Dear BK Parents and Students,

Well, if March 2020 wasn't memorable enough for COVID and school closures, how about a 6.5 magnitude earthquake? March began with a still raging virus and is going out shaking, rattling and rolling! By the way, our school suffered no damage from the earthquake that we can see, other than a few small cracks in the Carley Center walls that we will have a structural engineer and our architects (erstad architects) check out the next few days!

Happy April! In this Just in Time Communication, we wanted to update you on two of the five goals that we set for the uncertain period we entered three weeks ago and that are guiding our decisions and actions: 

Goal #2: Continue to provide a great education for all students via virtual learning

Goal #4: Find ways to acknowledge, appreciate, and celebrate members of our community

We have just completed our third day of virtual learning and the good news is that learning is taking place, students and teachers are connecting, and kids are engaged and participating actively. The challenges have been in two areas - one, system issues with Schoology, our Learning Management System, which is having nationwide performance and availability issues due to significantly increased usage of their platform. They are making changes and updates that will allow them to scale the system beyond what they believe they need to support their users (like BK) but, having spent 30 years at HP in the technology industry, I believe it will take some time. Thus, we have created a “side door” for when the “front door” (Schoology) is locked. Its purpose will be to provide an alternative for students to access their teacher and course materials in anticipation of continued, unreliable Schoology access. We have sent this information to our students and here is what the “side door” looks like.

The second challenge has been trying to do too much in these initial days and impacting the health and well-being of teachers, students and their families. We are going to adjust our schedule to strike a better school-life balance and focus on quality over quantity. We will be prioritizing what is most important and what can be taught well and retained. This means focusing on fewer things to be accomplished with integrity and quality each day and allowing mental and physical health during these stressful times to be more important than schooling. 

Thus, we will be adapting our schedules, starting this Friday, where we will have “office hours” for each teacher from 9:00 am - Noon, at which time students can connect with each of their teachers to ask questions, get help, etc. Following that there will be Asynchronous (one way) Learning from Noon - 3:00 pm, at which time students will have time to listen to lessons, do homework, and complete assignments.  In summary, Friday will be an independent work day for students but they will have immediate access to their teachers when needed. 

Starting Monday, April 6, we will move to an every other day block schedule where students will have four 75 minute periods each day. The 75 minute period should include 20-45 min of synchronous interaction, but will not be all synchronous. Teachers have a goal for the total time to be “all inclusive” with little to no homework beyond the 75 minutes for each class. The week of April 13 - 18 will have a similar format. As a reminder, we have school only four days the week of April 6 with Good Friday and also the week of April 13 with Easter Monday. Click on this Adjusted BK Virtual Schedule link to see the new schedules.

We knew we would learn a lot these first few days and we did indeed. Our goal from the start has been to learn, acknowledge the challenges, adapt quickly, and to keep moving forward. Our teachers, counselors, student services, and IT teams have worked incredibly hard and collaboratively the past three weeks to prepare us for this, building on the investments we have made as a community over the past 8 years in 1:1 devices, Schoology, Google Apps for Education, professional development, and our IT team and infrastructure. But we are not an online school. We are prioritizing learning and the mental and emotional health of our students, their families and our teachers and administrators. So please be patient, bear with us, and provide us feedback. We will be sending you a survey this Friday in our next Just in Time/BK Alive communication asking how things are going in your home and how we can best help you and your sons and daughters.

Counselors and Student support are available for students during the virtual day.  They have posted office hours with a video conference link on the “side-door” page.  However, the preferred way of contacting their counselor is via email. Depending on the nature of the question, counselors will follow up with an email, phone call or 1:1 virtual conference. 

Counselor/ Student Support Contact info

Mrs. Haener  [email protected]

Mr. Kristensen  [email protected]

Mrs. Kane  [email protected]

Mrs. Crum  [email protected]

Ms. Kurdy  [email protected]

We have received many questions about plans around the Class of 2020 celebrations and acknowledgements. We are in development of our plans (virtual, in person and/or delayed) for student events that acknowledge and celebrate our students, especially for our seniors in their final months of high school. We strongly desire to continue with Academic Excellence Week, Senior Retreat, Senior Mass, Yearbook signing, May 22nd Baccalaureate Mass and Class of 2020 Graduation on May 23rd. But given the recent distancing guidelines from the White House, which have been extended until April 30, doing those as planned will be difficult. We will provide some alternatives in mid-April to our community to consider and provide us feedback so we can make the best decisions for all involved. Stay tuned for that. 

We will continue each Friday with our Knights of the Week where Bishop Kelly faculty and staff nominate students, and students nominate faculty and staff. Each nomination honors a person who has demonstrated the BK Way attributes of Faith, Safe and Caring Place, Academic Excellence, Activities, Honor, Generosity, Community, and Partnership. Even though school is closed there are so many wonderful things happening even though we are not physically present to each other. Please encourage your sons and daughters to nominate BK faculty and staff. They need some love and encouragement as they are tired and under a good bit of stress - and they did not sign up to teach at an online school. But they are doing remarkable things to make it possible for your sons and daughters to continue receiving a great education through virtual learning.

Please also encourage your student to pop into the BK Virtual Commons each morning 15 minutes prior to classes starting. In the Commons, we will have opening prayer, celebrate birthdays, make special announcements and answer questions from students. Access information is on Schoology and has been sent directly to students through Remind. 

Finally, please plan to join us virtually to celebrate Mass from the St. Teresa of Jesus Chapel at Bishop Kelly with our Chaplain, Fr. Vance, S.J., this Friday at 8:00 am MDT on both Facebook Live and Instagram Live. Follow “Bishop Kelly Knights” to get the live feed or the recorded Mass if you are busy at that time. He will be celebrating each Monday and Friday at 8:00 am throughout the school closure if you can’t make this Friday!

This is our 8th Just in Time Communication since March 16th. Our next Just in Time Communication will be this Friday, April 3, when we will provide a further update on virtual learning and ask you to share via a survey how things are going for your students and how we can help make it better for all. As a reminder, we have archived these communications and the FAQ’s that have arisen on our Info for BK Families about COVID-19 webpage. 

Finally, please forgive us if we do not all respond within the 24 hour response window that is our goal, and should be your expectation. Our teachers and administrators have been very busy with planning for virtual learning and managing their own family situations with the stay-at-home directive. We are all very committed to our mission as a school and in making this virtual learning period a success for all students. Thank you for understanding. We strongly believe we will be a better school and a stronger community thanks to the efforts of so many through this crisis - including our parents. Thank you!.

God bless,

Here at BK IT we realize that this transition is a nerve racking one for many of us. We have fielded several questions and concerns regarding the process of going to an online virtual learning environment. We have answered many of the questions you likely have at the bottom of the BK website or at:

https://bishopkelly.freshdesk.com . Please take a moment to look at the questions and solutions in the Virtual/Flipped Classroom section of the Knowledge Base.

On a side note, most of the systems / software that we will be using in the coming weeks were never designed to handle the amount of use the U.S. is placing on them now. We will be experiencing outages, slowness, and downtime (remember the “old days”). Please have patience and understanding.

  

Bishop Kelly IT will be available 8:00AM to 3:30PM M-F during our virtual learning. Please help us navigate this new territory by making sure to check our knowledge base for an answer to your question prior to sending us an email. 

Parents / Guardians, please use your Student’s BK Google account when sending a request via email. Without that account your ticket may not be recorded.

BK IT Knowledge Base :  https://bishopkelly.freshdesk.com (login using a BK Student Google account)

Email Address:     [email protected] (Use a BK Student Google account)  

Opt-In for BK Emergency SMS Alerts

From time to time we will send out SMS notifications to parents for urgent reminders or other time sensitive items. Please be sure to opt-in for your respective remind group using the procedures below.

Text one of the following codes to the number "81010". Be sure to include the "@" symbol in your text.

@bkp2020

@bkp2021

@bkp2022

@bkp23



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