Tips for Ecoff/CCPS Parents

The tips on this page will benefit parents of children in the Chesterfield County Public Schools (CCPS) in general and Ecoff Elementary School in particular.

1. Finding Teacher Web Pages

Almost all of the teachers at Ecoff Elementary School post their class schedules, assignments, and other information to one of two special web sites: teacherweb.com or schoolnotes.com. If your child's teacher is not listed on Ecoff's web site, or is listed but without showing a link to a web site, there is a good chance you can find the teacher's web site on your own because both teacherweb.com and schoolnotes.com have very useful search capabilities.

a. Teacherweb.com: http://www.teacherweb.com/tweb/States.aspx

[Technical note: if you are paranoid like I am and have your web browser's javascript turned off by default, you will need to activate javascript for the site to work properly.]

At the teacherweb.com search page, you will first need to select the state of Virginia from the many foreign and domestic regions listed on the pull-down menu that appears on-screen.

A second field will then appear that lists all schools in the region you selected previously. After you make your school selection, a third menu appears listing the teachers on file under that school name. Be aware that Ecoff is listed as Ecoff, EcoffElementary, and EcoffElementarySchool, so you might have to try all three options before you find the teacher you are seeking.

b. Schoolnotes.com: http://www.schoolnotes.com/ (version 1.0)

http://new.schoolnotes.com/parents/main (version 2.0)

Schoolnotes.com is a little more difficult because some teachers at Ecoff have migrated to the newer version 2.0 while others still use the older version 1.0. As you can see above, each version has its own separate and distinct search url.

[Technical note: version 1.0 does not require your browser's javascript to be enabled, but version 2.0 does.]

If you do not know which version your child's teacher is using, you might want to start with version 1.0. In the event you do not find the teacher for whom you are looking, version 1.0 provides a direct link to version 2.0; more details to follow.

On the version 1.0 search page, the only data entry value that you can provide is the school's zip code, which for Ecoff is 23831. This feature virtually guarantees that search results will list more teachers than you care to see, including some from other schools.

Of course, the teacher you want to see might not even be among those listed. At the top of version 1.0's search results page, there will be a statement "Not finding your teacher? Try searching on New SchoolNotes" where the phrase "New SchoolNotes" is a hyperlink. Click on it, and you will be magically transported to a corresponding list of all teachers in that same zip code who use version 2.0 rather than version 1.0.

On the other hand, if you go directly to version 2.0's search url, you will see that in addition to the zip code, Version 2.0 also allows users to specify a teacher's first and/or last name. In this way, you can limit the search results only to a particular teacher of interest.

Do not despair if your child's teacher does not appear in the search engines for either teacherweb.com or schoolnotes.com. As of this writing (September 2009), at least two Ecoff teachers—Chance Harding and Tiffany Quann (née Ratliff)—use Google Sites, while Phyliss Karamarkovich hosts her web page on mysite.verizon.net. A simple Google search for the exact phrase "Phyliss Karamarkovich" or "Chance Harding" will find those two of the three sites.

2. Finding Teacher & Administrator E-Mail Addresses

Chesterfield County Public Schools (CCPS) typically assigns e-mail addresses in the format firstname_lastname@ccpsnet.net. What if you do not know the first name of the teacher or administrator to whom you want to send an e-mail (or, as in the case of Phyliss Karamarkovich, CCPS mispelled the first name)? No problem: you can look up the official CCPS email address at the web site

http://mychesterfieldschools.com/staff-emails/

There are only three data input fields: first name, last name, and school name (a pull-down menu). If you do not know the person's first name, simply leave it blank: last name and school name will suffice in the vast majority of cases. Interestingly enough, if you leave both first and last names blank and only select a school, the search will produce a full roster—complete with e-mail address—for everyone at the school, including all support staff. (That might be a spammer's delight!)