A note from Hiawatha High School Principal, Lori Fordyce
This week, our staff has been working diligently on several things.
Student personal belongings were distributed Monday afternoon. If you think your child is still missing a personal belonging from school, call the office with a description of the item and where you think you left it. Feel free to reach out to specific teachers if you think something was left in that teacher’s classroom.
Teachers are busy preparing their plans to finish out the remainder of the school year. They are deciding what to teach, how to teach it, and when to teach it. Each teacher should be communicating with their students. Parents, if your child has not shared his/her class expectations with you, I would encourage you to ask them about their classes. Both Google Classroom and Edgenuity can be put on smartphones, so this option may help in keeping on top of expectations. Rainbow Communications has installed many hotspots around our communities. If you do not have the internet in your home, perhaps the hotspot will provide that opportunity.
If your family does not have access to the internet & you have not heard from your child’s teacher, please call the school and we will arrange for the teacher to give you a call. If packets are utilized as the primary means of instruction, your child’s teacher will share distribution and turn in expectations.
Each teacher has dedicated “office hours.” These will be communicated out to the students. These are the times each day that students can expect things to be graded, feedback provided, emails responded to, video chats scheduled, quizzes unlocked, etc.
The guidelines provided by the state and adopted by USD 415 limit the number of minutes of learning activities per course to 90 minutes per week. There are exceptions to this--for example if a student is enrolled in a class through a college, this number does not apply.
A student tech assistance form should have been linked in every Google Classroom if your child is experiencing problems with their USD 415 laptop. It is also on the district web page.
We continue to provide meals at various locations around our school district. I would encourage you to take advantage of this service. It is available to any child ages 1-18 in our district.
As of now, we are still planning to follow the USD 415 calendar that has our last day of school as May 20, 2020.
No decision has been made on graduation. It is my sincere hope that we are able to have a celebration of some sort. What that looks like, I’m just not sure yet. I’m open to ideas and have been following conversations around the state and country to learn what other districts are discussing.