Liebe TCGS Gemeinschaft,
Schöne (kühle!) Frühjahrsgrüße!
Our two planning days brought a welcome chance to stop, consider, confer, and collaborate as we embark on the last weeks of this extraordinary school year. In addition to team-level meetings focused on evaluating our success, adjusting our approaches, and building our lessons, your educators spent time yesterday in various constellations as part of an "unconference." It's a favorite among our staff in which they get to learn from each other. Topics covered included "Running and Managing Zoom + Meets", "Digital Tools - Video recording", and "Self-Care + SEL online resources + Equity". We even held a Zoom
Kaffeeklatsch.
All are working hard with the goal of serving our kids and families.
One important logistical item to share with you at this juncture is that TCGIS will not be issuing grades for the second semester of this year. Teachers will continue to assign, collect, and give feedback on work and, as before, students and families will be able to monitor progress in Power School. In addition, students will receive comments at the end of the term, reflecting participation in distance learning this spring. After much deliberation and discussion, we see no equitable way to assign meaningful grades in our current circumstances.
We know not everyone will support this decision, and if that's you, I encourage you to consider
these points
. Feedback on our decision should be directed to
info@tcgis.org
.
Report cards will be marked with the language provided by MDE (Minnesota Department of Education):
Grades that are documented during the time period of March 16 through June 30 of 2020 reflect the distance learning period resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Future use of these grades for academic placement, admission, acceleration, or remediation is discouraged and should only be used with caution after balancing the information against student performance in other grading periods.
Please note that this solution applies only to this semester. Should distance learning continue beyond this semester, we will need to have an equitable grading system in place and we will need every one of these coming five weeks to learn as much as we can about how our kids learn best.
In closing, I feel it's also essential to acknowledge the difficulty our educators are (courageously!) facing these days - difficulty that, to a greater or lesser extent, you are all (equally courageously!) sharing. Like so many of you, we educators are tired and unsure. Like the kids and like you, we are taking this "new normal" with a wide range of emotions.
Difficult as it is, we're faced with choosing our reaction to this challenge, and I am so pleased to be part of an educational team that has greeted all of this with a can-do attitude and n amazing supply of resolve. We are getting through this.
Thank you for your ongoing patience, support, kindness, and solidarity.
Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Ted Anderson
Executive Director
8th & 9th grade parent
