Saint Patrick School's "New" Normal

Please include the following sections within the Reopening Learning Plan:

1. • Roles and responsibilities:

     1. 1. Our school leadership in harmony with our faculty and staff is committed to the school’s mission of providing a strong academic, spiritual and moral foundation in a safe and nurturing environment within a community that celebrates its diversity and embraces the Vincentian spirituality of service to the poor and the needy.

        2. Teachers collaborate with each other and with teachers from other Catholic schools within our Diocese to deliver the best possible instruction utilizing the most useful tools available as well as their creativity, their experience and the resources we are offered by our diocesan leadership and by our sponsors – the Daughters of Charity.

        3. Each of our staff members has his or her specific job description that serves our students and their families in a variety of ways (i.e., preparing and serving lunch, keeping track of the financial health of the school, assessing the needs of families, providing additional academic support to students struggling due various causes, etc.). Our staff is committed to watch, report and serve in whatever way possible the needs of our students so that they may be able to engage freely in learning.

        4. Parents partner with the school in the transformation of students into life-long learners, inspiring service to others and forming compassionate and effective leaders. Their service hours to the school as well as their fundraising efforts help our school community to grow socially, financially, and spiritually.

        5. Our Students coming from a variety of backgrounds create a diverse community of learners that looks to live out a harmonious process of inculturation in the faith as students discover their gifts and talents and begin to apply them in their education and in their role to serve the larger community.

Overview of the structure for cohorts

Our student body has been divided into seven cohorts with at least one teacher and at least one more member of our staff. TK and Kinder form one cohort given the small number of children, and grades 1 thru 6th form each one cohort.

Structure/approach for each content area, including co-curricula:

At all grades and for all content areas, teachers will be planning and guiding their instruction paying close attention to:

4. • • 1. Establishing learning objectives

       2. Delivering clear explicit and guided instruction

       3. Offering plenty of scaffolding opportunities

       4. Making use of formative assessment to inform their teaching

       5. Utilizing the powerful technology and educational tools we have available which
          include adaptive software (i.e., STMath, Lexia, iXL, ALEKS, and various other
          programs).
          

   • Our students on and off campus will be able to take advantage of the instruction offered
     since we use platforms that allow for students to have almost the same experience. Our teachers in grades 5th thru 8th use the Google platform to handle the workflow, while grades TK thru 4th make use of Seesaw.

   • Our teachers make use of the project-based-learning techniques for cross-curricular integration as well as link student learning to service projects.

   • The majority of our faculty is doing graduate work at Santa Clara University and some have already graduated from there. The collegiality that exists among our teachers is truly admirable – the work they are doing at the university is immediately applied in their classrooms with their students and teachers share with each other their successes and their challenges. Given our new reality, teacher collaboration occurs mostly through zoom gatherings.

   • Our teachers are aware that given the effect of the pandemic on student learning we need to prioritize what is essential and choose Focus Skills that benefit our students. Their specific goals to do this are:

     • 1. to monitor the reading proficiency and growth of students in Kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2 as much as possible, since in these grades students need to acquire a number of essential reading skills

       2. to closely monitor the mathematics proficiency and growth of students in grades with a disproportionately high number of Focus Skills

       3. and to disaggregate data to make sure their teaching is on target, but to rely more heavily on valid and reliable interim assessments because they can meet immediate needs for proficiency and progress monitoring information.

Students also receive instruction from:

• Spanish – Maleny Quiroz – Virtually for grades TK thru 5th

• Art – Debi DelBiaggio – virtually for all grades

• PE – Rhythm & Moves instructor – virtually for all grades

Their schedule is staggered for arrival, recess, lunch, dismissal and two restroom visits. Details of the staggering schedules are found on the first pages of this document:

• Arrival and Dismissal

• Restroom Visits Schedule

• Recess Schedule

• Lunch Schedule

Format for community components

6. • Masses, morning assemblies, buddy classes, etc. are all streamed or zoomed due to the physical restrictions.

   • Students take part in it virtually through zoom or in-person as they take turns in very
     small groups (no more than 12 students) to proclaim the Mass readings, to do storytelling, or to participate in liturgical movement.

   • Students at home can also participate in the proclamation of readings and storytelling with the use of their iPad through zoom.

Supervision plan

• The supervision plan for recess, lunch, and planned restroom visits is done by the teacher and the teacher assistants or staff support assigned to that cohort. The breaks and lunch periods for the teachers and the assisting staff are scheduled by the employees themselves in that cohort taking in consideration that students need to be supervised by at least one employee at all times.

• The Arrival and Dismissal is supervised by five employees: the principal (Olga Islas), the vice-principal (Jed DeTorres), the business manager (Diane Constantino), the kitchen manager (Rory Flores), and the administrative assistant (Martha Angeles). The details of how this is done are described in pages 3 – 5 of this document.