Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Weekly Update 9/30

 

Dear Wines Families, 

Thanks again for your patience as we roll out the final phase of our online platform and connect secure Zoom links with Schoology. It does appear that connection is inconsistent. Some classrooms are connecting quickly and some are slower. The initial connection can be slow—particularly when class starts in the morning. A “white screen” is not an error and so please wait a little while. Our teachers are monitoring the situation and have a backup plan to use the older links. We completely understand that this can be frustrating and we are doing all that we can to ensure a safe and easy online experience. But, as I’ve said since August, there will be hiccups so patience is key! Here is the rest of the news today: 

School Supply Distribution Today and Saturday
We will be hosting our “drive through” school supply distribution today from 4:00-6:30 PM and again on Saturday from 9:00 AM-Noon. Please enter through main Newport Rd. entrance and drive up to the front doors. You will be greeted by a staff member. Please have your child’s name and grade level written on a piece of paper and hand this piece of paper to the staff member. This will help us speed up the process. If you have library books or classroom books from last year, we can collect those from you as well. 

Shout Outs to Ms. Wahl
The PTO newsletter, The Wines Times, wants to send Ms. Wahl our loudest shout outs as she heads to retirement.  Please send your email message to shoutoutsformswahl@gmail.com. 
Shout outs should be in text, png or jpeg format only. One message/file per family please.

Curriculum Night: Oct. 6 
Our virtual Curriculum Night takes place next Tuesday evening beginning at 6:00 PM. Grade levels will present at 6:00 to 6:25 and will repeat their presentation at 6:30 until 6:55. I will host a schoolwide webinar at 7:00. Zoom links will be coming out soon. 

Walktober Continues!!
Our annual celebration of Walktober will go on this year! For returning families, you will recall that during the month of October, we participate in International Walk to School Day and also have a weekly walk to school all month. While we can’t walk to school this year, we will be encouraging all of our kids to take a daily walk each Wednesday after the morning meeting. 

See you tonight or Saturday for supply distribution. 

David







Monday, September 28, 2020

Wines Update 9/28

 Dear Wines Families,

I have a couple of important announcements today that I need to get out to you before my regular Wednesday message.

PTO Meeting Tomorrow Night

Our PTO meeting takes place tomorrow night at 7:00 PM. Please check your email for a Zoom link. As a reminder, all Wines parents are members of the PTO and are invited to the meetings.

School Supply Distribution: Wednesday or Saturday

We will be hosting drive through supply distribution on Wednesday from 4:00-6:30 and Saturday from 9:00 AM-noon. Please enter through the main Wines entrance from Newport. Please stay in your car. You will be greeted by a staff member. It will be most helpful if you write your child's name and grade on a piece of paper and hand that piece of paper to the staff runner. This will speed up the process greatly. You may also drop off library books from last spring or classroom books your child may have borrowed. If you can't make one of those times, please contact me and we will try to arrange an alternate opportunity. 

Save the Date: Curriculum Night Oct. 6

Curriculum Night takes place next Tuesday, Oct. 6th at 6:00 PM. Look for more details from your child’s teacher and/or from me later this week.

Zoom Update

At this time, we have successfully authenticated all students in Zoom. Parents and students do not need to do anything at this time so no need to follow any steps that came to your child’s email. Teachers will be working with students this week to ensure they are able to find and use the secure Zoom link in Schoology. Teachers will alert families as to when their class will switch from the link they have been using thus far to the new link. We are hoping this occurs for each classroom this week.

David

Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Weekly Update 9/23

 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






Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Weekly Message 9/16

Dear Wines Families, 

I hope this finds you well and I hope the kids are getting used to full days of remote learning. As I indicated last week, our teachers are working on tweaking their daily schedules as they learn about students’ engagement level and stamina in this new learning environment. Teachers too are learning about their own stamina. 

Schoology Begins Next Week

Next week our “classrooms” will be found in Schoology. Teachers have been working with students this week on how to access and use Schoology and working with families who may not have received their QR codes in the mail. 

School Supply Distribution: Sept. 24 and Sept. 26

Next week, we will be distributing school supplies for every student. There will be drive through distribution at the front of the school building. 

Distribution will take place on Thursday Sept. 24 from 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM. A second opportunity will take place on Saturday, Sept. 26 from 9:00 AM to noon. If you are unable to attend one of those distribution times, please let me know and we will work on finding another opportunity. 

At the distribution, if you have library books or classroom books/materials from last year, you can drop those off at that time. If the materials are for a specific teacher, please indicate on the item which teacher it belongs to. Library books do not need any identifier as they have school barcodes. In addition, included in returning students’ supply box will be their yearbook from last year. 

If you are a new enrollee and you have not dropped off your enrollment paperwork yet, we can collect it at that time. If you dropped your enrollment paperwork off earlier and were not able to retrieve your originals, we will have those ready for you at that time as well. There will be a distribution of Art materials at a later date.  

To expedite the process, please have a sign with your child’s first and last name and grade level visible to us from your car.

Attendance

If your child will be absent from school, please call the school phone at (734) 994-1973 or email Robin Moore at moorero@aaps.k12.mi.us. As with a regular school year, we need to account for each student daily. As this is not a “normal” school year, we know that some families have consistent absence patterns due to the unique situations in their families. We certainly understand this. If you have such a situation, please be sure your child’s teachers knows and also send Robin an email with this information so we can make note. 

Thank you for your continued support. As always, please let me know if you have any questions. 

David


Friday, September 11, 2020

Wines Update 9/11

 Dear Wines Families, 

Well, here we are at the end of our first week of school. Obviously, this was a new experience for everyone and I think overall it was a GREAT week. I myself had a new experience this week. After over 25 years as a classroom teacher and principal, I am very comfortable in classrooms with kids. However, today I read a story to a Kindergarten classroom via Zoom for the first time and I was really nervous. I found myself awake at 5:30 AM practicing in front of my computer on a Zoom call that only included me to make sure I held the book up just right!!! I think things went well and I'm looking forward to reading to the rest of the Kindergarten and Young 5's classroom next week! 

 

Full Days of School Next Week

Next week there is a small change from what I've shared earlier. Students will not be using Schoology to "go" to class. Instead, we will utilize the same Zoom links from this week. Next week, teachers will spend time daily working with kids to have them gain familiarity with Schoology so that on Sept. 21, our days will start in Schoology without any problems. By now, many of you have received your QR codes in the U.S. mail that will help students log on to Schoology and/or Clever. Mail is not consistent right now, so if you haven't received yours, don't worry. Teachers will be working with you next week to make sure everyone has their QR codes and we will get you your code in time for the 21st if you don't receive it by mail. Please let your teacher know starting Monday if you have not received the mailing. 

Next week are full days of school and our special area classes also start next week. Being the first week of full virtual school days, our teachers will be working with their daily schedules to maximize their instructional opportunities and also monitoring student engagement and fatigue. So schedules will likely shift based on how things go. A more firm daily schedule will be in place for the week of the 21st based on this information.

 

Attendance

We had great attendance this week! If your child is going to be absent from school, you can alert us in two ways. You can call the Wines main line at (734) 994-1973 and leave a message. You can also email Robin Moore directly at moorero@aaps.k12.mi.us. Just like when we are in the school building we do need to account for each child daily. 

 

Thanks for a great first week of school and certainly one I'll never forget. Have a nice weekend and we'll see the kids on Zoom at 8:10. As always, please don't hesitate to reach out to me with any questions. 

David

 

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

Weekly Blog 9/9

 Dear Wines Families,

I want to once again welcome everyone to what is already a historic school year. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we navigate a brand-new type of educational delivery. We’ve had nearly 100% attendance over the first two days, and so I thank you all for your efforts to support your children. While there will be some hiccups, changes, and challenges in the days to come as we transition into our “Schoology” classrooms, each day we will all get more used to being online for school and things will normalize for everyone.

 

For returning families, this Wednesday Email will be familiar. In a normal school year, I send a weekly update to families each Wednesday. This information is also be posted on my blog at www.winesprincipal.blogspot.com and the blog is shared on twitter (@wineselementary) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/wineselementary) as well. During these early days of this unique school year, I will likely be sending more email messages than normal, however. I understand we are being inundated with information right now but please do what you can to stay on top of messages as there are frequent updates. As I said above, soon things will normalize and you’ll receive fewer messages.

 

Student Logins

In the US Mail, you should have received or will soon receive a letter that includes your child’s Clever and/or Schoology QR code. These will be used in coming weeks to ease login on devices and programs. In addition, each student will need to have access to their AAPS email and password. These were sent to families via email on 8/30. If you do not have your child’s email and password, please email me directly and I will send you this information. It appears that there will be an added security feature in Zoom to protect students that will require each student to create and AAPS Zoom account which will require logging in with their email for set up. This will, unfortunately, require some adult support for our youngest students. More information about this will be forthcoming. In the meantime, please ensure you have your child’s information and reach out to me if you need it.

 

District Provided School Supplies

Each student in AAPS will soon be receiving school supplies to support their virtual learning at home. We expect to be able to distribute these items during the week of Sept. 21st. Please look for more information soon regarding what supplies will be provided and specifics about distribution.

 

Device Distribution

Last week over 15,000 devices were distributed to AAPS students. For families still in need of a device for students, we will have an additional device distribution this week on Thursday, September 10th, and Friday, September 11th, at the Balas Administration Building. Please fill out this 1:1 Form to select the date and time for device pick-up that works best for you. We plan to continue to schedule device pick-ups regularly in the coming weeks as necessary until all student needs are met.

 

Families in need of a hotspot for connectivity can fill out this 2020-21 Student Mobile Hotspot Request Form, and a member of the IT Department will call to discuss the best option for each family. For questions about device distribution or other technology issues, please call 734-997-1222 or email family_techsupport@aaps.k12.mi.us.

 

Thanks again for a great start to the new school year! As always, please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions.

 

David