Volcano Vista High School

Hello Hawks,I hope you all are doing well and staying healthy as we all continue to adjust as best we can to our new COVID-19 normal. I am writing today to share with each of you a modified, remote learning schedule. The revisions were birthed from the many emails, calls, texts, etc...received from our school's community. Many of our staff members have received messages/calls from other staff, parents/guardians, community members and from the most valued of our stakeholders - students. Although messages were different, they were all sincere requests for help. We have taken some steps to do what we could to improve remote learning by taking another look at Edgenuity and making needed changes to make that a bit easier to manage for everyone. That was good progress, but we knew we still needed to do more. We are now taking a closer look at workloads and time management obstacles for both students and staff looking through an authentic lens of both grace and compassion for everyone. Please take a look at the modified schedule below. We will start this schedule on Monday, November 16th. The modified, remote learning schedule allows for more self-care and catch-up time in addition to supporting a soft pre-transition to hybrid learning.Schedule Highlights:**Mondays are no longer C days (in this schedule) **Mondays are now 'All About Me' Mondays. Students will be given the time to focus asynchronously on completing any assignment they did not finish or turn in the previous week. ALL teachers have agreed to allow assignments from the previous week to be turned in by 2:25pm on Monday afternoons with no penalty. This creates conditions for students to make what we hope will be better time management choices in order to get all work completed/turned in without having to invest unreasonable amounts of additional time during the week and on weekends. NOTE: This is a school-wide minimum. Teachers still have the autonomy to honor all other make-up work plans they currently have in place. 'All About Me Mondays' is also enrichment and self-care time for students who may not have missed assignments. Both are integral parts of better managing our new COVID normals regarding remote learning. We hope this will take a bit of pressure off of children and the family members supporting them at home. Although not perfect,(nothing is) we hope this feels like the support it's meant to be for all students and families. **Students and staff will still honor advisory and SEL (social emotional learning) time on Monday. This time, while not attached to a grade, is mandatory. We will only require 50 minutes of synchronous learning time on Mondays with a focus on student support during this time. The expectation is that all students will participate. **Classes will be extended by 15 minutes and will meet synchronously Tuesday-Friday**The regular school day will begin at 7:25 (our normal start time)  Zero hour classes will begin earlier as usual. Zero hour teachers will share more specific information with their students as we move closer to our start date if they haven't already done so. **There is still a lunch block and time built in for tutoring and office hours with teachers, counselors, social workers, etc...**While students are taking advantage of this time, staff will be using the time to focus on technology integration, blended learning practices, updating gradebooks, responding to messages, collaborating with colleagues, etc... It's all about staff too! What we need from our students, with support and encouragement from parents/guardians: Please share all of the following with your children (in addition to the new schedule. This section is specifically for you, Lil Hawks: **When you can turn your cameras on, please consider turning them on. This helps teachers to better engage with students and to hold students accountable for being present and participating in the learning (not just logged-in). Yes, this is still optional. We just want to encourage on-camera learning as frequently as possible. If there are concerns with displaying things in the home, teachers/assigned assistant principals can work with students/families to install tools to blur or completely cover/change backgrounds. We do not need to see into your private spaces, but we really do need to see you as much as we can. **We need students logged-in on time and ready to work at the beginning of every class period. We cannot afford to lose the instructional time. Please work together to establish school day routines that include getting to classes on time and remaining focused on school tasks until the end of the day. Remote learning does not change this expectation. **Please be reminded that the regular instructional day begins at 7:25 and ends at 2:25. Our school day does not end at lunch. Students must be available for scheduled tutoring, grade recovery sessions, teacher/student support time, additional instructional time (enrichment/remediation), and all other afternoon activities as scheduled by teachers, support staff, etc... This time is not negotiable. Attendance is required when scheduled. **Please try to avoid managing other tasks during instructional time. It is very hard to focus on learning if you are running errands, getting ready for work, doing chores, etc... Please focus on your learning. REMINDER: Teachers are monitoring internet activity during class periods, and the administrative team has monitoring access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Your parents/guardians have access to monitor your activity as well (GoGuardian). Please DO NOT use your school-issued device to visit inappropriate websites. Please also refrain from entering remote classrooms and causing disruptions or using the school-issued device in any way that could be seen as inappropriate. If you are caught doing any of the above, consequences can include warnings, behavior contracts, loss of extracurricular activity/parking privileges now and after we return to campus, removal from the remote learning spaces, deactivation of your school-issued device (YES! We can do that remotely) and/or confiscation of the device. Your parents have already received guidance from the district regarding changes in the student handbook that address these matters. Please do the right things. NOTE: If students do not comply with these mandates, we will need to consider returning to our traditional on-campus schedule with longer classes that fill the entirety of the school day. Please don't force us to go down that road during remote learning. We want to be both fair and reasonable, but we have to do what's necessary to protect the integrity of the learning. If you do your parts, and we do ours, we all win!  Help us win, Lil Hawks! For parents/guardians - if you need help with Parentvue, GoGuardian, Google Tools, and/or anything else, please contact your child's teacher, assigned office/administrative assistant or assigned administrator for assistance. You can find all contact information on our website. Although this is another step in what we hope is a positive direction for everyone, we won't stop monitoring and striving for better. We won't stop listening to our community. We will never stop listening and hearing our students. If there are more concerns and/or areas in need of improvement, we will do what we can to make it better. We won't always be able to fix everything or even have the authority to make big changes, but we will always do what we can. Thanks to all of you for continued partnership. An extra special thank you to so many of you for the understanding, grace, compassion and patience that you have shown to us. We all need a bit of that.If you have class specific questions, please reach out to your child's teacher. If you need additional assistance, please contact your child's assigned administrator. If you need anything at all from me, please reach out. I wish you a wonderful rest of your week!Dr. BVVHS Admin Team VVHS Faculty and Staff PSWe will be sending out a Hybrid Intent Form to all families sometime this week to help us get a better idea of the number of students interested in returning to school if we transition to a hybrid model and the number of students who want to remain remote. Please take a moment to complete the form and submit your responses once it is sent.