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By Angela Deines, KNEA Communications

Please Note: The information contained in this article may be updated to reflect new information as we receive it.

With an additional 25,000 vaccine doses per week expected to arrive in Kansas soon, Gov. Laura Kelly has announced K-12 teachers, administrators and other educational support staff will receive priority in getting the COVID-19 inoculations.

“We want our kids back in the classroom,” Gov. Kelly said at the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka this week. “We all know that virtual school is not ideal. It creates a myriad of challenges for students, their parents, the teachers and the districts.”

While she stood by the decision to close school buildings for in-person classroom learning last March in response to the global pandemic, Gov. Kelly acknowledged that “prolonged remote learning is not sustainable.”

The governor’s “Back to School Vaccination Plan” includes sending the extra vaccine vials the Kansas Department of Health and Environment receives from the federal government to the state’s county health departments. The county health departments will then coordinate with the Kansas State Department of Education and local school districts to vaccinate all school staff. The vaccines, along with additional rapid testing supplies and continued adherence to the other mitigation strategies for in-person learning, Gov. Kelly said students should be able to safely return to the classroom.

“I want to make clear that we are able to implement the ‘Back to School Vaccination Plan’ because Kansas is receiving substantially more doses than we had been,” Gov. Kelly said. Kansas was receiving 45,000 doses a month ago and about 90,000 last week, she said. White House officials informed her this week Kansas can expect 115,000 doses per week going forward.

Through KNEA’s Government Relations arm, Gov. Kelly and her administration officials have maintained open lines of communication throughout the pandemic. The first-term Democratic governor has continued to meet virtually with teachers as well, including KNEA members, to hear their concerns regarding their students and their classrooms over the course of the COVID-19 crisis.

“Governor Kelly has always held educators in the highest regard,” said Mark Farr, KNEA president. “We know from our communication with her and her staff that front-line workers like Kansas educators are her top priority when it comes to vaccine distribution needed to get us all on a road to to recovery. The proof that Governor Kelly puts students first is in her effort to ensure that the adults who work most closely with students are safe, healthy, and equipped to do the extraordinary work of shepherding students through a global crisis.”

KNEA members begin getting vaccinations

Although there is a patchwork of plans across the U.S. to vaccinate teachers, Kansas educators have increasingly been prioritized and have been receiving the COVID-19 shots since just after the first of the year.

On Feb. 12, the same day the CDC released its official guidelines for reopening schools, Shawnee County Health Department officials announced they would be working with two major hospital systems in Topeka to get all interested K-12 public and private school teachers and support staff, including bus drivers, their first vaccination shot by spring break in March.

“We felt like the county and the district (Topeka USD 501) must have been collaborating somehow to bump us up to get the shots in February,” said Richard Bolejack, president of NEA-Topeka. “We were just surprised, truly, that we were going to get the shots this quickly.”

In Reno County, several members of EA #309 Nickerson-South Hutchinson were able to get vaccinated in early January.

“I got the vaccine because my dad has Stage IV cancer,” said Misty McCurdy, a reading instructor at Reno Valley Middle School. “I just want to make sure that I was safe to be around him. I’m not really worried about myself. I just was more worried about keeping my family safe and my students.”

“The reason that I got the shot is my husband is a heart patient and he has a pacemaker,” added Kris Jenkins, a preschool teacher at Nickerson Elementary. “I haven’t been to the farm to see my elderly parents since July, and it’s about killing me. So I want to be healthy enough to be around them over spring break, and not bring anything home to my husband.”

“I personally wanted the vaccine for my family and for my educational family as well, both students and the people I work with,” added Jolene Reed, a speech and hearing impaired therapist at Buhler Elementary and member of the Reno County Co-Op NEA. “Then I just really wanted to make sure that I stay as healthy as I can.”

Shiloh Blasdel, a classroom teacher at South Hutchinson Elementary, said she got the vaccine to reduce the chance of getting COVID-19 again after having contracted it earlier in 2020 and to protect her family. However, she said she also wanted it so schools could re-open safely.

“I hope that with getting the vaccine that we can hopefully open next year with lesser restrictions with masks and all the other things that we have to do at school just so it can be more normal for our students,” she said. “I’d really like to get as normal as possible, just for our students and for our communities.”

“I really feel this is essential to keeping our schools open and I want to see our school stay open and have more people at school,” added Travis Hampl, another Reno Valley Middle School teacher who talked about his reasons for getting the COVID-19 vaccine. “I think this was a really crucial first step and I’m excited to get the second dose and I recommend this to all Kansas teachers.”

Vaccinations on the national level

The nation’s most recognized infectious disease expert has a vested interest in making sure U.S. public schools safely re-open: one of his three daughters has been an elementary school science teacher in New Orleans for the past several years.

“We want to get teachers vaccinated as fast as we can,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, now advising his seventh President of the United States. “That will hopefully get to the goal that we all want…to get the children back to school.”

Fauci spoke in late January about the approach needed to re-open America’s schools during a virtual “fireside chat” with NEA president Becky Pringle and AFT president Randi Weingarten.

“When you talk about the things that are important to you,” Fauci said, referring to COVID-19 related school issues, “I hear them also on phone calls daily with my daughter.”

“We’re not going to get back to normal until we get children back into school, both for the good of the children, for the good of the parents, and for the good of the community,” Fauci, chief medical advisor to the Biden Administration, continued. “We want to make sure we do that by giving the teachers and the teams associated with teachers the resources that they need to do that. The idea of, ‘go do it on your own’—that doesn’t work.”

NEA members from Kansas and across the U.S. submitted questions prior to the virtual event. Weingarten asked Fauci the question submitted from Ron Hobert, a member of United Teachers of Wichita: “How can we protect both staff and students who are in face-to-face education settings as we move into the more critical stages of the pandemic in the next four months?”

“The President is taking very seriously the issue both from the student standpoint and from the teacher standpoint,” Fauci said, referring the American Rescue Plan for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, including the safe re-opening of schools. “We really want to and believe that the schools need to reopen in the next hundred days, essentially all the K-8 schools within 100 days. That’s the goal.”

The Biden Administration’s ambitious $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan includes ramping up vaccinations for all Americans, including teachers, but is leaving the rollout for vaccinating educators up to each states’ governors.

“The National Education Association strongly stands behind educators who have determined that they need access to COVID-19 vaccines to ensure that their workplaces are safer, whether they are currently working in person or will be returning to school buildings,” said NEA President Becky Pringle, “and educators need to have access to COVID-19 vaccines now, period.”

However, the official CDC guidelines released on Feb. 12 for safely reopening schools didn’t include making vaccinations for teachers a prerequisite for going back to full time, in-person classroom teaching.

Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said the federal agency and the Biden Administration are strongly encouraging states to “prioritize teachers and other school staff to get vaccinated.”

“We must ensure the teachers and school staff are healthy and protected from getting COVID-19 in places outside of schools where they might be at higher risk,” she said.

Under the CDC’s operational strategy, the following five mitigation strategies (masks and physical distancing taking priority), that if layered and used correctly on top of each other, make schools safer for in-person learning:

• MASKS
• PHYSICAL DISTANCING
• HANDWASHING AND RESPIRATORY ETIQUETTE
• CLEANING AND MAINTAINING HEALTHY FACILITIES
• AND DIAGNOSTIC AND RAPID AND EFFICIENT-CONTACT TRACING, IN COMBINATION WITH ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE, AND IN COLLABORATION WITH THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT.

Walensky said even with the release of the operational strategy, the “CDC is not mandating that schools reopen.”

“These recommendations, simply, provide schools a long-needed roadmap for how to do so, safely, under different levels of disease in the community,” she said. “The science, also, shows us that K to 12 schools that have impIemented strict mitigation strategies have been able to safely open for in-person instruction and remain open.”

President Biden’s American Rescue Plan would also put $35 billion into the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund so that colleges – including community colleges, public and private Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other minority serving institutions to “have critical resources to implement public health protocols, execute distance learning plans, and provide emergency grants to students in need.”

The American Rescue Plan also includes $5 billion for governors as part of the Hardest Hit Education Fund to “support educational programs and the learning needs of students significantly impacted by COVID-19, whether K-12, higher education, or early childhood education programs.”

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Olathe NEA member Alisha Morris creates spreadsheet to track school-related COVID-19 cases, garners national attention

Reading and hearing media accounts of the COVID-19 virus reported across the U.S. education system  this past spring and summer, Olathe NEA member Alisha Morris had an idea: Create a way for her fellow educators to see – in one central, transparent place – where the instances of the novel coronavirus were reported in each of the 50 states’ schools.    

“I was seeing all these schools experiencing cases,” said Morris, a theatre instructor for Olathe West High School. “I went searching for that information and couldn’t find it anywhere. I’ve always been kind of a spreadsheet nerd. I thought it would be a productive use of my time, waiting for school to start.”

Morris said she started entering the COVID-19 school data from news and social media accounts into a Google spreadsheet, separated by state, and then shared the information with her Olathe USD 233 board of education and on the Facebook walls of Kansas’ and other states’ educator groups.

Then the local and national media found out about Morris’ project and before long, she said she was interviewed by not only Kansas City television reporters but also by The Washington Post, Good Morning America, National Public Radio and The CBS Evening News.  

“It’s very overwhelming,” Morris said in describing the national exposure she’s received, “particularly because I really wasn’t looking for this to happen. I shared it with some people and it just exploded. They were all shocked to see what was on the spreadsheet. People obviously want this information.”

Leigh Anne Rogers, president of Olathe NEA, said Morris is “a dedicated educator that cares about student and staff safety.”

“With schools reopening across the country, Alisha found a way to house data and trends about COVID-19 that are specific to schools and educational systems,” she said. “We are proud of the work our Olathe NEA educator is doing.”

Once the news of her spreadsheet started garnering more attention, Morris said “a bunch of people” began sending her links to reports of school-related coronavirus cases. She said a small army made up of about 50 current and retired teachers and other people across the country have volunteered to help enter the news, social media and other verified reports.

“All of a sudden I was getting hundreds of submissions,” she said. “Then I started asking for help from other teachers across the country. I would assign them to their home state. It very quickly grew to over 700 schools put into the spreadsheet.”

One such teacher who jumped in to help Morris was Alaina Post, Kentucky Education Association member and foreign language instructor at Walton-Verona High School in Walton, Kentucky.

“I felt an immediate connection to Alisha because she seemed to have the same goals I had when I started my (Facebook) group (Kentucky Teachers/Staff for a Safe Return),” she said. “We both felt the need to amplify teacher voices and show through data that it was dangerous to reopen schools under the current circumstances.”

Jennifer Johnson, a member of Education Minnesota and a learning specialist at Normandale Elementary and Edina High School in Edina, Minnesota, said she, too, became aware of the COVID-19 tracker when Morris posted it on her state’s educator Facebook group, “Teaching in COVID-19” that has more than 130,000 members. She said as an interventionist, she knows how labor-intensive the gathering and entering of data can be.

“I instantly offered my support and aid knowing that this work is important work that someone should be doing, if not at the state or federal level then someone else,” Johnson said. “It’s disappointing that it falls upon a cadre of teachers to fill this role, especially considering that data tracking of this nature can only be meant for schools to make sound decisions in which to preserve the safety of our nation’s children, teachers, and other school support staff.”

Despite the thousands of submissions that are housed in the COVID-19 tracker, Post believes the number of school-related cases is getting underreported either by the school districts or county health departments or both.

“I think that this exacerbates the divide between teachers and staff and community members and parents because the community is not totally aware of how bad the situation is so they think it is safe to send their kids back into the buildings,” she said.

Morris said if a report of COVID-19 cases that can’t be confirmed but is in the public domain, it will be tagged as “NO ARTICLE PROOF.” She said her previous experience as a speech and debate coach reinforced her belief in having sourced entries whenever possible.

“The lesson learned from this is that people really want this information and they want to see it in one place,” Morris said. “(They) want to see this information in a transparent way.”

The success of the spreadsheet has also garnered the National Education Association’s attention. Morris since she needs to begin devoting her full attention to her teaching duties, NEA will soon integrate it into their digital content.

“They created a website and they’re going to take over the operation,” she said.

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NEA TEACHER QUALITY WEBINARS & MICRO-CREDENTIALS

Preparing Your Distance Learning Classroom

Join NEA Teacher Quality in a series of webinars designed to help you prepare your distance learning classroom. Register for one or all three!

August 10, 2020

Planning for a Week of Distance Learning

Join ed tech experts in exploring examples of what distance education might “look” like for you and your students. We will also consider the transitional thinking required to best support student engagement and success.

Register here: https://www.mobilize.us/nea/event/294137/

August 17, 2020

Facilitating Quality Practice

Quality practice looks, sounds, and feels different virtually. Let’s practice with tools that teachers and paraeducators can use with students. We will learn about best practices for online learning, including instructor presence, learning objectives, real world applications, clear expectations, engaging students, prompt feedback, and netiquette. We will focus on two platforms: Seesaw and Google Classroom.

Register here: https://www.mobilize.us/nea/event/295430/

August 24, 2020

Providing Accommodations and Scaffolding Online

How do you support students with IEPs, English language learners, and older students with developing literacy skills in an asynchronous distance learning environment? Using Google Classroom, learn strategies for providing accommodations, scaffolds, SIOP features, and elements of explicit instruction in an asynchronous setting that support all students. Register here: https://www.mobilize.us/nea/event/295432/

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The following recommendations are based upon criteria and indicators established by Kansas and federal medical experts. Click the image to view and download the full document.

Read more from the Kansas Chapter of the American Association of Pediatrics here: http://www.kansasaap.org/wordpress/kaaps-back-to-school-statement/

Visit the Kansas Department of Health and Environment COVID-19 response page here: https://www.coronavirus.kdheks.gov/

Read the CDC’s community gating guidance here: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/php/CDC-Activities-Initiatives-for-COVID-19-Response.pdf

Review all of KNEA’s alerts, guidance, tools and information in response to COVID-19 here: https://www.kneaweb.org/covid-19-alerts/

The post KNEA Recommended Gating Criteria & Indicators appeared first on Kansas National Education Association.

NOTE: The following video was produced on July 16, 2020, at KTWU studios in Topeka, Kansas. Panelists and production crew members exercised safe-distance and hand washing. Face coverings were used except by panelists only while recording the discussion.

The post KNEA EXPERT PANEL: Rights & Responsibilities returning to the workplace appeared first on Kansas National Education Association.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A FULL PDF OF KNEA PRESIDENT MARK FARR’S STATEMENT TO MEMBERS

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A FULL RESOLUTION PNG OF KNEA’S ‘SAFE REOPENING’ KEY POINTS

The post Open schools when schools are safe to open appeared first on Kansas National Education Association.

By Angela Deines

While the COVID-19 pandemic forced educators across the U.S. to leave their classrooms and deliver instruction online from home, many Kansas NEA members took the time to show their students appreciation off-line for participating in their online continuous learning.

“It was a good way to get out from behind the screen,” NEA-Topeka member Scott Ritter said. “It was also a ‘hey, we miss you and we want to thank you for holding up your end of the bargain’.”

Ritter, an English and Language Arts teacher at French Middle School in Topeka USD 501, is describing the visits he and Stephanie Karrer, fellow NEA-Topeka member and math teacher at French, made to recognize their students who stayed connected to their teachers and completed their online classwork.

“The change to distance learning was a struggle for students, families, and teachers,” said Karrer, who came up with the idea from other educators’ social media posts. “It felt amazing to recognize students who were attending the Zoom video meetings, persevering with distance learning, and completing their math assignments.” 

Over a three-day period, Karrer and Ritter visited nearly 75 different homes, delivering bags with water, snacks and a note. They said the students were excited to see them and showed their appreciation while adhering to social distancing.  

“I wanted to deliver the treats so students still felt connected to school,” Karrer said. “I’m also a believer in rewarding kids for positive behavior and effort.”

“To reach out and give them some attention,” Ritter said, “it felt good to get out into the community. It’s such a new and strange time for us and we didn’t get that closure.”

Affectionately known as “Mrs. O”, United Teachers of Wichita member Carolyn Orndorff said she also didn’t get the closure that’s customary at the end of the school year with her Buckner Elementary second-graders. She said the social-distanced porch visits with her students and their families who are struggling helped her through the transition to continuous learning.

“Relationships with these kids is everything,” she said. “I just had to make sure they were okay. That helps me sleep at night.”

To give her students some activities, Orndorff said she put together “recess in a bag” that included play dough, pencils and a box of crayons. Friends also helped her put together treat baskets for her students and their families.

Like Ritter and Karrer’s students, Orndorff said her students’ faces “lit up” when she saw them. Making sure they honored social distancing, she said they exchanged “air hugs” in place of the actual hugs they used to get every day when they came to school.

“They want to hug me and I want to hug them,” she said. “I just told them that I love them and that we’re going to be okay. Their classroom…it’s been taken from them and that just hurts my heart.”

Orndorff said she usually helps chickens hatch in her classroom during the spring. Because Buckner is a STEAM school, she said there would have also been a STEAM week in late spring. To give them some semblance of normalcy, she said she delivered STEAM bags to her students that included binoculars, bug catchers, compasses and bird books and encouraged them to send her pictures of them being scientists.

 “This is feeding my soul, just seeing them,” Orndorff said. “They give me so much back.”

A little more than 160 miles to the west of Wichita, Emily Dizmang, KNEA Southwest UniServ president and president of the Fowler USD 225 Teachers Association, was part of a caravan of other Fowler Elementary teachers who put signs of encouragement in their students’ yards to stay connected during the COVID-19 crisis.

“We wanted them to know that we still care about them,” she said. “With this happening so abruptly we couldn’t say goodbye. We wanted them to know that we’re just a click away.”

Like so many educators across Kansas and the U.S., Dizmang said all she wanted to do was give her students a hug and she could see they wanted to do the same. However, they could only wave and shout greetings to each other from a distance.  

“They never ran up and hugged us like they would have,” she said with emotion welling up in her voice. “You wanted to wrap your arms around them. It’s probably been the hardest thing. Sometimes that’s the only hug they get.”

A “positive” that came as a result of the pandemic, Dizmang said, was that she saw an increase in participation from parents who were previously “difficult to connect with.” 

“Some of those families I’m hearing from, I wish I could have heard from them all year,” she said. “It was nice to have those conversations. I heard a lot of appreciation, that ‘our kids couldn’t do this without you’.”

Back in Wichita, Jill Terhune, a UTW member, spearheaded the effort to put signs in the yards of graduating seniors at Wichita West High School.

“There was a group of us and we were talking about how we were going to connect with our kids, especially our seniors,” she said. “With 80 to 83 percent of them on free and reduced lunch, mostly free, we knew we would have to be creative in lots of different ways. Someone said ‘let’s do yard signs’ and I said I’d make it happen…because that’s just what I do.”

Terhune, who has been a counselor at Wichita West High School for the past six years and in Wichita USD 259 for more than 20 years, said the signs that read in part, “Once a Pioneer, always a Pioneer”, were a way to let the Class of 2020 know they are still part of the close-knit West High family.  

“Some of them escape to school (for security) and we’re constantly worried about them,” she said. “We wanted something more direct and personal. Our school is a family unlike any other school I’ve been in….It’s hard to explain. We really take care of our kids.”

Terhune said it was worth and time and effort to see the students and their families when many of the Wichita West staff caravanned in their cars to distribute the signs while being mindful of social distancing.  

“Seeing their faces and having them be reminded how much we care about and believe in them,” she said, “it was just so overwhelming.”

“It felt really great to see them and give them a little bit of motivation and encourage them to finish strong, especially the ones that we hadn’t seen,” added Gabe Costilla, UTW vice president and a half-time release instructor at Wichita West.

Terhune said it was a tough spring for the Wichita West family in many ways but having the staff come together for their seniors was special.

“It’s been extremely hard on us,” she said. “We’re such a big family. Our teachers were incredible. They made it happen.” 

The post Connecting with students beyond the screen appeared first on Kansas National Education Association.

By Angela Deines, KNEA Communications

Armed with their creativity and the power of the internet, Kansas NEA members across the state have used YouTube to connect with their students and families during the continuous learning process precipitated by COVID-19.

“You can let your crazy-side show,” said Hannah Hurst, a Lawrence EA member, also known as “The Art Teacher in Quarantine,” of the videos where she’s eating a sandwich with American pop artist Andy Warhol and bicycling through the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa in Paris. “I’ve been thrilled that people find humor in it.”

The videos show Hurst taking on the personas of some of her favorite artists like American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, French painter Joseph Ducreux, and Belgian artist Renè Magritte.

“I do a lot of silly accents in my classroom,” said Hurst, now in her sixth year at Deerfield Elementary in Lawrence USD 497. “Kids just respond to that kind of thing so well.”

Hurst said she really “didn’t know anything” about creating videos before Gov. Laura Kelly closed school buildings for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year. She said she largely taught herself how to use iMovie and convinced her three teenage children to help her with gathering props and shooting the videos.

“They are mostly a good part of developing the story which is hugely helpful,” she said. “They also keep me from making a total fool of myself.”

The “collision of ideas” for the videos never stops, Hurst said, adding they flow from the “recesses” of her mind, often from previous material she has taught her elementary students. She said the videos take an average of a week to produce and edit, adding that the creative process for them is “embarrassingly all-inclusive.”

“It’s really a vulnerable place to put yourself,” she said, “but it’s also given me some really great connections that I wouldn’t have anticipated as a teacher.”

Hurst said she has created the videos more for a creative outlet and aren’t part of the requirements she and other Lawrence USD 497 art teachers have to meet for offering continuous learning projects. However, she said fellow art teachers from around the country have reached out to her to give her positive feedback on the videos.

“It makes you feel like your time is so well spent,” Hurst said. “It also validates what you’re doing. Having art teachers compliment you is really the best.”

Maria Quintanar, a teacher at Alta Brown Elementary and Garden City EA member, said she has used YouTube to deliver quick, easily-digestible content for her kindergarten students during the continuous learning process. 

Just as important, the short videos – many of them less than a minute long – are for the benefit of her students’ parents, many of whom have shift work at Garden City’s meat processing plant.

“It works for me and it works for my parents because they don’t have to commit to a specific time” to view the videos, she said, “and they’re getting to know my teaching style.”

Quintanar said her students and parents can view the videos as many times as they need to, reinforcing the material that includes math, reading, writing, and phonics.

 “I really like doing them,” she said. “I’m just myself in them and the kids love re-watching them.”

Quintanar’s videos include her “bloopers”, her distinctive laugh and her own five-year-old and one-year-old children, she said.

“It’s good that I’m not going back and trying to make them perfect,” she said, “and they’ve got to know my actual children.”

Sabrina Casper has used this past spring to stay connected via YouTube with her kindergarten students before she officially retires at the end of this school year after 37 years of teaching.

“I can’t not do it,” the Clear Creek Elementary classroom teacher and member of De Soto TA said of transferring some of her instruction to YouTube during the COVID-19 crisis. “You just rise to the occasion. That’s what we do as teachers, we have to.”

Using an iPad and largely teaching herself to use iMovie, Casper has made several videos including one of chicks hatching and another watching a butterfly up-close eat an orange. She said making the videos has been both “therapeutic” and “cathartic.” She said she enjoys learning new things in collaboration with others.

“One of the hardest things for me about being a teacher is to keep up with technology,” Casper said. “It’s coming faster and faster but I think I’ve done a pretty good job with it. I have some wonderful colleagues on my team and they’re a little younger. I’ve shared my wisdom and they’ve shared their tech skills with me.”

Casper said she’s still “emotionally coming to grips” with retirement. She said not being able to see her students in-person for the rest of the school year has also been a process.

“We are talking on Zoom but it’s not the same,” she said. “People who know me know that I try to look on the bright side of things. You just do what you have to do and you do the best you can for your kids.”  

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