001okay good evening everyone and Welcome to our first ever pelum virtual open house so I'm Lee Whiting Jones I'm the principal I'm Jus nardy I'm the school counselor to have you joining with us this evening so it looks like there's a little bit of a lag with getting our content onto YouTube so we'll give it just another moment for folks to kind of hop on over all right and we'll get started so again Welcome to our first ever virtual open house we recognize that in this most unusual school year we're doing a lot of things differently and we're excited to be charting this new territory with you so we'll first go over our schedule for the evening so this mirrors the document that we sent out to you earlier this afternoon so we'll have a
002little bit of synchronous time together with Jess and myself and then you'll have some time to explore some of the resources from our school on your own so all of our staff members have made videos about their classrooms and content areas and I have watch them all and I'm really excited for you to get to see them you'll see singing and books and you might see a pet or two um so I invite you to watch as many of those as you like and they will all stay up on that document so you don't have to get through them all this evening and then we also invite you to take a fun family selfie of yourselves and email it to our Tech Teacher J Shri we'll put them together in a digital slideshow of all
003our pelum families and we'll put that up on our website so we can all see each other even though we're a part at the moment so Jess and I are going to share a little bit about our overarching school Vision our mission and our big picture work for the year and then as you look at the classroom videos You'll kind of see how this work shows up at every grade level and every content area a little bit differently so as we think about this year our vision is really anchored in three big pillars emotional well-being physical safety and anti-racism so we designed this Vision to really meet the moment that we're in as Educators and our vision for our school is a school where students feel safe valued and loved so we're going to talk
004about each of these three pillars and how it shows up in our work as a school um and we're going to do that through looking at the three big stakeholder groups so we'll look at how these three things show up for students staff and then family amilies so I'm going to be talking about physical safety and anti-racism and Jess is going to be sharing about the emotional well-being for each of these stakeholder groups so for students as you know we are in a remote learning phase and so at the moment students are um the safest place they can be and we're really really hopeful that we'll be phasing back into the building when Public Health metrics allow us to do so and at that time students will be um getting familiar with safety protocols to
005make sure that everyone is safe and comfortable in the school building in terms of anti-racist teaching and learning students are getting to experience that in two big ways this year so the first is a schoolwide project that we're so grateful for the support of the PTO and our friends at high five books to make happen so everyone in our school all students and staff are reading a picture book every single month and these books are from a curated list that we put together to really highlight the stories and voices of authors and characters who are black indigenous and people of color and we are also infusing our curriculum with something we're calling Black History Month all year long so every classroom is looking at a different aspect of black culture and the contributions of black
006Americans to our country so in one grade level they're looking at the contributions of black scientists and engineers in another grade level they're looking at the contributions of um organizers and civil rights leaders and thinking about how their work um moved forward how we think about social justice and activism in our country so we'll do a big celebration of all of our learning about black history during Black History Month in February okay so for the emotional well-being of our students the first thing that you are all aware of already is that they have daily class meetings with their teachers it's a great way for teachers to be able to connect with their students and check in with them making sure that everything is going okay we don't require that students have their cameras on but
007we do ask that they have it on maybe just for a minute so the teacher can check in and see that they're there then they are welcome to turn their camera off if that's more comfortable for them we also have grade level recess that's being run by our par professionals and it gives the students a chance to check in with each other and do non-school related discussions although they are welcome to talk about school but it's really supposed to be focused on having fun and connecting with each other we also have monthly all school meetings so it gives us a chance to get together as a whole Community um and do birthday celebrations and check in about whatever some themes are that we may be working on schoolwide we also have the let's talk curriculum
008it's been in our school for about two years it's been K through 2 grade and it's moving now to third and fourth grade and they're really focusing on anti-racism body autonomy and gender identity and fluidity and it's in partnership with UMass um the third thing that we are starting this year which we have not done previously at pelum is a universal social emotional learning screening with interventions and what this will look like is all of the teachers will be filling out short scales for our students to check in to make sure that there isn't anything that comes up that's concerning it's really important to do this all the time but it's especially important to do this this year when we aren't seeing our students daily in person and there might be things that might be
009coming up because it's tough not to be with their peers and then the last thing is access to myself and the intern students are welcome to reach out to their teachers and ask to speak with me anytime one of my interns Allegra who is from Smith also has office hours that the teachers are aware of and if they see a student that might be struggling they are welcome to suggest privately that they go and check in in algra's open hours and that they can have some time to have a break from their class schedule thanks chess okay so now we're GNA talk a little bit about our staff so again we're all in this remote learning phase together our staff have been amazing in shifting their teaching practices to using digital learning tools so all
010of our staff participated in a course through Global Online Academy in September to really deepen their practices with digital learning and they've also become experts at safety protocols so I have to give a huge Commendation to our phase one staff who when we were in the building with our kindergarteners and first graders for seven days in October were in incredibly Vigilant about making sure all students knew what the safety protocols were and were able to follow them effectively and so we're confident that when we do go back into the building together we'll be um feeling really good and feeling really safe in terms of anti-racism this is really an extension of work that staff has been doing for multiple years um in the pum community so over the summer the I think the entire staff
011including myself attended a workshop about dismantling white supremacist culture and that was really galvanizing for a lot of people it was really inspiring um and it's prompted a lot of change in our own practices and then in the culture of our building as well so we've been extending that work through some anti-bias activities together as a group and looking at our schoolwide practices and policies through the lens of dismantling white supremacist culture I say that with the caveat that anti-racism is not one-year work we are not going to be finished with that this year um but I'm really proud of the commitment of the staff and the community in moving the work forward and building our own understanding of anti-racist teaching and learning and then making that a part of our school Community as well
012so in terms of the emotional well-being for staff we are reading together as a staff all teachers and staff the book called onward which focuses on on resilience in teachers it's written by people who are coming from the helping professions and really focusing on not going anywhere near burnout and taking care of oneself and making sure that we are doing things that help us to remain positive teachers especially in a time where things don't always feel so positive and then we also took part in a two-day restorative practice Workshop in the beginning of the year we did some restorative circles with one another and we really practiced being able to communicate that way we also make sure to check in with each other on a fairly regular basis to make sure that if one of
013our staff members are feeling like they might need a little additional help we can make sure to support them in that way thank you okay and now we'll talk about families so you're in remote learning with us so your physical safety is important to us as well and um we've popped a link in here to an interactive covid testing map um we're really hopeful that folks are staying safe and staying well we'll continue to share resources about physical safety for families um and recommendations as we move forward through this together and then we've been engaging in conversations about anti-racism with our family community through our bimonthly teacher and family book group so so far we've explored two texts so we've um we you've read how to be an anti-racist and so you want to talk
014about race and coming up in December we're going to have a dialogue focused around the podcast series nice white parents so we're expanding our definition of what a book group is and we're looking at all sorts of media that just makes us think about anti-racist topics in new ways um and so I hope you can join us in December I'll send out more information about that date um and we'll plan to continue to meet every other month so we'll meet in December February April and then in June and then for emotional well-being for families this is again a very difficult time and and having as much support in your community and with other parents is really supportive and so one of the things that we are doing is the monthly Community Coffee it gives you
015a chance to connect with one another and also a chance to connect with school administrators just to make sure that you are knowledgeable about anything that we might be doing in the school and also able to talk talk with one another and then you also always have access to me you are welcome to email me at any point if you have concerns about your student but also if you need some additional support for your family I'm happy to connect with Community resources that are going to be able to help you guys in a way that the school maybe will not be able to and then we'll be sending out in one of the upcoming pum press uh newsletters a resource website that you guys can have access to that will also outline some of those
016servic that are in the community as well as just some reading material so that you guys have any information that might be out there about students and remote learning or not being able to connect with peers and finding some additional resources for that way and we recognize that openhouse is usually an interactive event and that this is not um and so Jess is going to be joining our community coffee next week so we rescheduled it for Tuesday just recognizing how busy everyone is this week so we'll come together in our community coffee on Tuesday Jess will join us in case you have any follow-up questions about this evening or just general questions um as we move into the you know the winter season a big holiday time um to just let us know how we
017can continue to support you okay and I will get out of there little bar um so I wanted to share this quote with you and I've neutralized the pronouns but I think maintained the Integrity of the quote so this is from Rachel Carson and she tells us if a child is to keep alive their inborn sense of wonder they need the companionship of at least one adult who can share it rediscovering with them the joy excitement and mystery of the world we live in we are so grateful for your willingness to co- te with us this year and for being that person for our students helping them keep the joy in this time the excitement the Curiosity and the Wonder for learning we know that it can it can feel really easy to get bogged
018down in the moment um and we're just so grateful for you and for the many many ways you support our school and our work and our staff and one another so thank you now it is time for staff videos and family selfies so we are going to send you off I'll bring the schedule back up so we invite you to take as much time as you'd like to explore all of the videos and resources on that document there's also a virtual school tour um so for those of you who have not been in the building for a while it might feel a little fun to take a virtual school tour and then again if you'd like to share a family selfie with J Shri you can email her at Krishna joh J arps.org so again
019thank you so much for joining with us um we appreciate you we hope you have fun exploring your children's classroom and our school okay thank you have a good evening everyone bye