Dear colleagues,
The three-day weekend provided us a well-timed short break before the last push of planning and facilitation of learning and of course report card writing leading us into the Winter Break. Thank you to the Track Rats, KB dancers, and Student Council for making the assembly a fun event. We look forward to hearing about all the great ideas from students and hopefully, more dances and other performances to conclude the final week in the Winter Assembly on December 18th.
This week we will meet as a whole faculty on Wednesday and then engage ourselves in activities supporting wellbeing and social interaction whilst maintaining COVID-19 safety protocols. On Thursday, ES parents are joining our Peek into Learning from 1:30 pm onwards to share how we are using SeeSaw at school and how the parents can see as well as help their children to upload assignments in case of learning from home. Riana and Trevor will contact you about the afternoon lesson with the hopes that there will be opportunities to show how the students utilize SeeSaw for capturing their learning.
As we are seeing the coronavirus spreading again as the third wave in Japan, it nudges us to review our protocols for continuing learning in case of quarantine or even in the case of precautionary measures, which we just experienced last week. What we may have to clarify is related to communication channels and responsibilities (particularly when Heikki is in a different time zone +7 hrs), the transition phase from in-class learning to online learning, precautionary measures involving closing a section/class/ grade level, and finally review our distance learning model particularly if only one section of the Elementary School is continuing learning through a Distance Learning model for a longer period of time. In order to do so, we would like to ask you to review our Distance Learning expectations shared later this week, and have an initial brainstorming session about communication, transition, and partial Distance Learning in your team meetings prior to next Wednesday's meeting. This would help us to collate suggestions and ideas when we experience COVID-19 related disturbances to our in-class learning and consequently create perhaps smoother and timely transitions in otherwise unpredictable times and circumstances. We will spend some time in our next Wednesday meeting on 2 December where we collate ideas and suggestions so that we as the ES Leadership Team and in the end, Heikki can make decisions for the protocols and practices we want to have in place.
Message from Heikki:
The snow finally found its way to Finland and we had a couple of days of steady snowfall. Thank you all for the flexibility allowing us to move the assembly into the afternoon to accommodate my connection with the students. It was great to see all the kids in the classrooms. In addition to trying to focus on the daily items at school, I have been continuing the interviews for the positions open in the school year 2021-2022. With the collaboration of Jon, Riana, Trevor, and I, we are steadily moving forward, planning the next school year and staffing already.
Have a great week!
Riana, Trevor, and Heikki
Weekly Duties: Duty List Aug-Dec
This Week's Schedule: Master Schedule 20-21
Professional Learning:
Please note that in order to qualify for Professional Development, you must always apply through the CA PD
application form found on KissFlow. Applications must be submitted no later than 10 days before the
registration deadline. For further information on 'How to apply for PD - click here'.
IB PD 19-20: Here is the IB PD booklet. Here is their search to find the workshops.
Check emails from Renee for other online PD opportunities
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