Last Blog 2019-2029 School Year

Happy summer room 9 families. You did it! Parents, you successfully helped your children navigate the 4th quarter of their first grade year from home. Who would have ever thought you would become your child, or children's, teacher while trying to run a household and still work your own jobs all at the same time - during a world wide pandemic! What a way to end. Give yourselves a pat on the back, you all did it. You made it work for your family, and you reached the end. Congratulations to all! I hope you all have enjoyed your first, well deserve week of summer. Here are some last items of business.

Summer Birthday's- We usually get to end the year with a summer birthday celebration. It is our chance to recognize our friends who have birthday's over the summer. Obviously, we did not get to do this. We also missed some of our fourth quarter birthdays as well due to the closures. So I wanted to be able to say Happy Birthday to all my kiddos who we did not get to celebrate in person.

 Addisyn, Raymond, Slim, Elsie and Jayla! 

(I owe you all a birthday cup 😁)

Summer School:  Summer school will look a little different this year. There will not be live, summer school. Instead a group of amazing FUSD educators will be working hard in the month of June to create lessons based on the summer school themes. These lessons will be interactive and include things like virtual fieldtrips (from what I was told anyway). The best part is they are available to everyone! They will be posted on the FUSD website in July. Please, take advantage of this resource this summer, especially if your child is in need of reading help! Thank you.

The Million Dollar Question:  Like every teacher in America, I know parents want to know what next year will look like. I know I have always been honest about every step of the process with you, and I promised to keep you updated with any new information. I plan to uphold that throughout this summer. That is why it pains me to inform you that as of yesterday Governor Doug Ducey announced his plan is to open up schools in the fall. State Superintendent of Schools Kathy Hoffman is supposed to follow up on Monday with what exactly that means and what that will look like. I hesitated to write this because in my opinion, although it may be the announcement that was made, it was made way too soon. There is no way we can know what our state, city, or district will look like in 2/3 months and I think we need to be monitoring the situation for a little longer before we can be making such definitive decisions for next school year. That is only my opinion on the situation, and I will support decisions made. I just am confused on how they can be made this early. Will this decision change? I do not know, but if it does I will update you. I will continue to keep you informed throughout the summer. Try not to worry about any of it, who knows how it will change as next school year draws near.

Now for my confession. Last Friday I cried for about 5 good solid minutes. Crazy tears, dog looking at me like I was insane. It was probably one of the hardest last days of school ever. How do you end the year when you do not get to hug your babies as they walk out the door, proud new 2nd graders. It was so depressing closing my computer as opposed to waving goodbye to 23 beautiful little humans, packing up my room, and closing my door on another successful school year. The hardest non goodbye boodbye ever. So please, hug them for me today. Read them a story for me, my favorite thing to do with them. And tell them I am so proud of them becoming 2nd graders. They will always be my babies (or as Lylah would say, my Mama Mia babies - inside joke). Have a great summer Room 9 families. Hope to see you all soon! 💚 - Ms. Shaw

Last Week of School 2020

Happy Sunday. It is so surreal to sit here and write what is probably the second to last blog of the school year. Again, I find myself fighting back tears thinking about what we would have been doing if this had been a normal last week of school, but if things had been normal this would have been the second to last week of school. Anyway, here is an update on what is happening as we close out this school year...

Student Belongings: I went in last week and packed up everything in the students cubbies. All of this years items will passed along to next years teacher. Thankfully there was no personal items left behind in our classroom - yay! If you will be moving and will need to pick up your child's bag of stuff before next school year please contact me via email (ashaw@fusd1.org) by Wednesday, May 20 so that we can make arrangement on Friday, May 22 for you to come pick up. We are working on what to do about getting back our library books, so hold on to those for now, we will let you know.

Last Week of School Check In's:  The sign up for our final check in's is ready. Here is the link Check In Sign Up.  We will have a special guest joining us, and per student request you may bring your pet to share with us. My dog will make an appearance if she will cooperate.

Report Cards:  I will be finalizing report cards this week. Please, if we have not been in contact yet, email me (or better yet sign up for a check in) so I can know what your child has been busy doing at home. If you have been reading books, they have been continuing their education. If you have watched nature documentaries, they have been continuing their education. They do not need to have been doing all the work off the HUB for me to feel like you have been working on continuing your child's education at home, this is not one size fits all. I still encourage each family to do what works best for them at this time. I just need to know for the sake of report card comments the district is requiring of me at this time. If you have already shared this information with me, you do not need to email me. Thank you.

Extra hugs to our kiddos for me this week. I cannot believe this is the end of our too short year together. The end of the year is always hard, but man this is a whole other level with not getting to see my babies in person. I began this blog with tears, and I'm ending it the same, so I'm leaving it here. I will continue with more updates as they come in. -Ms. Shaw

Second to Last Week of School Post May 11th-15th 2020

Hello Room 9 families. I hope all of you had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend. Quick update on a few things.

First, this week's spelling and matching story is up on my staff page. Remember, this is optional. It's just something we would have been working on in class. Feel free to do work on it as you wish. 

Second of all, I will not be able to do 1:1 Check In's this week. I have too many meetings, trainings, and my son has AP tests this week which makes it difficult for me to be on the computer talking to littles while he is trying to concentrate on his AP exams. All of it just proved to be a bit too much at the same time. I am super bummed about this, but we will definitely to one more the last week of school. I will let you know when this sign up is ready. Thank you for understanding.

FUSD would like your input on this years parent survey. Here is what they have put out:

The Flagstaff Unified School District understands parents and families are balancing the unexpected challenges of your children’s remote learning, while caring for others and dealing with the many ways COVID-19 has impacted how you live and work.  We are interested in knowing how you feel your children’s remote learning is going- for them and for you. 

Take the Parent Survey Today

Your input will help our district understand where we might need to provide your children and your family additional support and how FUSD can better prepare should we have to shift again to remote learning in the future.  Please take a few minutes to share your perceptions by completing this survey.  Thank you for your input.

I always like when I have the opportunity to share my point of view, and I encourage you to take the time to give your feedback as well. Thank you!

I hope everyone has a great week. If you need anything please feel free to email. -Ms. Shaw

First Week May 2020

Happy May. 3 weeks of distance learning left everyone. The school board voted to move the 3 remaining snow days, which would have been May 6th-8th, to the end of the year. This means this Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday will be learning days and the last day of the year will now be May 22nd. Which means, 3 weeks left. 

I would like to end the year with check ins. I was really hoping we could find a way to do whole class meet ups, but at this time the district has not found a legal way to allow this to happen. However, individual meet ups are allowed through Google Meets. I would love to see our students once a week on Google meets for the next 3 weeks. I'm thinking 15 minute Check Ins. This week we can just catch up, talk about what they have been up to, what they want help with, maybe they can bring one thing to show me - just one! It will only be 15 minutes after all. I am super excited about this, and honestly I am ready to cry just thinking about seeing their faces. Gosh I have missed your children sooo much! If none of the times I offer work for your schedule, please reach out and we can make something work! Also, the sign up times are for this week only. I will be making a new sign up for next week. This is due to schedule changes. Sorry for any inconvenience. The link to the sign up is Sign up for Check In's. I will have to send out individual meeting links via email after you sign up, the one in the group email will not work. Hopefully that will be your link for the rest of the year. If not, I will send new ones each week.

Marshall will be holding its first ever virtual assembly. The PBIS team wanted to make sure to finish out the year with our final THINK like a Mustang awards ceremony, in honor of the K for kindness. The assembly will be Friday at 9:00 am via Facebook live. For anyone who cannot view at that time, it will be recorded so anyone can watch it later. More information should go out from a phone call from Principal Reasor soon. Our two recipients for the kindness award are Abrielle and Joseph. Two very kind friends.

I think the assembly was the big thing I was forgetting last night. If and when I think of any other important information I will update the blog again. Can't wait to see the kiddos little faces this week! I am so excited and filled with joy just thinking of this. 💙-Ms. Shaw