As we come to the end of term 1 I hope this newsletter finds you well, making good progress in your learning and finding a rhythm to your school year with us.
EBUS has closed new full-time registrations as our high school courses are full or close to full at this time. If you know of high school students looking join EBUS for the rest of their high school journey, encourage them to contact me after December 5. As a full time student with EBUS, I will email you each a credit check detailing your progress in the graduation program showing the courses and required assessments completed, courses you are registered in and what remains to be complete to meet graduation requirements. I have emailed all our fulltime grade 12s and have begun on the 11s and 10s, in order to ensure our students planning to graduate this year are all set with required courses. Watch for this important email in the coming weeks if you have not already received one.
REQUESTING COURSE CHANGES
The vast majority of our high school courses are at capacity at this time. For full time students wanting to change courses, please use the “drop course” button on your dashboard and email me your new request. Be sure to put the full student name and the specific course you are requesting, like English New Media 10. Courses will only be added if there is space and the student is dropping one or is substantially complete in a current course. As students complete or drop courses they finish or are not interested in taking, that frees up a seat for another, so it is in all students’ interests to not have inactive courses on your dashboard and to finish courses as soon as you can. The website where you can see what courses currently have space is found here https://ebus.ca/about/enroll-with-ebus-2/ but we expect to have seats open up in early December, late January, and then by mid-March, the latest courses will be added. Summer session registration will open May 1, we will have more info about that closer to the date. In short, if you have courses on your dashboard, you should be handing in work in all of those courses regularly, or drop the course and we can add that later in the school year.
COURSE REMINDERS
This year it is essential students get started in all the courses on your dashboard given the volume of new students we are welcoming this year. Note that students who have not submitted any work within 4 weeks of having the course on your dashboard risk being withdrawn and not getting that course for an extended period of time. If you need help with something reach out to the teacher right away, or if you need to make a course change, let me know. Our goal is not to stress students out with this information; we want to support each one of you with your goals of learning and high school graduation. At the same time we want to provide learning opportunities for as many learners as we can this year, so please make sure we know what we can do for you. As a guideline, students working in 4 or more courses should plan for 25 hours each week for learning time, scheduled flexibly when it works for you. Your teachers are available during the traditional school day by email or phone, and we work hard to respond to student questions within 1-2 school days, but note if your teacher works part time, it may take longer to respond.
PHONE APPOINTMENTS
For the time being I am available by phone at our EBUS office in Vanderhoof – 1-800-567-1236 ext 2244. For students and families looking to book an appointment with me, please visit https://tinyurl.com/yyrbnz7p and select the appropriate amount of time you need when you are available for my call.
REMEMBRANCE DAY VIRTUAL ASSEMBLY
We invite our fulltime families to join us in taking time to honour the sacrifices made for the freedoms we enjoy today. We encourage you all on Tuesday November 10 at 10:30AM Pacific to join our virtual Remembrance Day assembly at https://us.bbcollab.com/guest/28db7fc77ebe485995f74bca33098bab
REQUIRED GRADUATION ASSESSMENTS
Students graduating under the 2018 graduation program will need to complete a possible total of 3 assessments to meet graduation requirements; Literacy 10, Numeracy and Literacy 12. The ministry recently announced the Numeracy and Literacy 10 assessments will be going ahead this school year while the Literacy 12 has been cancelled and will not be a requirement until the 2021-22 school year. These assessments must be written under the supervision of a teacher and are written generally in high schools across BC. EBUS will help our fulltime students find a seat a local high school for the January and June sessions.
To clarify who needs to write the assessments this year:
Grade 10 students – literacy 10 and numeracy
Grade 11 students – literacy 10 and numeracy (if you did not write last year)
Grade 12 students – numeracy (if you have never written)
Students need to complete these one time.
For students looking to write in the January session, EBUS can help you find a school close by for you to write in. You can register for that at www.ebusgradassessment.weebly.com between November 20 and December 4.
You can get all the details at https://ebus.ca/welcome-package/grade-10-12-homeroomnews/graduation-assessments-provincial-exams/
WHAT ABOUT?
To ensure our full-time high school students have all the information about EBUS Academy needed to be successful, our website contains lots of information vital to student success. In this section of our bi-weekly newsletter, we will highlight some of the elements of EBUS that we get lots of questions about.
Sooo…what about the ends of Terms?
Ministry of Education policy requires high schools to formally report out to parents 4 times a year. At the end of each term, a report card is produced showing the progress in the high school course as a percentage complete, a grade shown as a percentage, and any comments regarding student learning. The term deadline of November 9 is set as a guarantee date – any work submitted before that date will be marked and included in the term 1 report card. Work can be submitted November 10 and beyond, and we strongly encourage students to keep working, but that work may not be on your term 1 report card, a snapshot of learning accomplished and assessed by November 9.
If a student has a self-determined deadline of November 9 to finish a course and does not finish by that date, they just continue on until finished, no penalties or late marks taken off, no need to ask for an extension before the June deadlines. The final course completion will show up on the next report card. So in the end, take Dory’s advice from Finding Nemo, and just keep working…just keep working 😊
MENTAL HEALTH MINUTE
It is quite common to hear from students and parents by this point in the year that there may be struggles noted – motivation may be a concern, the student might not be progressing as well as hoped, or with all that is going on in the world – an exceptionally stressful time – our mental health might not be where we’d like it. I hope by saying you are not alone in noticing this, you recognize many of us are struggling, but we are in this together. When we struggle, think about what is most helpful – kindness, noticing the positives and efforts made (even if they appear small), words of support, curiosity instead of judgement – these may be more important on that day than assignment completion. We are living in a very stressful world these days, and learning does not always happen in the ways we envision. If you want to talk further about this, do reach out, I have a mental health background and am not afraid of the sensitive conversations that sometimes need to happen.
UPCOMING IMPORTANT DATES
- Monday Nov 9 Term 1 ends
- Wednesday Nov 11 Remembrance Day – EBUS closed, courses open to students
- Tuesday Nov 24 report cards available
- Friday Nov 27 Professional Development Day – EBUS staff unavailable, courses open
- WINTER BREAK Dec 21 – Jan 1 – EBUS staff unavailable, courses open
- Monday January 18 Term 2 ends
- Tuesday Feb 2 report cards available
- Note that Term end dates are guidelines for students to finish courses, if you do not finish by the November or January term end date you can continue with your studies without penalty. New courses are not automatically added at the Term change, students must request them as they finish current courses.
You can find the full year school calendar at
https://ebus.ca/about/district-calendar/
PARENT ACCESS
Parents, you can access your student’s progress and report cards on the EBUS parent portal: https://my.ebus.ca/parentportal/login.php We recommend parents log in with their student at least once a week to stay actively engaged in their learning and progress. Students, you can access your report cards from your dashboard; look for the A+ icon in the upper right hand corner. Report cards are published 5 times a year; November, January, March, June and for summer session courses only, September.
As I get asked this often, if your student plans to finish their course(s) in a quarterly fashion, meaning by the end of term 1 on Nov 9, they should be about 95%+ complete today. For a planned finish by the end of term 2 or semester 1 on January 18, students should be about 50%+ complete. And for students working in a linear fashion to complete by the June deadlines, they should be about 25%+ complete at this time.
If there are ideas for the newsletter you would like to suggest please email me those to cmushumanski@sd91.bc.ca
Keep well, the next newsletter will be Friday November 20.
