Dear Eagles and Eagle Families,

Tomorrow, April 1st we are so excited to be launching our online learning platform for students.  Our teachers are thrilled to start interacting and working directly with students again. As we move into this new educational platform, there are some key elements that will assist your students in being successful.

What will the learning look like?  As an overview, all your child’s teachers are preparing daily lessons that will be posted daily through Google Classroom, and will be estimated as 15-30 minutes in terms of the amount of time for students working per class.  Students should log-in through Clever using the same user name and password they did during the normal school year. Teachers may “push out” assignments and lessons at a particular time, but to be clear, that does not mean students have to access it at that time. Please check with your child to make sure they have been added into all of their teacher’s Google Classrooms - most teachers sent out emails and communications through Aeries.  If you are having trouble, you can email teachers directly so they can help get your child set up.

Using Google Classroom: During our time of online learning, students need to go onto Google Classroom daily and then can determine how they will complete their individual assignments during that day.  Overall, the expectation is that students should have no more than about 3 hours of work time daily, but students can break up that time throughout their day, and we encourage breaks!  Students are not accustomed to sitting for that long to complete work all at once, and we suggest maintaining a routine at home that works for your child. Encourage your child to wake up at a close to typical time, complete some normal morning routines (morning chores, breakfast, etc), and then have a specified time each morning that they look through all classes and determine how they will work through each class. 

Contacting Teachers and Help Resources? Teachers also all have virtual office hours, which are optional times for students to contact teachers for support or questions.  Teachers will all post these hours on their Google Classroom, and they will also be posted on the school website for parent and student reference.  We have added a “Community” Page where information and resources for our Online Distance Learning will be posted and shared. For your reference, Virtual Office Hours are in 30 minute segments, and basically is just set time that your child’s teacher is available either through email, Google Classroom or Zoom to support.   As always, teachers are available during regular school hours to answer any questions that may arise. You may contact your teachers via email or Google Classroom. Please note that teachers are not available 24 hours a day! While being online has allowed teachers flexibility in responding to inquiries, they are not always available to readily respond after 3:00pm. We want to support the time each teacher needs to be at home with his or her family, and we want our students to also have that important family time as we move into this new structure.

What about grades and attendance?  As we utilize the online platform, students will be given regular feedback from teachers on their learning, which requires regular participation by students, but formal grades will not be assessed.   Learning is the goal! Additionally, there will not be attendance in the formal sense, but teachers will be checking in with students and the administration on students who are not participating or interacting so that we can follow up on supporting those students.  

Teamwork!  Finally, as we work through learning together, please reach out to teachers with questions.  Teachers want to know how students are doing, and if you feel your child is struggling in any way, we want to know!  One of the best ways to support your child is to assist them in pulling up their Google Classroom to review their classes, even if it’s later in the day.  Additionally, help your students in reaching out to teachers directly to help build their capacity to advocate and ask questions. We appreciate the team effort and all our parental support, but we also want you to know that we are here to teach - and we want to know how we can support you at home.  

Once again, thank you to everyone in our Mesa View and OVSD community.  This has been a learning process for everyone, but one that brings exciting and innovative opportunities.  We are so excited to see what kind of new learning and growth our students will see as our teacher dive into new and creative ways to engage all students.

Your Principal,

Jadyn Grunbaum