Parents,

Thank you so much for your patience, grace, and understanding as we have moved forward with virtual learning. I cannot say how much we, the staff at HMES, appreciate you and your willingness to help your students get adjusted to our new normal. As we have completed our first week of virtual learning, there are a couple reminders I wanted to send out.

Parent Expectations for Distance Learning:

• Continue to extend grace and understanding
  • Our teachers are working as hard as they can to navigate this steep learning curve. Please continue to be patient and support your teachers as they are striving to make this situation as successful as possible for our students.
• Choose a good place to learn
  • Set up a physical space for your student to be in each day that is quiet and free of distractions. Be mindful of this space as it’s an adjustment having a camera in your home now that your students are participating in live classes. Please be mindful that your student’s whole class can see you when you walk behind them. Please be sure to wear appropriate clothes when passing behind your student.
• Help students ‘own’ their learning
  • We do not expect parents to be full-time teachers during the day. Provide support and encouragement and expect your children to do their part as it appropriate for their age. Struggling is allowed and encouraged!

• Begin and end the day by checking-in
  • In the morning, you might ask:
    • Do you have any assessments?
    • What materials do you need for class today?
    • What can I do to help?
  • At the end of the day, you might ask:
    • How far did you get in your assignments today?
    • What did you discover? What was hard?
    • What could we do to make tomorrow better?
• Stay in touch
  • Teachers will mainly be communicating through Class Dojo and email. Make sure you are connected to your student’s class through Class Dojo. Stay in contact with classroom teachers but understand that we may not be able to answer right away. Teachers cannot answer calls, texts, or message in the middle of their live lesson (just like during face to face instruction). If you are struggling to connect to the live lesson, please be mindful that it may be after the lesson that the teacher gets back to you. Teachers will be posting most mini-lessons to Google Classroom. So, if you are having technical troubles, you can find the content your student missed there. Nothing replaces the live instruction, but we understand that technical issues happen sometimes.

Thank you again for your understanding as we navigate this new situation we have been in! I have been amazed at the support from you all and I know our teachers appreciate it as well! If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We look forward to what will be accomplished this school year! Remember, we are better together!

 

Cassandra Moore

Principal