Dear Wines Families,
I hope this finds you well. A few important announcements for this week are below.
Zoom Authentication
I’ve received a number of emails from families who have not received the email to complete the process of authenticating your child’s Zoom account. I sincerely apologize for the continued challenges. There are some issues on our end in terms of setting up the accounts and so there is certainly the possibility that the issue is on our side. However, I do want to make sure everyone is looking in the right place. The email will go directly to your child’s AAPS email, not the parent. So, the first thing to do is to make sure you are looking there. If you need your child’s email address and password, please let me know and I can send it to you. You can log in to the account via Gmail.
If the email is not in your child’s account and is not in their Spam folder, then the issue is likely on our end and we are diligently working on it. If this is the case, please fill out the form below and we will try to rectify the situation right away.
WE DIDN’T RECEIVE THE ZOOM AUTHENTICATION EMAIL
If you did receive the email and haven’t followed the authentication process yet, HERE are the directions. If you followed the steps you received an error message of some kind, that is when you should contact the help desk at 997-1222 or email: family_techsupport@aaps.k12.mi.us.
Change in School Supply Distribution Dates
Due to circumstances beyond our control, we need to move our School Supply Distribution dates to next week. The new dates are Wednesday, Sept. 30 from 4:30-6:00 and Saturday, Oct. 3 from 9:00 AM-12:00 PM. If you made alternative arrangements with me for supply pick up, that date is no longer possible either so please try to make it to the new dates. If you cannot make either date, please let me know and we will work out another time.
PTO News
Please join us for our first PTO meeting of the school year on Tuesday, September 29 from 7:00-8:30 pm. In this meeting we will be conducting board elections, reviewing and voting on approval of this year’s budget, planning fundraising strategies for the year, and brainstorming ideas for keeping the Wines community connected during this challenging time. PTO meetings for this school year, or until further notice, will be held on the last Tuesday of the month at 7:00 pm and will occur virtually over Zoom. Remember, every Wines family is part of the PTO and is welcome to attend our monthly meetings. The link for next week’s meeting will be sent prior to the meeting.
The PTO Wines Times newsletter wants to hear from you! Do you have a tip to share about virtual learning that may inspire or help another family? Maybe it is how you use the breaks, set up your at-home space, or what snacks have helped everyone stay energized. Send in your tips (1 email per family, please) to virtuallearningtips@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
As We Settle In…
While most certainly this is not a normal start to the school year and the amount of time it is taking to find our “rhythm” is certainly longer than normal, we are beginning to find some consistency. I want to touch on some of the feedback we have received from families as it relates to screen time, student engagement, and in some cases, student frustration.
I want to point out that we are still very early into the school year and today marks just the eighth full day. In any year, these first few weeks of school are a transition and a time for kids to reacclimate to school and for our younger students, a period of stamina building. For all students, this a time of significant change from summer routines. Students often struggle during this period and can be irritable, frustrated, tired, etc. While this virtual learning experience adds a significant new variable, in many ways this transition period is similar to normal school years. The biggest difference is that parents don’t see the entirety of your child’s day during regular year so families are understandably more in tune with the moment to moment emotions of your child. We most certainly want to continue to work with you and hear your feedback since this is new to all of us. We will continue to tweak our approach as we learn what makes the most sense at each grade level. But we do ask for you understand that students are still transitioning and this transition may be a bit longer than in normal years.
I also want to touch on parent participation in school. Again, this is very new and certainly there is a need for adults to support our kids. We thank you for this!!! We hope that as routines are more normalized, parents or adult caregivers are able to fade away your support. The way I see it, your main job each day during the regular school year is to get your child to school safely each day. So, either putting them on the bus, dropping them off, or sending them to walk or bike. This year, getting them to school means ensuring they are logged on each morning. Once that is done, we want our teachers to monitor the class, monitor student progress, and monitor engagement, and monitor behavior. Kids wiggle, become disengaged, and even misbehave during class time in school. Unless the issue is severe, generally we handle these things at school. I want to give parents the freedom to let these things happen in the virtual world as well. And we will most certainly be in contact with you if we need your support or intervention.
As a parent, I understand the desire to help your kids in this virtual realm. The other day, both of my twin 7th graders were turning in an assignment during the day and each asked me to look it over. I immediately began to help them when I realized that if they were in school, I wouldn’t be there to look over their daily classwork. So I told them that this is their independent work and I’m not available to assist. Obviously, we can’t pretend that everything is just like brick and mortar schooling, but the more we can try to find those boundaries, the better it will be for our kids.
Sorry for the long message today!
David
