Message from  the Director
Liebe TCGIS Gemeinschaft, 

Today marks the end of our first week of planning time. It's been a whirlwind of virtual and face-to-face work. Your educators have been giving their all to create our equitable distance learning plan. In our daily conference calls, our commissioner of education charges us to be "radically student centered" in our work and that is exactly what the TCGIS staff brings. 

We hope you have been coping well. That this is hard for everyone is an understatement. We know all of you are challenged, so please know that your teachers are constantly aware of the balance between keeping the kids learning and giving families space to deal with their own situations. 

Middle school and elementary school teachers met today with admin and school coordinators and a few things were immediately evident to me:
  • We miss the daily connections that were such a key, if often taken for granted, element of our work lives. 
  • Zoom is amazing. 
  • For all the problems we solved in the first part of the week, we still have much to process and discuss.
  • Uncertainty and worry can at times be overwhelming. 
  • Everyone is focused on making this work, eager to serve our kids.
  • We can do this.
The Front Office will be closed starting Tuesday, March 23rd, 2020. If you need to pick up any other last minute items please come to the office on Monday, March 22, 2020.

For families of Emergency Workers and First Responders, please note the list of included professions have expanded. See this list to see if you qualify for child care during these two weeks and potentially going forward: Expanded List for Tier 1 and Tier 2 .  As of now, TCGIS can provide care for Tier 1 providers and potentially provide care for Essential Tier 2 Workers if there is emergency needs. Please contact info@tcgis.org if you have any questions or needs.

As we enter the most well deserved weekend I can recall, I feel so grateful for all of the contributions made to our community in this unprecedented situation. Smiling families came to school to pick up materials, sharing words of support and solidarity. Many of you sent a staff member a quick message of support. The "my co-worker danced in her jammies" thread on the Friends page was hilarious. 

At the same time, the stress of the COVID situation is real. So many are facing existential uncertainty and so many of the rest of us are looking around saying "What can I do to help?" It's been inspiring to see the best brought out of so many. Again, I feel grateful. 

Next week, we will begin to push out more details of our equitable distance learning plan and we will ask many of you to help us test and troubleshoot our plans. The final plan will be posted by Friday, March 27. 

To be clear, school has not started up again yet. Nothing that has been sent out this week is something that has to be made up or that contributes to your child's grade. We await instructions from the state as to what will happen next. 

If and when we put our equitable distance learning plan into action, please be patient and flexible. There will be much to learn in the opening days and we have yet to see how our kids respond. 

To close, I do have three concrete items to share with you.
  1. A survey about tech access for Middle School families. If you or your middle schooler have not yet filled this out, please do by Monday, March 23.
  2. Our new German Enrichment Website . This collection of German language resources for students will be continuously updated and is not tied to classroom work. 
  3. We have also added a new page to our website  that lists resources available to families to help cope, prepare, and adapt to this new reality. This page is linked to the homepage and at the top of the original Family Resources page
We are so glad to be in community with you!

Ein schönes, wohl verdientes Wochenende wünscht

Ted Anderson
Executive Director