Discovery Ed: App for kids to measure social distance, learning resources for parents and educators

Discovery Education has created a free app that helps children understand social distancing. The app allows users to point a device at another person or object and see if it is an appropriate social distance. The app, called Social Distancing Training, helps young people grasp the abstract concept of social distancing in a concrete manner. The app includes info from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. The Social Distance Training app can be downloaded on an iPhone or Ipad in the @Apple App store.

Discovery Education has also created free resources for parents and caregivers. Five weeks of resources are organized by grade, with offerings for K-2, grades 3-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12.

MIT students painstakingly recreated their iconic campus in 'Minecraft' — take a look

The coronavirus ended their semester early, but MIT being MIT, students knew they could figure out some kind of technical workaround.

A group of MIT students built a server in "Minecraft," where they've been building the campus in stunning detail, working on recreating places that are especially meaningful to them. The project follows other schools like UPenn and Brown, who have similar virtual campuses in the works. 

MIT students are recreating their Cambridge, Massachusetts campus on "Minecraft" after COVID-19 ended their semester early.

Events including graduations and weddings have been moved online to "Minecraft," "Animal Crossing," and other online games since the coronavirus spread throughout the world.

Read the entire article here.

Roton Student Honors Teachers & Staff With Stunning Violin Piece

Roton Middle School Student and Violist Arav Amin honored teachers and staff by playing a beautiful rendition of Nocturne in C-sharp minor by Frederic Chopin.

Virtual NPS celebration of Excellence in Education

This week, NPS kicked off a virtual celebration of Excellence in Education, featuring our teacher honorees in a series of videos on our Facebook page in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week. Next week, we'll feature our Educational Support honorees! Follow us on Facebook to see the daily features.

To view the compiled video of the full series of teacher honorees, visit our YouTube channel by clicking here.

Congrats to all of the 2020 Excellence in Education honorees! We are proud to have these teachers and support staff represent all of the hard working staff members throughout the district.

Governor Lamont Announced Classes at K-12 Public Schools Will Remain Canceled for the Rest of the Academic Year

Read the entire press releaser here.

Governor Ned Lamont today announced that due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, he is ordering in-person classes at all K-12 public school facilities in Connecticut to remain canceled for the rest of the 2019-2020 academic year and continue providing distance learning during this period. Schools will also be required to continue providing meals to children under the school lunch and breakfast programs for consumption at home, as they have been throughout this emergency.

The governor is consulting with state and local education officials regarding whether summer school programming should commence as scheduled. He anticipates having guidance on that matter toward the end of this month.

It's time to hit "re-set"

Unite with us in our interactive digital mosaic. Co-create this image that honors our courageous youth. For a donation of $10 or more, upload your photo and message to hit “re-set” — to memorialize your best intentions during this time of solidarity.

We’re all in the same storm, but we’re not all in the same boat. Getting back to “normal” won’t work for our youth. We need to create a “new-normal.” As we assess what it cost us to hit “pause” for these past months, we need to now hit “re-set” for the sake of our youth, to focus on finding the strength to live up to our ideals. Real change will come as we redefine what it mans to be courageous.

What is possible? We are already seeing empathy opening up and expanding. Just as we are frantically working on creating a vaccine, we need to work at creating a cure for inequality. Part of the solution is strengthening and expanding the reach of Carver’s culture and programming that recognizes our students’ individuality, diversity of talents, and boundless possibilities.

But many of our students arriving in sixth grade, for example, a critical point in preparation for real math and science learning, won’t have the content or skills they need for grade-level courses. When many of our students return to school, their families will still face housing and food security challenges. They’ll need to cope with deep and lasting trauma at a time when services will be strained.

For some students, half a year of lost schooling might not ever be recovered. This can affect their odds of graduating from high school and, thus, their lifetime incomes.

To comply with health guidelines, educators will almost certainly be forced to limit the number of students in classrooms. Many older teachers will fall into health-risk categories that may prevent them from being in physical classrooms at all. Schools may have to close again if regional infections spike.

The economic slowdown means bare-bones school budgets. The recent federal stimulus bill will provide about $270 per pupil, not nearly enough to make up for state and local funding shortfalls.

Flattening the learning loss curve is possible. We are working with our schools to find effective strategies to ensure that students have the essential content and skills to enter the next grade with minimal remediation. We are bolstering supports virtually now around core competencies — the skills and content our students need to progress to the next grade.

We will be searching for effective ways to as much as possible help our youth catch up over the summer. We hope that federal stimulus funds go toward remediation coursework — assistance our schools could not provide this spring and must make up for.

Schools will need to prepare for academic triage and diagnostic testing, and we need to start planning for the next forced school closure. It will come.

American families have more reason than ever to believe that education is critical to their future prosperity. But necessity must breed invention.

The choices we make now matter.

Your support matters.

At some point, the coronavirus will pass. There will be (and already is) staggering suffering and loss of life, enormous economic devastation. That tragedy cannot be overstated. For years, we will be trying to rebuild our broken world. But perhaps a more deliberate way of addressing inequality can become permanent.

Calvary Baptist Church offers the Martin Luther King Scholarship

Update on Carver virtual after-school programming

Carver is a provider of solutions. We create programs in the after-school and summer context, but everything is designed to uniquely fit the needs of each of the schools in which we operate. Daytime certified teachers and paraprofessionals are the ones who implement Carver after-school programs, so they are also attuned to the social and emotional needs of their students.

Carver’s virtual after-school academic, enrichment and wellness programming is reaching our Norwalk public school students in nine elementary, four middle and two high schools, in Side By Side Charter School, the Carver Community Center, and in the Classical Studies Magnet Academy in Bridgeport.

Utilizing the Zoom or Google teleconferencing platforms, our teachers might begin their daly sessions (3:30PM to 6:00PM) by asking how each of their students is doing, inviting a “show and tell” moment, or just taking the time to say hello to each other.

Students receive support with their schoolwork and homework. Having access to many hundreds of online learning tools, our teachers provide their students with the support and enrichment opportunities they need. Project-based activities also provide family engagement opportunities.

Our elementary students can use GoNoodle, for example, to stretch, dance, and laugh at home for a much needed break. The teacher might then take his or her students on virtual field trips to famous landmarks, museums, and even into outer space. The enrichment block might include stories, Kahoot! Trivia quiz games, and so much else.

Our middle school students begin each session with a social-emotional check-in, followed by a physical wellness activity, and then virtual field trips and other enrichment activities such as art and science projects. Students receive help with their daily school day homework. For the first time in 50 years, Carver had to cancel its annual spring break college tour because of the stay-at-home order to fight the pandemic. In its place, we created a database of all the 360-virtual college campus tours available across the country.

In addition to some of the programming elements described above, our high school students enjoy Rap Tuesday, a co-ed group led by a social worker and teacher when students discuss relevant topics that can be challenging or sensitive. There is Wild-Out Wednesday, a discussion and critique of current cultural events and issues. Throw Back Thursday invites nostalgic and often a humorous examination of music, pop culture, and technology that no longer hold any appeal.

It is online learning's big moment. But long with significant academic needs and modest successes, children are also experiencing stress, anxiety, and a sense of loss. A missed sports season, a canceled prom and graduation ceremony may seem small compared to the national losses that we're seeing around us. But it's important to realize that to children these losses loom very large in their lives. So we are doing everything we can to help our students process this and to be there for them.