer,
and last week we had our,
our first session with our staff.
Everyone either read, or
was encouraged to read
or watch different works
to expand their ideas,
or their perspectives around
race in the United States.
We had a discussion group
for an hour and a half
on those works that they selected,
and then tomorrow we're
spending, I think it is five,
four or five hours with a
consultant who we've hired to work
with our school throughout the year.
We already have several
sessions scheduled with her
that will work first with our staff.
We definitely feel like we
need to first empower our staff
to address these issues in
their classrooms and make them
comfortable having those
conversations amongst themselves,
before, you know, we do really
intensive work with students.
With that said, our English
and history departments have
already begun the steps to
evaluate their curriculum,
to see how they can already
start to take better steps
through teaching students
some of these issues
in a more educational or academic context,
and using that knowledge to
connect to what's happening
in our current day society.
And, you know, obviously the
summer has been very tumultuous
in our country.
So we recognize that we do
want to address these issues
with students directly when
we have our welcome back class
meetings coming up in the
next few weeks when students
return, and from there we'll move forward.
And you know, it is, it's a long process.
It's, I wish it's something
that we could get done
in one meeting and be like, that's it,
but obviously it's not.
So it's gonna take, it's gonna
take time to really make sure
that we're making a concerted effort
to address this more directly.
And, you know, we need that
support from, from our,
our parents and our families too.
So I, you know, we included
this in the letter,
but I do encourage you to talk
with your children about it,
even if they weren't in the meeting.
Just talk about, you know, what
language is appropriate and,
you know, when it's not
okay to say certain things,
you know, as well, because it's, you know,
it does have to be a group
effort between home and school
and, you know, and obviously
our students have a role
in making good decisions
for themselves too.
So with that, I'll get
to my couple of questions
for this forum tonight.
I'm gonna talk about the schedule.
I'm actually gonna share
my screen shortly too,
to show you a couple of things directly.
So when we created our
back to school plan,
we wanted to have a schedule
that would be easy to switch
between remote and hybrid.
If, you know, if we're fortunate enough
to go back in person this year.
So we opted for a block schedule
that basically minimizes
transitions during the day.
So we limit the number of
times that students are mixing
in the hallways and therefore
spreading more germs and,
you know, are at greater risk
for contracting anything.
So that's why we opted for
four academic classes a day
versus the normal eight
that we usually have,
just to cut that down,
but in a remote setting,
I think this also has a
benefit because it's just,
it cuts in half the number
of balls that students have
to juggle in one given school day.
You know, we know a lot of
our students are gonna be
on their own for a good part of the day
in navigating between their
different online classes.
So I think having a block schedule, again,
fewer things to check off for
the day will hopefully help
them manage that more on their own,
especially cause this is such
a new reality for all of us.
In the spring, we had a
very flexible schedule.
A lot of classes were entirely remote,
or not remote, that's not the right word,
they were entirely, they
did not meet in person,
so they did a lot of
independent work on their own.
So having a strict normal
school day schedule
is a big shift for us, and it
might be for you too coming
from your old school districts.
So I think this, again,
having a very strict schedule
will help us make this feel
like it's a little bit more normal,
'cause we're following our normal
7:55 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. school day time.
So I'm gonna project the
schedule just so you can see it.
This has been in our back to school plan,
so you may have seen it before.
Hopefully you have seen it before.
I'm just gonna switch my tab.
Can everyone see the schedule?
People are, or maybe not,
maybe it's the website.
Let me try that again.
I think I hit, I didn't hit
the share screen instead.
Okay, share screen.
That's what I want.
I wanna go to this one.
Okay, so here's the schedule.
It says blue week.
Can people see that, hopefully?
Seeing some nodding, awesome.
So we have blue and orange week.
We'll get to that in a moment.
So each day will start at 7:55 a.m.,
with the exception of Monday,
and Monday, we are
calling this a flex day.
The only time that students
have to check in is
from 9:05 a.m. to 9:35 a.m.
in their Monday morning cohort group.
These groups are going to be
between 10 and 13 students,
it kind of depends on the grade level.
They will be with
students from their grade,
and they'll be paired
with a teacher who teaches
within that grade level too.
It might not necessarily be
a teacher that they have,
all the better, 'cause they
get to bond with another adult
at the school, have another friendly face.
But the goal of this check-in
is for the staff to have eyes
on all of the students and just, you know,
get that sense of how they're coping,
how they're adjusting to
remote learning, you know,
continuing to be at home on
their own after the spring,
and learning and not in the
traditional classroom setting.
So the goal of this check-in
is to come together as a group,
as well, to also just talk
about nonacademic things.
We're encouraging our
teachers to, you know,
talk about scheduling, you know,
how they're managing
their time on their own.
You know, how they're
staying organized at home,
what their workspace looks like,
all of those conversations
that facilitate the content
learning and also simple
things like, you know, what,
what did you have for breakfast today,
or what did you do over the weekend,
or things like that too,
to just help give a little
bit of that social connection
that is obviously of big concern for us,
because, I think, some
of the best connections
with students happen in
those unstructured times
between classes or, you know,
as people are packing up to
leave and that kind of thing,
and that's obviously so
much harder to do remotely.
And it gives students a small
group of their peers that they
can connect with as well.
The rest of Monday is going
to be dedicated to schoolwork.
So students will have the opportunity
to visit their teachers in office hours.
And we'll have a schedule
that we'll share with everyone
of what departments will hold
their office hours and when,
and then the rest of that time,
if they don't need office hours,
should be dedicated to schoolwork.
Teachers will be assigning
work, with the idea in mind,
that Monday is a day for them to do work.
So whatever is titled homework
might seem a little more
than what students are accustomed to,
because they do have that
time on Monday to work on,
on the work,
on the schoolwork that
they have been given.
So just keep that in mind,
as you see homework being
assigned from teachers.
And then Tuesday through Friday,
follow the same kind of format.
The class is always going
to start at 7:55 a.m.
There will always be a break
from 9:35 a.m. to 9:50 a.m.,
and from 1:20 p.m. to 1:35 p.m.,
and lunch will be 40 minutes long,
and everyone in the school
is at lunch at the same time.
I really stress the breaks
and the longer lunch as times
for students to get off the screen,
go outside, pet their
dog, you know, do maybe,
do something completely
not related to schoolwork.
You know, just to take a break
from the computer screen,
'cause we, you know, we're
concerned about that time too.
I know my eyes are totally
shot at the end of the day.
So I definitely feel for
everyone who has to be
on the computer for that long.
So again, use that time to take a break.
We're encouraging teachers too,
to incorporate screen
breaks into their lessons,
think about what they can
ask students to do maybe
in a notebook or a book,
rather than on the screen all the time,
especially for their homework too.
So for our new families, the
blocks are gonna be unfamiliar,
but basically, on our
typical schedule, we have A1,
and A2 classes.
We have one and two, we
call them odd and even days,
in our normal setting.
So once a student sees their
schedule, in plus portals,
it says, I think it's
B-L-T-U or blue Tuesday.
It's something like that,
that's to show that it's the blue week,
versus the orange week.
So the blue week goes A to D, E through H,
and then repeats that for the two classes.
Our classes that are one credit,
or would normally meet every day are both,
are peddled A1 and A2.
So some classes you will
have every other day,
and some classes you'll
just have once a week,
if it's a half credit,
if it only meets during A1, for example.
The next week will be the orange week.
That's when the schedule flips.
So instead of having A class first period,
students will have that class last period.
Normally we rotate our
schedule, so periods meet
at a different time on
an eight day rotation.
This is a way to kind of replicate that.
Teachers and students find that, you know,
sometimes first period is
a better time to learn,
than last period or vice versa.
So flipping the schedule in this way helps
to just mix up learning time.
It also gives students this
time during academic workshop,
which all classes will benefit from,
on this blue, orange week,
alternating schedule.
Teachers will instruct for
the 7:55 a.m. to 9:05 a.m.,
the 70 minute block for first period,
and then at the start
of academic workshop,
the students will have the ability
to turn off their cameras.
Teachers will do so as well.
They have to stay logged into Zoom.
They cannot leave, but they can use
that academic workshop time
to complete work related
to the class that they just had.
So it's kind of like a built
in jumpstart on homework.
I think it's a really
good way to think of it.
I know again, I teach one class.
The way I'm anticipating using
it is, I will do instruction,
breakout rooms, that kind of
thing during the 70 minutes.
And then during academic workshop,
I expect that students will be, you know,
doing a reading, or maybe
working on a writing assignment
that relates to what they did in class,
that may be under normal 45 minutes,
I would have had them do
for 20 minutes in class.
So just again, it gives
them that dedicated time
to be working on academic
work independently,
taking a screen break, potentially too,
depending on what that work looks like.
And again, we're encouraging
teachers to think of their time
and think of that time as you know,
independent work time for students.
I'm next going to share
our school website,
to show you a couple of different things.
Let me bring, oops, bring that back up,
closed out of the right,
the wrong thing, I think.
Go back to that tab, okay.
So our website has a lot
of resources to answer some
of the questions that
we've seen come up a lot.
So I'm just gonna show that.
So if you go to AMSAcs.org,
you'll be brought to this site.
This scrolling banner has our,
kind of our most popular topics right now.
So, summer office hours, which
is kind of coming to an end,
our back to school learning plan.
So you can click on this,
and it'll bring you directly there.
And then the next thing
on here is summer work,
'cause we've had some questions come in.
For the vast majority of students,
they will have had summer
reading for their English class,
and potentially some math work,
depending on what math class they're in.
So if you click on that,
it will show you the work
that they've been expected
to complete over the summer.
Individual teachers are handling
submission of summer work,
depending on the standards of their class.
You know, they either will
have already communicated
that to students, so that
will have been made clear
within the first week,
but students should
complete that summer work
for the first day of school.
So the, one of the places
that I think will be
really helpful for everyone
to be aware of is our academics tab.
So once the school year begins,
we are going to be
launching a nice resource,
to help everyone find what they need
to find very easily for teachers.
So you can go scroll by department.
I'm going to show you Miss Bandaru,
who's one of our computer
science teachers, her page.
Oh, I think I just,
thought it was under science,
but oh, computer science
is separate on here, sorry.
So I'm gonna show you her page.
So again, academics, the
department and then click on staff,
off to the right.
And I'm going to show a
page that she's completed,
and she trained all of
the students on today.
They'll bring you here, teacher's name,
most of the teachers have
a picture in here as well.
And then you'll click
on one of their classes,
whatever class your student's enrolled in.
And then it will bring you to
this lovely presentation slide
that has all the resources
that students and families need
to find the work that they need to do.
So if you click on any one of these links,
course expectations, course syllabus,
it's gonna bring you to that document
that you need for reference.
The Google classroom icon
in the top left is there.
So if you click on that,
it'll bring you to the Google
classroom for this course.
And if you click on grades,
it will bring you to
the plus portals page,
so you can log in and check
the grades of your students.
Some of the other links on here are,
on the bookshelf will be the textbook
for students' reference too,
if they have an online copy.
And then this little
envelope is just a click to,
you just click it to go to their email.
This is a new tool for us this year.
Teachers were trained on this today,
and everyone's very excited
to design their little,
mini, virtual classroom on here.
And we think this will, again,
be a really helpful tool
for everyone to use, just to find things.
One of the big pieces of
feedback that we've received
over the years, is just keeping track
of where everything is for families.
I think especially parents who are hoping
to support their students,
sometimes have a hard time
finding what they need to find on here.
We are only using Google
classroom this year
for class material.
So that's hopefully, a helpful
thing to clear up as well.
And plus portals is
where we post our grades.
So the last thing on my list
for questions was school supplies.
So the supply lists
were updated last week,
and sent out to families.
Again, we only do supply lists
for grades six through eight.
Actually in the past, we
haven't had one for eighth grade
in the past few years,
but there is one now.
There are just so many
classes in the high school
that we don't put a supply list together,
'cause there's so many variations,
depending on the exact
schedule that a student has.
My understanding is that teachers have
created the supply list with the idea
that students will eventually
need these supplies,
if we go back.
It might seem weird to have, you know,
a whole host of pencils or notebooks,
when so much it's gonna be done virtually,
but I know I'm definitely
gonna encourage my students
to still be writing by hand.
I think a lot of other
teachers will too, and it,
it might help, you know,
students as they're listening
to a lecture to take
notes by hand as well.
So they can kind of watch
and write at the same time,
and they're not navigating
between different tabs,
but again, every teacher has, you know,
different pieces of advice that
they'll be giving students.
We are getting close
to the end of our time,
so do you want to give Miss Morin,
who's the sixth grade advisor
or grade level coordinator,
some time if she would
just like to say, "Hello",
and then I think we'll,
we'll be pretty close to wrapping up.
- Hi everyone, my name is Amanda Morin.
I am going into my
sixth year here at AMSA.
Like Mike, I began in the
special education department,
and moved to the English department.
Unlike Mike, I am not from around here,
and I'm sure you're shocked
to hear me say that,
especially the way I speak.
I teach sixth grade English,
sixth grade grammar.
I also have a directed study class,
and I am the sixth grade coordinator.
One of the concerns that I have heard
from a lot of parents is,
how we are going to kind of give you,
your children a really
good sense of culture,
of the AMSA culture.
And I do want to reassure
you that through orientation,
we have two sessions with the DS teachers
that your children will be doing,
getting to know you activities.
Also during DS, in addition to a structure
that we're putting around that,
we also have an advisory curriculum,
where your children are going
to be able to work in groups
with their peers in breakout
room on Zoom groups,
but nonetheless, in
groups with their peers.
And we will give them as
much opportunity to interact
in small groups in the classroom as well.
So please be assured that they
will have that opportunity
to virtually get to know each other.
And then when we do come together,
it will kind of like, being
like, seeing an old friend.
If anyone has any questions
regarding the summer reading,
regarding the dialectical journal,
or anything that we are doing,
please send me an email.
I also wanna let you know
that in the grammar class,
prior to just jumping
into all of the excitement
that grammar has to offer,
we do about two weeks
worth of study skills.
So we'll work with your child
on how to be very comfortable
using an online planner,
that I'm working on putting together,
how to use plus portals,
how to organize a really
good study area at home,
how to effectively email
a teacher or any adult,
and kind of have self-advocate,
how to be able to speak to a teacher,
and really express what
it is that they need.
And that's gonna be especially
important this year,
when we're not face-to-face.
So again, if you have any
questions about any of what it is
that we're planning on doing
as far as team building,
or as far as curriculum,
just please reach out and
I'll be happy to respond.
Thanks guys. Have a great night.
- Thanks, Miss Morin.
- Thank you, just, the only
question that I saw in the,
in the box that I don't think we answered,
was about summer work and what's
happening with summer work.
The math teachers will
reach out to the students.
That summer work will be due somewhere
in the first couple of days of school.
So the kids will hear directly
from the teachers on their
math packets from the summer.
And I heard, Amanda, I
think you told me earlier,
that it will be two weeks that
the English work will be due,
the summer work for, yes, okay.
Oh, Mike Finkle, could
you unmute Amanda please,
for another moment?
- Miss Linzey, you're correct,
and we will put into Google classrooms,
as well as plus portals,
a due date as to when
that is actually due. Thank you.
- Great, super.
All right, and I, I think
that's, that's what we have.
So I know we have some parents
for older students here.
If you have any additional questions,
please feel free to reach
out to, to any one of us,
and we'll be happy to,
we'll be happy to help if
there's other questions.
Plus portal is, is our
student information system.
You know, that name is
thrown around a lot.
Basically right now, what it does is,
it's the, the teachers
store the grades there.
The schedules are there.
You can check missing assignments,
and things like that, there.
Most of the work that the
teachers are doing this year,
though, is it will be
through Google classroom,
and they'll be then,
teaching through Zoom,
and they're also using Nearpod this year,
which we've had a lot of
training on this week,
about ways to really
increase student engagement,
by adding in little polls and,
and message boards and things like that,
so that students can put
short answers in there.
And I think that's gonna
be a very helpful tool.
So, so basically plus portal is,
it's where we hold the
student information,
and you'll want to check that periodically
to make sure that, that students
aren't missing assignments,
and you can follow along with that.
You'll also have guardian
access to the Google classroom,
and you'll be receiving
information about all of,
all of that.
Sixth graders will get their, you know,
they've just gotten information
about the new email account.
If you haven't gotten it,
Erica put her email address
in the, in the chat.
You can take a look at that
and you'll be getting more
information about, about
plus portals and their,
their AMSA Zoom account as well.
You can always reach out to us.
We really want to be
partners in education.
This is what this is all about.
It's about us working with you,
working with your students,
and the teachers, all working together.
I hope that one of the things
that you've heard and felt
from us as we've interacted
as, as AMSA adults,
is the respect and collaboration that we,
that we really foster here at AMSA.
I tell the staff all the time,
this is the job that I'm doing right now.
I'm a, I'm a school guidance counselor.
That's my background.
That's where my education came from.
I came to AMSA as a school counselor.
I will always be a school counselor,
just like Brianna will
always be a teacher.
And so, you know,
I can, at any point be a
school counselor again and,
and be at AMSA and that's okay,
and then someone else leads the school.
And so for us, it's, it's
about service leadership.
It's about all of us doing the
job that we can do right now,
and we work together like that.
And so we wanna work
together with you, too.
So reach out to us.
We're always accessible.
We work together all very, very well.
There's a lot of respect
in our community for the,
for the adults, and so
we want to bring you in,
and make you part of that too.
And we need you on our team and,
so that we can educate your kids together.
So that is it for us for this evening.
Please feel free to reach
out to us or to teachers.
Your children's schedule
will be on plus portal.
So when you are able to
log in to plus portal,
they will be able to see
their teacher's names,
and the schedule.
You'll be able to match that up.
Well, you'll be able
to see it on the blue,
and the orange week.
Those are our school colors,
obviously, by the way.
And you'll be able to see
who your teachers have.
And then for the orientations,
we'll have the sixth grade orientation.
They'll get to meet and see
some of the teachers online.
And we're gonna do another
orientation as well,
for the older students who
are new to the community.
That will be on the afternoon of the 14th,
and you'll get more
information about that as well.
So thank you so much for joining us,
and for your great questions.
We will take a look at this chat,
and if there's anything that we missed,
we will get a Q and A out.
(upbeat electronic music)
