To continue Dr King’s work, Black Lives Matter at School “Week of Action” is February 1-5. Their website offers a guide to help teachers structure the 13 principles of the BLM movement into daily lessons with this Starter Kit. 

Media Literacy

When breaking, heavily-divisive news arises -- such as the attack on our nation's Capitol earlier this month -- it can often be a challenge for teachers to discuss those issues in class.  Media bias, students' political beliefs, those of their family, and the desire for teachers to be impartial and fact-based can often be at odds with one another.

This is where it helps for students to think critically about the Authorship and Audience pieces of the Media Literacy Framework to consider who created the information, and who they were trying to reach.  This can make it easier to bring controversial topics into the classroom and examine them from a more objective point of view.

Teachers can also prompt students to practice lateral reading when reading for information.  That is, reading about what others say about a source.  A great resource for this is AllSides which presents news stories from the whole political spectrum, with analysis of the publication's bias.

Here is a small sample of the sessions DoT has helped partner with teachers to build:

Phishing Scams

A "phishing" email is a message that attempts to trick you into revealing your private, personal information to a hacker.  ASD staff should be wary of any surprise surveys or requests for information that appear to come from their building principal or district leadership.

Look at the example below and try to note the red flags:

• The "From" line contains a Gmail address, rather than an @auburn.wednet.edu address.

• The "Subject" line is in all capitals - this is unprofessional and not something you would expect from an ASD email.

• The green banner alerts you that this came from outside our district - this should be the first sign for staff to proceed with caution.

• The email comes from "ithelpdesk9949" but the message claims to come from Dr Alan Spicciati.  As much as we'd like his expertise, the Superintendent does not work in the IT Department.

• This is a Google Form that says it is "Designed for Microsoft and Office 365 Users Only" - this is confusing and contradictory.

• You may also question exactly what is an "End of Year Faculty Evaluation" - it's vague, yet official-sounding language.

• Typically, ASD surveys will be accompanied by an explanatory email from our Director of Communications, Vicki Alonzo.

If you find yourself in receipt of an email like this, please do not click on anything.  Instead, forward the email to postmaster@auburn.wednet.edu so that it can be addressed by our engineers.