Greetings, RCMS Magnet Students & Families!
I’m writing this from my “new” office, where I have spent more time than I care to calculate over the past five months. It seems like just yesterday that we received the news that MCPS was shutting down physical school buildings due to COVID-19… and yet, in many ways, it seems like a past lifetime.
I call this my “new” office with quotation marks, because this space has always been my office. However, before COVID-19, it was my humble little music studio. It was the sacred space to which I would retire after a long day of administrating, parenting, etc. — to drop a well-worn record on the turntable platter, or to pluck a guitar off the wall and make some music of my own. However, since the executive order to work from home, I’ve repurposed this room to accommodate my work resources, from notebooks and binders to a new halo light and earbuds with a mic. Now most of my time in this space is spent on Zoom, Meet, Google, and Synergy… it is a different world.
Why so much detail about my little office? Well, because ALL of us have had to repurpose important portions of our old lives, in order to make sense of this new reality. The desk for my son’s new work space arrived today, and sits on my front porch waiting to be built as I write this. Creating an isolated, organized space for him to engage with his upcoming 7th grade classes is one crucial way that we’re trying to set him up for success, even with so many unanswered questions swirling around. All of us are making adjustments, not only to our physical home/work environments, but also to our routines, interactions, and expectations.
And speaking of expectations, we all know that last spring’s “Crisis Learning” experience left a great deal to be desired, even with all the hard work everyone put in to make the best of an untenable situation. We have been working together all summer to reflect, revise, and rebuild — to design a better experience for all of our students and families. So, with the opening of the 2020-2021 school year just days away, I want to update you on some of the important changes we are implementing in order to make the coming semester as positive and engaging as possible for our students.
Returning families may remember that we sent out parallel surveys to parents, students, and teachers at the end of last school year, to gain insights on what worked well, and what needed to be fixed. A detailed summary of those survey results can be reviewed in this slide presentation; in a nutshell, however, all stakeholders clearly expressed that our highest values are consistency, clarity, flexibility, and meaningful human connections. Here are just some of the changes we’re implementing to help better serve our students and families:
- ALL teachers and courses will be set up on myMCPS (not Google Classroom). This will allow students and parents to access all courses and materials in the same place.
- ALL course homepages will look the same, in order to simplify navigation and access to content, grades, course information, etc.
- We are introducing “Student Enrichment Teams” (SET for short), small teacher-facilitated groups that will allow students to bond with grade level peers and staff outside of their core teachers. We are excited to have another level of connectivity and interaction, centered on building relationships and exploring students’ interests, alongside their scholastic pursuits in content classes.
- Teachers and departments are planning explicit trainings for how to use online tools and resources, so that every student has the knowledge and access they need to engage in the work.
- Departments are collaborating across disciplines to develop learning opportunities that tap into students’ natural inquisitiveness and push them to think flexibly and creatively. Whenever possible, teachers are rethinking assessments in terms of project-based learning and problem-solving.
- We’ve designed a schedule that serves our students’ needs and offers great flexibility for independent learning. Within this schedule, we’ve dedicated time in each day teacher’s day for reaching out to students and families for extra support, check-ins, and updates.
There will always be more ways to improve our students’ experience with distance learning, but we are confident that Roberto Clemente MS will offer an engaging, rigorous, and supportive environment from day one. This brief post is merely an introduction to the next chapter — there will be much more communication to come. We know that our children and families are approaching August 31 with a complex maelstrom of emotions, and we are here for you.
Anticipate more updates next week and beyond, including important information about our upcoming “Magnet Meet & Greet,” our schoolwide work toward making RCMS an antiracist learning community, interdisciplinary project-based learning, virtual field trip opportunities & guest speakers, and much, much more. From my little office to yours, thank you as always for your involvement and support. It will certainly be a year unlike any other — together, we will make it the best it can be.
-Steve Orders, Magnet Coordinator & 7th Grade Administrator
Image credit:
Wiseman, Joanna, et al. “Four Ways to Keep Young Learners Engaged in Your Online Classes.” Resources for English Language Learners and Teachers | Pearson English, 25 Mar. 2020, www.english.com/blog/four-ways-to-keep-young-learners-engaged-in-your-online-classes/.