9/25/2020
The purpose of this message is to provide parents with a description and rationale for the learning model that will be implemented at the high school level after Fall Break.
This week, a working group made up of high school teachers and leaders representing multiple disciplines met to collaborate on a learning model that provides a high quality, equitable learning opportunity for students who select the classroom (in-person) learning model as well as students who are remaining at home for health or family reasons. We sought to identify a learning model that is equitable, simple, and reasonable.
While master schedule changes are taking place at the elementary and middle level to create pure in-person and remote learning classes and sections, the complexity of the high school master schedule would make applying a similar strategy at the high school level nearly impossible. Our high school teachers have worked hard to establish and build specialized programs for our high school students. If we moved forward with creating pure in-person and remote sections, we would have to eliminate and collapse sections which would considerably impact established programs.
For each high school class period Monday- Thursday:
- At the start of class, teachers will provide up to 20 minutes of collaborative Zoom instructional activities
- During the lesson, students in-person and remote may engage in the same learning experiences or differentiated ones depending on the learning arc for the day.
- A five minute collaborative Zoom closure/check-in at the end of the class period
We would still allow Fridays to be flexible for teachers so they can prioritize working with students who need support.
We recognize that Remote Learning has been difficult and we appreciate your efforts thus far to work with our teachers to support your student. We also recognize that the proposed model will be new to our students, but it will provide the opportunity for students to maintain the relationships they established with their teachers. While we recognize that teachers will have more opportunities to support students who attend in-person, on Fridays during teacher support time, teachers will prioritize the support of students who are remote.
Over the next two weeks, we are going to provide you with some additional information regarding this shift. In addition, we plan to work with high school teachers who oversee specialized skill programs (CTE, fine and performing arts, etc.) as well as specialized curricular programs (AP, dual enrollment, exceptional education, etc.) to find time to meet our students individual needs. We also plan to expand our tutoring offerings to help students fill the learning gaps they have accrued.
We want to take a moment to thank the members of the working group who considered every possible model. We have the next several weeks to work on the finer points and to practice teaching in this manner. The teachers in MUSD have shown a passion for students and teaching that persists even during these tough times, and we are positive that together we can make the transition to in-person meaningful and equitable.
Attachments:
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Mountain View High School | 3901 W. Linda Vista Blvd., Tucson, AZ 85742 | 520-579-4400
