This morning, we wanted to send an email of all good news and feature Acacia as our Member Spotlight! If you are not yet following IAPSEC on LinkedIn, please do so and help share the examples of the great work our members do to support their students!
Here are some of the things Acacia has done:
Acacia wanted to make sure that students and parents knew they were thinking of them and missed them, and to support them as closely as possible, so they started making Acacia's Daily and Weekly Video Announcements with fun loving themes! All staff contribute clips and resources for the students and parents. Students are encouraged to participate as well.
Administration along with related services staff have made daily/weekly calls to severely at-risk students who are having trouble with eLearning or students that are having specific struggles with the stay-at-home orders to assist with mental health issues and making sure they have the necessary devices for eLearning. Staff and Admin drove devices to homes for no-contact drop offs and Acacia provided Instacart orders to particularly struggling families that needed basic food options.
Care packages were driven to student homes via their elementary teachers, making sure students had something fun to do at home while also providing the necessary school supplies to complete their school work.
Teachers and administration work in breakout rooms in Zoom or 1:1 sessions to make sure all students are completing their daily eLearning assignments. No child was left on their own. Parents are called and walked through the process if needed, YouTube videos were made to make sure parents and students had step-by-step directions to access the eLearning platform. If a student did not have headphones to Zoom with, administration sent the student their extra pair in the mail. All teachers and paraprofessionals have daily Zoom conversations with their students and daily scheduled times to meet to work on assignments as well.
One of the transition teachers found out that her student did not have the proper PPE to wear while working at his job in a grocery store. She reached out to our school to find him PPE and an administrator found the student a mask and sent it to him through the mail. Another one of the transition teachers delivered food and necessary supplies to a sick family more than once to make sure her student (and his family) had what he needed to feel well and learn.
As a staff, Acacia has shared and catalogued over 200 free resources in a database for teachers to use with their students to provide as many engaging and supportive resources as possible during the closure.
Great job, Acacia!
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