3/15

 Good day, and welcome.

In moving forward with the district plan for teachers to provide students with lessons and assignments to complete at home during our recess to prevent the spread of the virus, many students and parents, I'm sure, are concerned about students' abilities to keep up with these demands and adjust to the changes. Many of our students have difficulties with completing work independently, developing new practices, maintaining determination, and understanding content without some individual help. 

My intention is still to support our students, and teachers in completing assigned work next week. Teachers will be holding online "office hours" and you should look for them on the teacher web-pages and google classroom. Because the nature of our work in special education requires more individualization, what I believe will be most helpful to our students will be regular check-ins. I plan to do these 1-on-1 or in small groups by grade. Ideally, if you have the ability in your devices, we will be using google hangouts, which is part of your school google account (in the menu with all your other google apps after you log-in). If you are having trouble with understanding a teacher's tools or expectations, please reach out to me. Additional support will be available, but this much will be expected. Where possible, I would like students to conduct this conversation face-chat to face-chat, or by phone call. My office Hours will be daily from 12:30-2:30. If these times are inconvenient, or if while working you are unable to complete a task, please reach out to me by e-mail and I will happily find a way to accommodate as quickly as I can. 

Academic Support Expectations: Join the google classroom I have invited you to. I will be posting a work tracker for you in the form of a google sheet. You will fill this out daily with your assignments and notes on your progress so I can see what you are working on each day. If I'm worried about your progress, you can expect a call from myself or Mrs. Derderian to follow up. 

Math Connections: We will be finishing our algebra with the worksheets you have, and the test, which will be take-home, but you will be scheduling a time with me on Wednesday to take the test in real-time. For the start of geometry, we will be working largely through Khan academy, but I hope to do some video lessons with you in real time so you can ask questions as well. 

These are the times that try us, this is what we have been training for. Remember our midterms and finals where we discussed time management and setting up an effective study space? Now is when to use it. I believe in you all, and you are not alone! Show them what you're made of. 

Welcome Back to TAHANTO for a great start to our School Year 2019-2020. 

Our emphasis this year is on developing greater responsibility in our Special Education students as they approach their academics, self-advocacy, executive functioning, and self-determination skills with greater personal responsibilities. We are hoping we can all raise our expectations so that we can assist our students as they acquire the independence they will need to be successful in post-secondary experiences.

My philosophy is it is better to try to test them while they are in environments where we are available to support as needed. It is my hope that by expecting great progress and independence while in high school, our students will be ready for greater challenges in post-secondary experiences.

In the beginning, these actions will be noticeable in Class overviews and expectations.  Specifically, you will note that greater expectations are being placed on students within our Academic Support classes- See course overview Academic Support under my Website. A new grading system is being developed to be shared as students settle into classes.

Additional materials and information will be shared throughout the year on a variety of subjects pertaining to:

Self-advocacy

Self-determination

Interest and Skill Inventories

Students' responsibilities

Responsibilities of families 

Post-secondary experiences

Technology skills students require

Transitions to High School 

               to College

               to the Workforce

Please keep checking back for new and exciting articles and information.

Please feel free to contact me @ kderderian@bbrsd.org if there are additional subjects you would like information on.