Spring 2020
I hope you and your family are safe and healthy as we continue to move forward with the online learning platform. There is no doubt that these are challenging times for everyone and life as we know it has changed quickly over the last month. I would like to thank everyone for their continued support and understanding as we continue to adjust our “virtual” learning experience. I am extremely grateful not only to our teachers for developing lessons and delivering instructional activities that resemble some type of normalcy; but also to our parents for attempting to balance their personal and professional lives in what has to be an extremely stressful time. I would like to express my sincere thanks to everyone for their efforts in trying to provide instruction and support for our students.
Governor Murphy has extended the school closure to at least May 15th, which puts us well into the fourth marking period. The administration and faculty of Rolling Hills continues to have ongoing discussions as to how to grade student work/effort in a manner which creates the least amount of stress for both students and parents. When first starting the remote learning for Rolling Hills students, all online grading was on a “Pass/Fail” system. As we are now moving longer into the process, we have decided to utilize a “Satisfactory/Needs Improvement” comment to acknowledge student work and effort. The S and NI system will not impact any existing grades from previous marking periods and will hopefully alleviate any stress for parents or students seeing an “F” during these trying times.
Parents/guardians should remember to use the student Schoology account to see any assignments or updates posted by the Special Area teachers. Since students only see the Special Area teachers once per week the Special Area teachers (Music, Art, Spanish, PE, Computers, Library) will only be posting one assignment per week. The assignments will all remain current through the end of the 4th Marking Period and the teachers will be using a S (satisfactory) or NI (needs improvement) as well for the assessment criteria. However, to draw focus on the Special Areas as enrichment/exposure subjects at this time students will only need to complete the majority of assignments posted to receive the satisfactory grade. (for example, if there are nine assignments posted, the student will need to complete five assignments by the end of the 4 Marking Period).
Thank you all again for your incredible efforts to instruct and support our students.
Please stay safe and healthy.
Dr. Stumper