Written by: Jon Watson, High School Counselor, A-K
Welcome back to school D’Evelyn families! We are excited for the beginning of the school year and to witness all of the amazing work our students will accomplish. We hope you all had a wonderful summer, and we want to share some information with you about the year to come. Experiencing change can be extremely difficult and frustrating for many of us, especially when we have done things the same way for so long. This year has already presented more changes than most of us endure over a long period of time. As a counseling department, we are constantly looking to keep up and stay ahead of the changes that many students and families are experiencing. For this school year, we have changed our overall vision of the counseling department, we are altering the ways we provide lessons to students, we are developing new curriculum, and we are adjusting our approach in the ways we meet individually with students. As we were discussing how the school environment will be changing this year, we thought about how last year ended and what the main concerns students, families, were and staff were experiencing. The word that constantly came up was CONNECTION. We felt like, as a community, the lack of connection led to significant challenges, frustration, and loneliness. This brings us to our newly developed vision for the 2020-2021 school year. Our vision: Create a supportive environment for the D’Evelyn community including students, parents and staff that promotes communication, connection, and resources to help guide the community through this challenging year. We recognize this year is going to present new challenges, and things may not always run as smoothly as we would like. Our goal is to help provide the support and the communication necessary to bring a sense of connection to the whole community. Our department is working with the administration on developing a new curriculum that will hopefully lead to more positive connections among students and staff. We want to provide students an atmosphere where they can share their strengths and their struggles. We invite them to express their concerns and share their successes. As with any type of community, we will be most successful if we are all able to grow and learn together rather than apart. Counselors will still be meeting with students in the building and through online platforms. We are asking parents to encourage their students to have Google Chat open while they are working remotely, so we can easily chat back and forth with your student. We will also be sending communication to students and parents through email, google classroom, Jag Tracks, and Naviance messages. We are going to continue to utilize our Google Forms for students to request appointments, which are located on the home page of the counseling website and in all of the Google Classrooms. Students can also request appointments by stopping by the counseling office when they are in the building. We are excited for another school year to begin, and we are looking forward to conquering this new format of life that has been thrown our way. We encourage all students and families to contact us with any questions or concerns, and we will always support you in any way that we can. We know this year may seem scary and frustrating, but just remember, no one has to go through it alone. Google Classroom The counseling department will be creating a google classroom for each grade level. Unfortunately, we are unable to meet with students in large groups like we have in the past to present and complete our comprehensive school counseling curriculum. There are many activities that we feel are valuable in supporting student development from college preparation, to career exploration, and finally with social-emotional development. With cohort restrictions and the change in the schedule, we have to move all of our curriculum to an online format. We will be inviting every student to join their grade appropriate Google Classroom. In this classroom we will post our Google Form where students can request appointments, and we will provide information about college, careers, and social emotional health. We will require every student to join this classroom. The assignments that will be posted will not be graded nor will they have strict due dates. However, some of our assignments will be required by the district, so students will need to complete them. This classroom is supposed to provide additional support for students throughout the year. We encourage you to make sure your students join the classroom and participate in the assignments. Schedule Changes for 2020-2021 As of right now, the schedules are still not finalized. Our administrative team is working diligently night and day to get these schedules finalized. Unfortunately, this has not been an easy process, and with the ever changing school schedule, they have had to remake the schedules multiple times. Our goal is to release the schedules sometime this week. Once they are released we will begin taking schedule change requests. We DO NOT make schedule changes for the following requests:
We will only look at changing a student’s elective request. With the tight schedule we may not be able to accommodate every request. We have student’s select up to 4 alternate electives during the course selection process for this exact reason. Military Opt Out If you would like to opt-out your child’s information from being given to the military you need to do so by the end of September. You can do so by logging into your Jeffco Connect account and click opt-out. If you have any questions about this process please contact Kathy Hays in the counseling office. Virtual College Week D’Evelyn will still be hosting a College Day this year, however, it will look different than it has in the past. Our College Day will turn into a Virtual College Week with a few online virtual activities occurring on specific days. We are targeting the start of College Week to be the week after Labor Day. We will also have a “Virtual College Fair” this will be a document with information from all of the institutions that were slated to attend out college fair this fall. Their page will have information about the institution, a virtual visit link, and contact information for that specific college representative. There will be more information to come about our Virtual College Week including: breakout sessions, speakers, and more! |
Jon Watson Archives
April 2022
Categories |