Good morning,
I hope this email finds you well and I hope you and your children are off to a good start to the new school year.
Purpose of this email? Due to the complexities of the blended program and to the constantly changing remote learning accommodations for students and teachers, we must repeatedly assess and make necessary adjustments to our school, students’, and teachers’ schedules. We do so to ensure we are providing the best possible learning experience for our students during this unprecedented school year.
Why schedule and class adjustments now? Over the past several weeks, our full remote and at home cohort rotation learning classes have swelled to over 50+ students in most classes. To maintain a quality remote learning, daily live teaching/interaction instructional model, it has now become necessary to adjust several teachers’ schedules and to move several students’ classes. These adjustments allow us to create smaller remote learning classes for our cohort A/B/C students when they are at home participating in remote learning. This will also allow us to reduce the class size for our fully remote learning students in cohort D.
The movement of students and teachers is a necessary inconvenience at this time; leaving the class assignments and programs as-is will result in a learning environment that does not support a robust remote learning and blended school program. Implementing these changes after we have begun the school year will take patience and attention to detail, but once implemented, the changes will have a positive long term impact on your child’s in-person and remote learning experience.
Please review the information below with your child. I will also send a separate email to students explaining the upcoming changes and what they will need to do in order to be ready for their classes on Tuesday, 9/29.
How and when will the class/schedule changes take place? Here is the timeline of how the students schedule changes will be implemented:
On 9/24, Thursday afternoon/early evening, all students will receive via DOE email their class/cohort and schedule. Many students will not see any changes to their schedules, but many will. For students that do not see any change to their current class or schedule, you do not need to do anything more. The schedule changes have not affected you.
For students that receive a new class and/or cohort via email on Thursday afternoon/evening, you will also receive and you will need to accept new Google Classroom invitations from your new subject teachers during the school day on Friday! Some of your teachers will be the same from your previous class and/or cohort, some teachers will be new. I understand students may now just be getting comfortable with their classes and teachers, but I also ask students be patient and understand these changes will support your learning experience. Students will become comfortable in their new class within a day or 2 as well.
What do students need to do for Friday 9/25?
For Friday, 9/25, ALL STUDENTS WILL FOLLOW THEIR ORIGINAL CLASS SCHEDULE FOR DAY 5 WHEN LOGGING INTO THEIR GOOGLE CLASSROOMS (DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FOLLOW YOUR NEW CLASS SCHEDULE FOR FRIDAY IF YOU RECEIVED ONE).
Instruction for students this Friday, 9/25 will be asynchronous (no live session) Assignments for each subject will be posted in their current Google Classrooms by subject. Complete assignments will be reviewed/submitted to teachers on Tuesday 9/28. Students must also be sure to complete their attendance form for Friday!
All students with a class/cohort/schedule change will receive new Google Classroom invites via their DOE email from their new teachers. Students make sure you accept those invites when you receive them! And be sure to review your new schedules!
This process will allow teachers/administrators to organize their new classes and to send out and follow up on the many new Google Classroom invites students will be receiving during the day Friday.
When will students follow their new class schedule?
All students and teachers will follow their NEW schedules beginning Tuesday, September 29, 2020. Tuesday will be a DAY 6 schedule. Wednesday, September 30, we will follow DAY 1 schedule and Thursday, October 1, (our first IN-PERSON learning day for cohort A ) we will follow our DAY 2 schedule. Friday, October 2, we will follow DAY 3 schedule (our first in-person learning day for cohort B).
Once again, thank you for your understanding and flexibility as we adjust to our constantly changing situation. Hopefully, these upcoming changes will be the last for a long time to come.
Please feel free to email me with any questions you may have. Have a wonderful day!
Sincerely,
Vincent Suraci
Principal JHS 157
VSuraci@schools.nyc.gov
