…and just when we thought our creative and safe thinking had been put to the test, heightened efforts of both are now being even more challenged as we plan and prepare for the safe return of our secondary students and staff. Purple today…red possibly tomorrow…and hopes for orange to arrive as soon as possible! Last week’s data that met the state’s criteria for being below 7 daily new cases per 100,000 and less than an 8% positivity case rate helped move TUSD forward with planning for the safe return of students. If last week’s Stanislaus County data of 4.8 new cases per 100,000 and 3.5 positive case rate hold, we will see our County move to the red—which will need to remain constant for two weeks in order to be able to plan for the return of all TUSD students in safe blended learning. The good news is that our plans to return TK-K students on October 26, grades 1-3 on November 9, and grades 5-6 on November 30 may not require a waiver with the move to the red tier, although the health and safety protocols contained therein would still apply.

For those who know me well, SUDOKO has been a long-standing past-time of mine; frankly, I love the numbers, puzzle, and challenge of it. But even the most challenging level of this logic-based combinatorial number placement puzzle has not been as great as the puzzles before us—15 schools, 14,000 students, 1500 staff, and 5 potential learning platforms—small learning cohorts, blended, distance-learning, hybrid, and traditional independent study. Even my days at creating a THS master schedule for 3900 students could not help prepare me for arranging multiple schedules to keep students learning, remaining safe, and staying distant. Thankfully, I have a team of minds and experiences across all grade spans that think outside the box and envision what can be! It’s time like this that I wish my #13 Gallup Strength of Arranger and #16 Strategic could be in my top 5—looks like I’ll have to rely on those who do possess these talents and take advantage of my #2 Responsibility to make sure our challenge is met for our students and each other.

Cunningham 4^th graders began “Farm Reads” last week allowing the Farm to be in their Zoom Classroom to read books and connect the Farm to their ELA read aloud. It was so much fun to interact with those students and share the Farm!

Bringing Our Tools Back to School With Us: As we create plans for bringing students back to school, we welcome the opportunities that will create to reconnect, and nourish our emotional health and social support systems. We also approach it cautiously, aware of the nervousness and uncertainty a lot of us feel about the changes. It's a helpful time to reflect on what we know, and what has gotten us through tough moments in the past. With this in mind, let's review our most favorite tools.

TUSD Ed Tech Bytes In this week’s installment of Ed Tech Bytes, we are going to be looking at Google Document URL tricks. These are tricks you can use when sharing a document (Docs, Sides, Sheets, Drawings) from your Google Drive. Instead of just sharing the link, you can have recipients preview the document, force making a copy of it or view it as a template. Let’s jump into how to do this.

Before utilizing these URL tricks, we need to make sure that link sharing is turned on. You can do this a few ways. One way is opening the document, clicking on share, and then in the Get Link section, if you are sharing within our domain you would want to click the “Change link to Turlock Unified School District”. If you are sharing outside our domain, then you would want to click the “Change link to Turlock Unified School District” and then click the down arrow and choose “Anyone with the link”. After you have set your preference, choose “copy link”.

After you have copied the link, you will notice that toward the end of the URL you will see /edit?usp=sharing. You will want to delete everything up to the backslash / and replace it with one of the following URL tricks. Now, here is where our URL tricks will flex their muscles. Let's dive into them now.

Sharing the link with this URL trick will share the document without any menu bars and buttons. These are great for things like newsletters, flyers, instructional materials like a syllabus.

What? Did you know that through Zoom, using our desktops, that we can upload any picture or video as a virtual backgrounds? This virtual backgrounds can be any image or video taken from your phone or internet!

How? You can upload these images beforehand in your Zoom account, or you can do this while you are in the meeting! Watch a tutorial video provided by Zoom HERE! To Add Backgrounds Ahead of Time

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal.

2. In the navigation menu, click Settings.

3. In the Meeting tab, navigate to the Virtual Background option (under the In Meeting (Advanced) section) and verify that the setting is enabled.

How long have you work in TUSD? 8 months. I started February 18, 2020 and officially replaced Scott Soiseth on March 2, 2020. Almost exactly 2 weeks before COVID-19 began.

What is your job title? Director of Child Nutrition & Warehouse

Where did you work prior to TUSD? I worked full-time on weekdays as the district’s Registered Dietitian at Manteca Unified School District for almost 5 years and occasionally, part-time on weekends at Kaiser Permanente for almost 7 years. I am a workaholic.

Any Info you would like to share about your job? Average Day? Before I come into the office at the central kitchen, I make site visits to see my team. It is important for me to connect with my staff to see how things are going and ensure they have all the resources or information needed to do their job. The remainder of my day consists of emails and reimagining child nutrition meal service through an unprecedented pandemic.

Things you are most proud of? I absolutely LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my job and am so proud of my Child Nutrition & Warehouse team! I’m so thankful to have this opportunity to work with incredibly dedicated and hardworking individuals who did their best to ensure I had a smooth transition as a new director. My team continues to provide great support and willingness to take all ideas related to COVID-19 meal service and make it happen. It nice to have a great team and leadership contributing to all of our successes (especially being the 1^st on the West Coast to distribute USDA Farmers to Families Food Boxes).

Challenges? Balancing budgets, creating healthy meals using current resources, and maintaining department moral while navigating through the endless USDA/CDE child nutrition regulations and waivers related to COVID-19.  Marie Russell said it best when she said, “Coronavirus, heat, lightning, ash, hornets… Nothing stops meal distribution.”

Favorite memory/story? Friday, April 10, 2020 – Child Nutrition Meal Service at the Child Nutrition Education Center with district leadership, teachers, and Child Nutrition staff to serve a week’s worth of meals to all TUSD students within 2 hours. It was such a rewarding feeling and a great reminder why we love our job!

What are you reading? The Leader’s Greatest Return: Attracting, Developing, and Multiplying Leaders by John C. Maxwell. (Thankful for a brief commute, car Bluetooth, and audio books)

Any favorite shows you’re watching on TV? When I have time... The Bachelor, S.W.A.T., Grey’s Anatomy

Fave movies? Anything Disney.

Anything about your personal life you’d like to share? My life is never boring. Aside from my day job, I am also attending CSUStan to finally finish my MBA program. I am so thankful for my husband who is understanding and supportive to be able to work from home, take care of our 4 kids (ages 10, 7, 4, and 2), deal with distance learning, and still have dinner on the table when I get home from work.

Life is never boring.