Current News and Information
DISTANCE EDUCATION BEGINS MARCH 30TH
Dear students and parents/guardians: March 23, 2020
Life has given us a new and unique challenge. I appreciate your patience and understanding as I navigate my way through this unfamiliar form of teaching. I am going to do my best, but it will not be perfect. There are things I cannot even anticipate until we get going. I encourage you to reach out to me with any questions, concerns, or comments.
Here are a few preliminary things for you to know:
As we all know, kids thrive on structure and routine. We are all hoping to keep that going to provide the most success for all of us during this uncertain time. On our Google Classroom site, I have posted two suggestions for daily learning schedules, use the one that works for you or modify as needed.
Dear students and parents/guardians: March 23, 2020
Life has given us a new and unique challenge. I appreciate your patience and understanding as I navigate my way through this unfamiliar form of teaching. I am going to do my best, but it will not be perfect. There are things I cannot even anticipate until we get going. I encourage you to reach out to me with any questions, concerns, or comments.
Here are a few preliminary things for you to know:
- If you do not have a computer or tablet at home, please contact me or the office for a school issued chrome book. If you do not have internet access, please let us know so that we can connect you with a local provider.
- If you are using your own computer, you will need to access the google drive using the chrome browser.
- All school work will be done via Google Classroom through your child’s gmail account. (All students have had these accounts, but are now being activated to be used for this time.)
- The email will be sent to the student gmail and then needs to be accepted by you.
- Core Content Lessons will be done mostly in Odysseyware, ReadWorks, Scholastic, and IXL - links will be included for you as well as log-in information. Supplemental instruction and games will be listed as well.
- Attendance: this will be logged and reported using the Google Form of the day. If the student does not respond to these questions, it will be reported as an absence.
- Assignments and Grades
- Must do: this is how we are grading your child. These are recorded and reported to us.
- May do: educational and fun things to do. We do not have a way to track these, but the kids love to do them.
- Math: the expectations are like this - Odysseyware lesson and IXL lesson and GoMath pages - must do. ABCya practice and any other games listed - may do
- Language Arts: Must do - Odysseyware lesson, IXL lesson of grade level, ReadWorks passage assignment, May do - other
- Science, Social Studies, Art: Please do - If the above work is overwhelming, feel free to wait on these topics, especially right away as we are adjusting. The kids will be getting some Science and Social Studies in the ReadWorks and Scholastic assignments, however, I will be providing other activities and ideas.
- Academic Testing - you will earn grades from assigned work and receive a report card. State Academic Testing (the MCA), and STAR testing are currently postponed.
As we all know, kids thrive on structure and routine. We are all hoping to keep that going to provide the most success for all of us during this uncertain time. On our Google Classroom site, I have posted two suggestions for daily learning schedules, use the one that works for you or modify as needed.
Mrs. Powers
3rd & 4th Grade Teacher
Crosslake Community School
Crosslake, MN
3rd & 4th Grade Teacher
Crosslake Community School
Crosslake, MN
Published!
I recently published a Human Relations lesson planning rubric in collaboration with renown Education professor Dr. Barbara Bridges.
It can be found on her website: http://bridgescreate.com/lesson-plan-rubric-for-cultural-integration/
This work highlights the importance of meaningful and correct integration of cultures into curriculum as to best represent, educate, and inspire all students of all backgrounds and life experiences.
It can be found on her website: http://bridgescreate.com/lesson-plan-rubric-for-cultural-integration/
This work highlights the importance of meaningful and correct integration of cultures into curriculum as to best represent, educate, and inspire all students of all backgrounds and life experiences.
BSU Human Relations Award Ceremony
Prayer Flag Activity
led by award recipient Mara Powers
completed by Cohort U 2014
led by award recipient Mara Powers
completed by Cohort U 2014
Mara Powers, Spring 2014
This has certainly proved to be an interesting journey through consciousness and, I expect, an eye-opening experience for many of us. We each came into this class with preconceptions of certainty and reality that we had been constructing our whole lives, only to be asked to tear them apart and reconsider their validity as truth. We have all had Dr. B. as an instructor before so, I believe had some idea of what we were getting ourselves into, if only that we were certain to be challenged and to be asked to think outside the box.
The topics that we were confronted with exploring, the discussion questions we were asked to contemplate, and the lessons that we were required to create all aided us in the development toward a genuine shift in our frame-of-mind. It is no small task to design lesson plans aimed at elementary age students with the objective to reduce the marginalization of a group of people who have long suffered intolerance and bigotry on the scale of which we have learned of. This great undertaking was met brilliantly by many of our classmates. I hope that everyone took the time to read through and save some of these wonderful lessons for use in our future classrooms. For this was the point of their creation, to be used.
This class has given us the tools to serve a diverse student population with an open heart and open mind. To see clearly the challenges that our students face and to find a way to help them overcome the obstacles set in place by their marginalization. If we were to go into teaching with rose-colored glasses on, never accepting the realities of discrimination, staying immune to the hate and the violence, the inequality in opportunity and access to resources, the debilitating effects of the culture of poverty, if we were to go into teaching without any consciousness to see clearly the disproportionate number of challenges faced by so many minorities or marginalized people we would be doing our students a great disservice.
Our learning in this class has helped us to take the first steps toward acquiring a more holistic perspective of the people in our world. It has nudged us in the direction of opening ourselves up to acceptance of alternative truths. We have learned that there is compelling data out there that supports all of these other views and ideas and that absolute truth as we knew it was only a comforting illusion and no way to live a considered existence. I say that this class was a first step because it is not the end of our exploration but only the beginning. It is now up to us to move past tolerating and toward respecting, accepting and adopting of some of these new ways of thinking and of being. It is not enough to acknowledge that others have a different set of life experiences than we do, it’s time to immerse ourselves in new and uncomfortable situations, to learn by doing and by being a part of worlds that we did not previously know existed.
We now know the importance of collecting data but that is not enough, we must act on it, use it to create change and do good. I challenge you to not just collect data to support your own previously held ideals, as this is always readily available and all too justifying, but to actively seek out data that is in direct opposition to your truth. I implore you to open yourselves up to difference, to move past the single-stories and obtain as many angles as you can, for that is the only way to get a clear view.
With genuineness of mind and intention,
We Can make a difference.
With clarity of thought and knowledge,
We Can teach in ways that create much needed change.
By using the tools we have been given,
We Can deviate from the path and forge a new and better way of being for ourselves and our students.
This has certainly proved to be an interesting journey through consciousness and, I expect, an eye-opening experience for many of us. We each came into this class with preconceptions of certainty and reality that we had been constructing our whole lives, only to be asked to tear them apart and reconsider their validity as truth. We have all had Dr. B. as an instructor before so, I believe had some idea of what we were getting ourselves into, if only that we were certain to be challenged and to be asked to think outside the box.
The topics that we were confronted with exploring, the discussion questions we were asked to contemplate, and the lessons that we were required to create all aided us in the development toward a genuine shift in our frame-of-mind. It is no small task to design lesson plans aimed at elementary age students with the objective to reduce the marginalization of a group of people who have long suffered intolerance and bigotry on the scale of which we have learned of. This great undertaking was met brilliantly by many of our classmates. I hope that everyone took the time to read through and save some of these wonderful lessons for use in our future classrooms. For this was the point of their creation, to be used.
This class has given us the tools to serve a diverse student population with an open heart and open mind. To see clearly the challenges that our students face and to find a way to help them overcome the obstacles set in place by their marginalization. If we were to go into teaching with rose-colored glasses on, never accepting the realities of discrimination, staying immune to the hate and the violence, the inequality in opportunity and access to resources, the debilitating effects of the culture of poverty, if we were to go into teaching without any consciousness to see clearly the disproportionate number of challenges faced by so many minorities or marginalized people we would be doing our students a great disservice.
Our learning in this class has helped us to take the first steps toward acquiring a more holistic perspective of the people in our world. It has nudged us in the direction of opening ourselves up to acceptance of alternative truths. We have learned that there is compelling data out there that supports all of these other views and ideas and that absolute truth as we knew it was only a comforting illusion and no way to live a considered existence. I say that this class was a first step because it is not the end of our exploration but only the beginning. It is now up to us to move past tolerating and toward respecting, accepting and adopting of some of these new ways of thinking and of being. It is not enough to acknowledge that others have a different set of life experiences than we do, it’s time to immerse ourselves in new and uncomfortable situations, to learn by doing and by being a part of worlds that we did not previously know existed.
We now know the importance of collecting data but that is not enough, we must act on it, use it to create change and do good. I challenge you to not just collect data to support your own previously held ideals, as this is always readily available and all too justifying, but to actively seek out data that is in direct opposition to your truth. I implore you to open yourselves up to difference, to move past the single-stories and obtain as many angles as you can, for that is the only way to get a clear view.
With genuineness of mind and intention,
We Can make a difference.
With clarity of thought and knowledge,
We Can teach in ways that create much needed change.
By using the tools we have been given,
We Can deviate from the path and forge a new and better way of being for ourselves and our students.