• City Theatre Company Presentation

  • • • Katie Trupiano, Director of Education, 412-431-4400 x269, ktrupiano@citytheatrecompany.org 

• FINAL MEETING FOR 2020-2021 - JUNE 23, 2021

  • • • In person or virtual or both??

• May is Mental Health Awareness Month

  • • • EVERFI resources

      • 31 Activities for Mindfulness in the Classroom

• Interested in study implementing Datawise with 5th grade math teachers?

  • • • Need 25 buildings to participate

      • Study conducted with Harvard Datawise Founders, Koru (to provide training), and SRI (for research and grant coordination)

      • Study begins late spring/early summer of 2022   

      • Study will focus on these questions:  Does Data Wise help to: Improve student mathematics achievement?  Improve teacher instructional practice?  Make team meeting time more productive?

• ESSER Funds Guidance

  • • • PDE will be releasing a template that will assist with submitting Health and Safety plans for the ESSER III application.  PDE believes that the “emergency declaration” section of the code will cover districts for next year and Health and Safety plans may not be necessary in the future. 

• Instructional Time Guidance for 21-22 SY (SC 520.1)

  • • • Guidance will be released to field re: 180 day/990 hour requirements for instructional days next year– taking same approach as this year – allowing districts to submit simple attestation with sample schedule –same format. Communications: intentional that PDE expects districts to return to 5-day/week in-person instruction & reason for continuing for 2nd year: districts have families not ready to send students back to in-person instruction – provides flexibility for districts for those families and for health/safety of community in case of high number of COVID cases in schools. Not encouraging hybrid options. Took 2 sample schedules off website – no longer relevant (half-day).

      • Submit an instructional time template

• High School Graduation Requirements Guidance 

• PDE Accelerated Learning Website

  • • • Can view recorded sessions for Act 48/Act 45

• Keystone Exams and Participation Rates for students in grades 7, 8, 9, 10

  • • • Even though the 95% participation rate waiver is in effect for this year.  High schools will still run into issues with the keystone exams. Brian Truesdale confirmed for me that the participation rate for keystones is based on the number of juniors who took the keystones by the end of their junior year.  Therefore the 95% participation waiver will only impact this year’s juniors.  Other grades scheduled to take the keystones this year (grades 10, 9, 8 etc..) will have participation count unless there are additional waivers in the future.

• Local Assessments

  • • • PDE Webinars on May 18 and 19 and open office hours on Tuesdays in June

• FREE National EdTech Equity Dashboard  - a real-time view of edtech engagement trends, which is free and available to the public; shows districts usage data of tech tools by subgroup

• Engineering Its Elementary (EiE) Recorded Overview - Rod Hardy, Matt Weightman, and Alyssa Moore

• Esports Update

  • • • IU1 Esports Pilot Tournament with Campus Schools only on May 28

      • Interested in including esports in your curriculum or starting a club?   Reach out to Jenny Lent or Sarah D'Urzo

        • • We will hold an Esports Overview meeting for those interested on June 7, 2021 at 9am

      • Resources

        • • Hitmarker - website for jobs related to esports 

          • NASEF - North American Scholastic Esports Federation 

            • • Curriculum/Lesson Plan resources

              • Club registration

          • Varsity Esports Association 

            • • Comprehensive Gaming Curriculum 

• Educator Effectiveness for 2021-2022 under Act 13

  • • Act 13 of 2020 revises the Act 82 Educator Effectiveness system for evaluating PreK-12 professional employees. Beginning with the 2021-22 school year, the revised rating system takes effect for classroom teachers, non-teaching professional employees, and principals across the Commonwealth.  To assist school leaders and educators in preparing for these changes, the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) has prepared the following two documents located on the Educator Effectiveness webpage:

• An Introduction to Act 13 of 2020 and Impact on Educator Effectiveness

• Act 13 Professional Development Requirements and Opportunities

• PDE is committed to assisting educational professionals in a smooth transition to Act 13 Educator Effectiveness requirements and will release additional guidance and resources over the coming weeks.  Please contact PDE’s Division of Planning (ra-pde-evaluation@pa.gov) with any questions.

• • • • The tools were developed as required by the new evaluation system created under Act 13 of 2020. Act 13 changes the measure on direct classroom observation and practice from 50% to 70% of most educators’ evaluations. The remaining 30% of the rating is based on building level and teacher specific student achievement data, including student performance on standardized testing, local assessments, portfolios and projects. The building level data also will be adjusted by a measure of poverty for each individual school building. The teacher specific student achievement data will include student performance measures that relate directly to an educator’s practice each academic year.

      • School entities must still complete professional employee evaluations under Act 82 for the 2020-21 school year. However, the requirement to include performance data for a professional employee’s performance rating has been waived for both the 2019-20 (under Act 13 of 2020) and 2020-21 (under Act 136 of 2020) school years. 

• Captions for Accessibility of Videos

  • • • Described and Captioned Media Platform  - free videos to educators and the videos are already captioned 

      • Kapwing activates captions automatically for newly recorded videos (7 minute max video)

• The Teacher Education Program at West Liberty University is offering a free virtual workshop with bestselling author, Ruby Payne. Ms. Payne is the founder of the training and publishing company, aha! Process, Inc. Emotional Poverty in All Demographics: How to Reduce Anger, Anxiety, and Violence in the Classroom Virtual Workshop

  • • • Friday, June 4, 2021

      • 8:30 AM – 3:30 PM

      • For more information on the workshop, please click here:  Emotional Poverty Workshop.  The Emotional Poverty textbook is required for this workshop. We have already purchased copies of the book and will send one to you, at no cost, prior to the workshop.

      • Please RSVP by completing this form, by Friday, May 21, 2021: 

      • Emotional Poverty Workshop RSVP Form

• PA STEM Coalition Meetings Spring 2021-Career Pathways Report with Stephen Herzenberg, Keystone Research Center took place onMay 13, 2021 03:46 PM

  • • • Meeting Recording: https://zoom.us/rec/share/GGx-WbEQzX-WBRlJGdblCnuML3vSNbu6Sy7KpYRWtZ6TNqEr9gfF3NG9NW9VMZo.vggeXzr0FrDCr81R

      • Access Passcode: PQZX^D9O

      • KRC Career Pathways Report

• Industry 4.0 Teacher Academy 

• Career Exploration Resource from Catalyst Connection 

• Research Focuses on Role of Assistant Principals

• PVAAS Recorded Videos

• Investing in Arts Education 

All InfoCard Updates as of April can be found HERE!