LCHS Friday Focus

          Happy Friday! With only two days next week, I won't be putting out a Friday Focus. I will either be recovering from my first attempt to make a Thanksgiving meal or in the hospital for food poisoning. Before you say anything to Kristin, I am the one making the Turkey, I am sure the green bean casserole will be safe.  Hopefully you had the chance to watch the stream of the play last week. Mrs. Ohrlund and crew put on another fabulous production.  I know there is lots of frustration on students not doing any work when they are home quarantined or in isolation. The MTSS committee presented me with a couple of plans on how to try and get those students who are behind additional help during the school day. I want to remind you that we do need to take time to build in interventions into our normal class time like last year. Again, you are under no pressure to get to a certain point in the curriculum. It is better to go slow and make sure students un...

        Happy Friday the 13th! I hope everyone has had a good week. With midterm quickly approaching, it is next week, please make sure you are wrapping up any PASS Plans and any first quarter incompletes that are still outstanding. With our high COVID rate in our county and zip code, I will allow you to do PASS Plans through Google Meet or by conference call.  Also next week we have our second screener date. We will give the Star Assessments on November 18, please plan accordingly.  The end of the trimester is also next week. I plan on storing those grades on Monday, November 23.  With our county's high Covid rate, we will continue to limit school access to visitors during the day. If you are scheduled to have a guest speaker, (Officer Vickery is ok to talk to your class) it will need to be done via Google Meet. The front office will be stopping the visitors in the office when they try to check in and to let them know that we can't allow them any furt...

          Happy Friday! I hope everyone has had a good week. Thank you for your patience with the students with the quarantine and those put in isolation. I know it is difficult and frustrating when the student is gone for an extended amount of time and then doesn't do the work while they are gone. It is not ideal to be trying to catch them up while moving the other students forward. I would recommend that those students who do not do the work while they are absent be assigned times to come in before or after school to get caught up. This may help motivate them to do more work if they have to be gone for extended amount of time. Even the students that do the work at home may still have gaps in their learning. Online learning is not the same as learning in class, and we know not every student is going to be successful in this method of learning. Again, I want to stress that you do not have a set point to get to in the curriculum. We can only do so much in the day...

        Happy Friday! As we wind down the month of October, we begin the part of the school year I always thinks flies. It always seems November and December are gone in a blink. Looking ahead to some dates to make sure you have on your calendar. End of the 1st trimester is on November 17. Midterm for 2nd quarter is on November 18. We have an extra hour meeting on November 4, this is the only one for November. District In-service is on November 11. We have an evac drill scheduled for November 5 at 10:10.  We are short several subs today, if Beth asks you to cover the class, we really need you to do this. I know she hates asking you to give up preps and that is our last resort. I am sending some kids to study hall today because we are short 3 subs.  With midterm coming up on November 18, you should be wrapping up PASS plan meetings. Please make sure I get a copy of the PASS plan so I can enter it into my spreadsheet. The last time I ran the at risk report we...

          Happy Friday! I hope you had an enjoyable week. With the first quarter now complete, grades are due this morning at 8:30. If you have a grade change after 8:30, please email Mr. Formanek or myself to change the stored grade. Midterm of the 2nd quarter is on November 18. All PASS Plans need to be completed by this time. Remind students if they have been quarantined twice or quarantined and then isolated, their parents can opt to have their class go Pass or Fail. Parents will need to notify the high school office by 12/21 to do this. Mr. Formanek or I will send an email out with the names of students opting to go pass/fail. Then you will need to change the grade to a P or F. As you have probably seen, the CDC changed how the 15 minutes of exposure time is figured. As of now, the IDPH has not changed to follow the CDC guidelines. IDPH is still going by 15 consecutive minutes. If they would change to the CDC guidelines, then it is calculated by cumulative ...

        Happy Friday! We have made it through another week. I hope you were able to connect with the parents you needed to during our two nights of conferences. If a parent didn't show up for conferences or has not shown up for a PASS Plan meeting, please call and see if you can set up a phone conference with them and the other teachers. We want to make sure we make every effort we can to communicate with the families. I know it is frustrating, but some of these students are at-risk for a reason. Avoidance can be a learned behavior.  Just a quick note about the election. As employees of the school, you have the right to support your candidate or political party. However, you may not promote your party, candidate, or beliefs to the students. As a former government teacher, I made certain that my students had no clue of my political affiliations. I would say most of you have no clue what my political affiliation is. This is the way it should be, it is our job to t...

      Happy Friday! We made it through another week. Remember with the new quarantine rules, students don't need to quarantine if everyone is wearing a masks. Students must wear a mask at all times while in any school building. The only masks breaks that can be taken is if you go outside and have approval from Kyle and I. I shouldn't see students tweet pictures from classrooms with them not wearing their masks. I understand that you want to give them a chance to take their masks off for a little bit, but with our policy this is not allowed. In the last couple of days, we have seen a slight increase in the students either testing positive or having symptoms. It is important that we keep up on getting our lessons on Schoology for these students. We can't develop the mindset that we are operating like we have in the past. We are still navigating through this COVID journey. Keep in mind that not every student is going to be able to do everything we ask them to do online. Some...