Hello South Students and Families,
A few updates/clarifications…please bear with me:
1. Term 1 for Grade 12 ONLY will end next Friday, 11/6 and report cards will be available for Grade 12 ONLY on Friday, 11/13 at 5:00pm.
For grades 9, 10, and 11, term 1 will end on Friday, 11/13 and report cards will be available on Monday, 11/23 at 5:00pm.
This change from previous years is due to the fact that we started school later and yet since so many seniors apply early to college, we need to still get senior grades closed and out to colleges ASAP.
2. School Communications for Students During COVID:
The question has come up about how students, most of whom are learning remotely, are getting information passed on to them about events, clubs, and other important info. We have three avenues of communication that we are using:
a) Student NPS Gmail Accounts and Schoology–teachers and faculty advisors regularly contact students through either school Gmail, Schoology, or both (and schoology messages do ALSO go to the student’s Gmail account, just not vice versa) and I also share relevant information with students almost exclusively through their Gmail accounts. Please remind your students to be checking their school Gmail accounts on a regular basis so that they don’t miss any school-related information that may be shared.
b) School-wide Schoology Group: When the school closed down in the spring, we piloted a school-wide Schoology group where information relevant to students could be posted and shared. Now that the majority of clubs and activities have started meeting, we are hoping to get that Schoology Group active again. Our Student Life Coordinator, Ms. Parker, is working on a plan/system for the use of the school-wide Schoology group so that we can highlight student-related events, including potentially club specific info, without over saturating the site with too much information at the same time. We are hoping to have an update on this soon.
3. Clubs/Activities
Speaking of clubs/activities, as I have mentioned in previous emails, we are centralizing all of our information on a Google document this year: NSHS 2020-21 Clubs and Activities This document is available for students to peruse using their NPS Gmail account (we are limiting the document to NPS students using their school email only to protect the privacy of students who appear in club-made videos) and we encourage all students to bookmark it for easy access. The link to the clubs document can also be found on the student activities page of the South webpage.
The clubs Google doc. is organized by club category and there are Zoom meeting links, club meeting days/times, a listing of the faculty advisor, and a listing of the student leaders of each club. Students can also sign up for all clubs directly through the Family ID registration link at the top of the document. If a student has a question about any club, they should send an email directly to the student leader of the club, the listed faculty advisor, or both. If specific club information on the document is incomplete, it means that the student leader has not yet turned in the annual club paperwork required of all clubs and so is not meeting yet….we recommend students check back on a weekly basis as information becomes updated.
Finally, there have been some questions about whether clubs can have some meetings on campus or not. A few challenges so far this year are:
1. Many of our faculty who advise clubs are not currently working on campus and advisors do need to be in the building with students while they are meeting.
2. Many of the clubs meet during flex block which is in the middle of the school day so it may be difficult for students and faculty advisors to go back and forth between home and school and make it back to their next class on time.
That said, if a club wants to try to have even a meeting or two on campus either during the school day, before school or after school, AND their faculty advisor can join them, I have asked them to reach out to me about a possible date and time and then I can share procedures/next steps to try to make it happen.
These are such challenging times with many time consuming logistics to figure out to try to get students and staff in the building, whenever possible. We appreciate your patience as we work to try to accommodate requests and we will continue to do our best to think “outside of the box”, while maintaining health and safety protocols, at the same time.
Have a great weekend,
Chris Hardiman
NSHS Interim Vice Principal
