001ugh [Music] hmm hello good evening everybody my name is todd sadique i'm the interim principal here at emirates regional high school and welcome to open house 2020 style you can see the format is a little bit different but the intent of the evening is still the same the main goal of tonight is really for you to hear from your students your children's teachers about what's going on in the class either about course objectives on how your students are assessed grading things of that nature um but first we're gonna you're gonna hear from the admin team and then we're gonna be directed to videos that the teachers have prepared to give you that information and aside from the obvious reason that we can't have large scale gatherings at the moment some of the other reasons why
002we wanted to format this evening this way is we know that not everyone would be able to make it to open house tonight even though they really wanted to some of you have more than one child at the high school you wouldn't have to pick and choose which teachers you wanted to go see so the videos will from the teachers will allow you to view them at your own convenience and so you'll be able to hear a little bit from all your children's teachers and even from some of the teachers they may have next semester or next quarter so you know you'll be able to watch some of the video and then you know you can go check on the election results and then come back and watch more videos it'll be totally up to
003you and speaking of the election some of you may have heard from your children that yesterday many of their teachers created space in their classrooms to have a discussion about the election you hear a little bit about the history the electoral process electoral college process and give students you know space to really talk about it for the teachers who weren't fully uh confident in having those conversations there were other spaces where students could have those conversations facilitated by an adult and also our guidance counselors were available all day through the school day for drop-in meetings and they continue to be available by appointment and also today some of your students may have been up on the common uh there was a pro-democracy rally up there i think i saw maybe two dozen students from amherst
004high school up there and many of those students asked about attendance and if it could be excused or not and so my answer to them as it is to you just email your students teachers and let them know that you know where they were at and then we can make sure those episodes are excused and um speaking of absences in attendance excuse me our attendance policy is similar to what it was last year a lot of you may have received some robo calls already if your children are marked absent during their a period class and then you're looking to you'll receive uh an email an outreach from their teacher after they've missed three have three unexcused evidences in a specific class then after that there is a district letter that comes at six absences and
005when we get to nine we arrange an attendance meeting and that meeting is really designed let's try to figure out you know which ways we can better support your students and your families to have them attend class more regularly so the 9th grade 9th and 10th graders will have their attendance meetings with the dean of students and the guidance counselors the 11th grade they'll have their attendance meeting with one of the two assistant principals either mr mackey on this camera and then most of the 12th graders will have an attendance meeting with me and again the main goal of that is to figure out how we can best support you know the students to get to class more regularly there's a lot of things going on different people's lives and families and we don't always
006have that information and the more we can communicate and understand you know some of the challenges that are going on with individuals with distance learning the better we can help support them through these times i'm moving right along i have an agenda of things that i'm uh reading from so also i gotta tell you if you're a little uncomfortable like talking to an audience that i can't see so please be patient with me um so something else i wanted to mention was powerschool and grades by this time your students grade should be updated in powerschool and if you have any questions the best way to get those questions addressed is to email the teachers directly you can also include the guidance counselors in those emails as well and they'll do a great job of trying
007to help you figure out you know if there's assignments that they thought they handed in and they're not recorded or grades are missing or whatever the issue is they can help figure out how to best get those issues resolved before i i'm hand the mic over i almost wanted to uh let everybody know about the district's continued work towards creating a more welcoming and anti-racist environment here even in this virtual learning that we're doing so the district has really supported the school the high school and all the schools in the district and continuing that work there's been many workshops over the summer many of our teachers not only from high school but in the district attended a dismantling white supremacy culture workshop um run by joe truss we've also our keynote speaker in our curriculum
008day on wednesday at tuesday actually was dr bettina love she's been doing a lot of anti-racist work we're also going to have another um speaker dr goldie mohammed address our faculty on december 12th and also teachers have been allowed to change their professional practice goal to include the work that they've done along the anti-racist initiative and also to document how that work is appeared in their classrooms um so that's gonna be it for you right now and i'll talk to you a little bit before you go off to watch the videos thank you for being here tonight take care hello everyone i'm miki gramacki assistant principal and i just wanted to share with you some information about communication and this virtual environment it certainly can feel isolating and lonely and so we want to work
009really hard to ensure that when you have questions or when students have questions and concerns that they have some idea where they can turn um so a huge thank you to our entire faculty who made the videos this evening i know on top of everything else they were doing you know that that was another task but one that i think everyone will find very meaningful and it's really important that you feel comfortable contacting your child's teacher or teachers about issues and situations that that may come up or just questions that you have i know tonight is designed to answer those questions but certainly you should feel very free to contact the teachers they've included their contact information on their videos we also are trying to make sure that our website is as up-to-date as possible
010so that you can utilize that as another way to communicate so for example we know that lots of questions have come up about technology students have questions about logins passwords if they have chromebook issues so on the website thanks to sam camera and ella they have created a link that's called arhs help desk and that is pretty prominent on the fir on the front page of the arhs website um at first there's the home link the about link and then the help desk and i think that um families and students will find what they need if they're having technology issues by going to that link something else that families especially new families to the district and families of ninth graders you might not be aware that you have access to the morning announcements and i
011always find that as much as i think i know about the high school when i read the morning announcements i always learn something new so on the website towards the bottom there's a link that says parents and guardians if you click that link you'll see morning announcements and you can visit that frequently and it also logs all the previous announcements and so that's a way that families can really stay up to date with happenings in the high school students of course have access to those as well and the last thing i'll leave you with is really encouraging you to get involved with the parent guardian organization or at the very least please subscribe to their newsletter again if you go to that same parent guardian link the first link is um the arhs pgo and
012if you click that link that will take you to their website and on the right side of their website it says subscribe so tonight if you haven't already please subscribe to the arhs pgo newsletter that newsletter is published every friday morning and i'd like to thank all of the pgo members including becky demling who put that they put that newsletter together every week and i think you'll find that it's a great source of information so again please never hesitate to contact one of us and i'm going to turn it over to our interim assistant principal sam camera thanks mickey hello everybody i'm really happy to be here um i just want to start by saying that i'm thankful um that we have ella stocker who is moderating this for us behind the scenes you can't
013see her um but she is our assistant tech support this year for distance learning so as the assistant principal for distance learning i feel really lucky to have her so i'm thankful for her you all can thank her in the chat um so i want to talk a little bit about distance learning uh this year we decided to improve it significantly from the spring and we contracted with an organization called goa goa stands for global online academy it's a non-profit organization that's comprised of an international consortium of schools and our faculty took a five day long intensive course just before school opened um and so there are many aspects to that course and you may see these components as you witness your stu your students online learning the first aspect of it is to build
014trust and relationship with students so the goal really is to build an online presence and allow for an easy exchange of information between faculty and students as well as between peers building community in an online setting can be really tricky and so we can do that asynchronously as well as synchronously asynchronously through discussion boards and flipgrid video chats interactive shared documents and then synchronously through small group discussions and one-on-one meetings we've worked really hard to also create spaces for students to have casual conversations with their teachers but also with each other we're trying to replace those in between class chatting times it's hard to do and we've discovered i think that we may need a little bit more transition between classes in order to do that well but the good news is our classes are
01580 minutes and so there's a little bit of another opportunity for casual conversation there the teachers have also made it very clear how to find extra support how to get help after school through this so the second aspect of goa is to provide academic challenge for students to support agency as well as encourage students to take initiative so what's key in those ideas and you know what's central to those concepts really is giving students choice um and so part of that is we we can give them choice but we have to help them learn to navigate online environments and so we're building some real independence there so the other thing that's important in this component is building um agency right and so giving students an opportunity to really create and not just absorb information we
016want them to sort of share and teach material that they've built expertise in and we want them to really lead the learning um and not just be passive um absorbers of it and so it's it's shifting um it takes a long time to build rapport with students in an online manner and so my hope is you'll see more and more as the year goes on that your your students will be creating and they'll be creating podcasts and presentations and videos and maybe facilitating discussions on their own so we're leveraging all types of media and we really want students to explore lots of different types of media and my hope is that they can also help each other with that i do know that the students are digital natives for the most part and so they've
017been instrumental in helping faculty out as well and i really appreciate that um the third and last aspect of goa is redesigning assessments and reimagining the time that we use so we're rethinking time on learning a little bit it's not school versus homework but it's time on learning and so that's a little bit tricky it's hard to shift away from that dichotomy and we're working really hard on that um the other thing that we're encouraging is more formative assessments that are graded and ungraded that check for understanding as opposed to large-scale fewer summative assessments that are tests um so the summative assessments that we're hoping um that we're hoping teachers want faculty will use should include a little bit of choice things like portfolios and exhibitions that display student learning will really allow for more
018opportunities to publish and share learning with their peers we don't want students to just submit the end product to their teacher we want them to learn to to publish and to and we want that to sort of go further than just the teacher's inbox this also allows for more opportunity for feedback and improvement during the process um collaboration and support as well as reflection are really important as part of that assessment and so the last thing is we want to really diversify interactions with students we want to elevate our students voices and faces and so this requires a really careful balance between synchronous and asynchronous learning um so synchronous as well as asynchronous learning needs to be active right we don't want our students to be sort of passive receivers of information just coming from
019a screen so we really want it to be active synchronous learning is really best for connection answering questions clarifying questions that students are struggling if they're struggling to understand a concept in math or science or or history or english all of the above um synchronous learning is also really good for small group discussions great for guest speakers so we've had this new opportunity in this virtual world to bring people in to our community virtually that's been pretty exciting um it's also really great for student presentations um we use acernus learning for uh deepening understanding and research but also connection building discussion boards between peers and students and faculty and students we use asynchronous learning for research but also creating exhibitions and portfolios um asynchronous learning really does give faculty the the opportunity to build a
020lot of choice into the curricula and then scaffold challenge into the curricula as well so as you can imagine this has been quite a learning experience for all of us faculty administration and students alike and the learning curve has been pretty steep i hope and imagine that as time moves on and as the year moves on it will become smoother and smoother and you'll see um the the progress that we're making towards this idea of creating as opposed to students just absorbing information um so if you have questions about distance learning please reach out to me um and now that i'm done talking about distance learning i'm going to pass it on to victoria stewart our athletic director thanks so much thanks sam hi i'm victoria stewart i'm the athletic director here at the high
021school and the middle school i'm just going to give you guys a little bit of an update about fall sports so it's been great to see i don't know if any of you guys have driven by the high school when practices are going on with all the kids in their masks and all the coaches really excited um to coach this season but it's great it's a wonderful thing to let the kids go and do other than the great justice learning that we have going on right now a fun fact 40 games have been over 40 games have been postponed this year and that's not because of the fields it's because of covid so it is a fun fact and i just want to say thank you to all the parents and guardians for being really
022flexible throughout all these changes looking on the mia site which you can find on our athletic web page you just go to the high school webpage and then you'll see athletics and you can see all that information there there's a total of 222 student athletes right now that are enrolled in fall sports which is great because we have 10 teams practicing a total and nine teams competing the one team that is just practicing is football the rest they all have competitions and volleyball they've been outside they've been working really hard at it and then they've been going and competing indoors but they're having a great time as well um we're about to finish up next week so we're coming to an end soon and it's just great to see that they're having so much fun
023a little bit about the winter i know a lot of people are really eager to hear any news not much news there right now as of right now we won't start any earlier than november 30th however it can get pushed back similar to the fall uh i knew about the fall 10 days beforehand so i'm not expecting anything that much different modifications the ea guidelines and such should be coming up either tomorrow or next week then the mia board of directors we'll be looking at those and making modifications to the winter sports that we can have once read once that's all figured out registration will be open um not there's no particular date as of now however i will send out a mass email to the community so everyone is aware of that we have
024three more seasons left winter the floating season which is where football has been moved to and then after that we have the spring season those are all up in the air i'm just hoping for the best in crossing our fingers that's all i have all right great thanks victoria okay so um i wanted to also mention one thing so the first quarter is coming to an end it officially ends next friday on november 13th and so in preparation for that on monday and tuesday this monday and tuesday from 3 to 6 p.m we're gonna have a material drop off and distribution some of the semester long classes unlike many of the english classes students will drop off the books that they've already read and they may be picking up some additional books and for students
025who had the quarter classes a lot of the art classes will be dropping off some of those supplies and students getting ready for second semester or second quarter our class will be picking up those supplies as well so that'll be happening in the gym on monday and tuesday from three to six if those times don't work for your family please reach out 362-1700 again this information will be sent out to families again on monday as well that's similar to the reminder that you got today about the open house and you can call the number and we can arrange for a different time if those times don't work for you so i'm not sure if there are any clarifying questions about tonight i cannot see any if there aren't then it'll be time for everyone to
026go and start watching those great videos that your children's teachers have made again you can check out all the teachers videos from your student schedule currently or if you want to even look ahead to see what teachers will have either second quarter or second semester you can do that as well again thank you everybody for coming out and spending some time with us this evening and you've heard it many times but if you have any questions comments or concerns please let us know we'll do our best to address those and you know we need your support and communication now more than ever we want to make this the best year possible for all of us alright thanks again take care everybody