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Aug. 27, 2020

NYSSCA UPDATE

NYSSCA Awards 2020 NYSSCA As we approach the opening of the school year, I encourage you to reflect upon the successes you and your colleagues have had in supporting students and building comprehensive programs that are data driven and student centered. Looking through this lens of skills, programs and leadership, please consider nominating yourself or a colleague for one of the NYSSCA Annual Awards. School Counselor of the Year Instructions School Counselor of the Year Application Administrator of the Year Application (scroll down) Outstanding Program, Practice or Project Application (scroll down) Career Achievement Award Application Leadership Grant Application The deadline for all nominations is October 15, 2020, and award recipients will be announced at the NYSSCA Annual Conference on November 12-14, 2020, at the Turning Stone Resort, Verona NY. If you have any questions, please contact us at: 937-9-NYSSCA or 937-969-7722.

Register Early! – Innovation through Collaboration! NYSSCA 2020 Conference NYSSCA Registration and other details available now!! READ MORE

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Back to Work ASCA As the 2020-2021 school year begins, ASCA continues to develop and share resources to help you navigate the new environment. We hope you've reviewed the ASCA Back-to-School Resources, which were launched last week. You'll find a number of resources there, including what ASCA standards say about the school counselor's particular role in school reentry, as well as school reentry considerations and guidelines, collecting data in a virtual environment, engaging in anti-racism work and more. READ MORE

Resources for HS Counselors & Students Presented by the New York Water Environment Association and the Syracuse University Environmental Finance Center High School Counselors, are you interested in a program that partners schools and local water utilities to offer educational programming and internship opportunities to students? The New York Water Environment Association (NYWEA) Work-in-Water program offers the tools, resources, and skills needed to build partnerships between high schools and water utilities, develop fulfilling internships, and increase awareness of water careers. This unique, hands-on learning program allows students to see first-hand the skills, technology and people that are working to ensure the public has access to water quality resources. If you are interested in connecting with a local water utility, share with us your contact information at this link, by Thursday, September 10, 2020. For more in-depth information about the internship program, register for NYWEA's free, interactive webinar on Thursday, September 17, 2020, 10-11:30 a.m., hosted with the Syracuse University Environmental Finance Center. Register here for the Zoom webinar. READ MORE

New Tentative Dates for the January 2021, June 2021, and August 2021 Regents Examination Periods NYSED The new tentative dates for the January, June, and August 2021 Regents Examination periods are being provided at this time to assist schools and districts with developing their local school calendars for the 2020-21 school year. The schedule is linked here. At this time, no final decisions regarding the feasibility of administering the Regents Examinations in 2021 have been made. The Department will continuously monitor the situation statewide and provide updated guidance, policies, and regulatory changes as necessary. Questions may be directed to the Office of State Assessment at 518-474-8220 or emscassessinfo@nysed.gov.

AROUND THE INDUSTRY

100,000 NYC students with disabilities are entitled to classes with two teachers. Will the city be able to staff them? Chalkbeat With less than a month remaining before New York City plans to reopen school buildings, a crucial piece of the reopening puzzle remains uncertain: What will teaching and learning look like for students with disabilities? That question is particularly complex for about 100,000 students who attend classes that are set up to integrate special and general education students in the same classroom and which are required to be staffed by two teachers. READ MORE

School counselors making sure students have mental health resources during pandemic WFTS As brick and mortar schools prepare to open or already have, counselors are working to make sure they meet the mental health needs of their students. "Our counseling service doesn't stop. Only thing that changes is the way we deliver it," Boyette Springs Elementary School counselor Wayne Shaw said. Shaw has spent 26 years in education, serving elementary students, collegiates and everything in between. READ MORE

'More needed now than it has ever been': School counselors prepare for unprecedented return Spectrum News Kevin Brooks is a guidance counselor at The Urban Assembly Bronx Academy of Letters. He sees his work in the new school year as especially important. "The role of a school counselor is more needed now than it has ever been because this is a reopening like no other,”"he said. There are about 3,000 guidance counselors in city public schools tending to students academic and emotional needs. READ MORE

For students with disabilities, schools say they have to do better in the fall EdSurge Right now schools are making — and, in some cases, already implementing — tough decisions about where learning should take place this fall. Elected officials are making decisions contrary to recommended guidelines that can leave school leaders in an impossible situation of shouldering accountability for health and safety while lacking the control to do so. READ MORE

COVID-19's harm to learning is inevitable. How schools can start to address it Education Week It has been more than a century since the United States experienced a pandemic that so fundamentally disrupted schooling. There is little research that directly speaks to what happens to learning afterwards.  We don't yet know how much ground students will lose because of the pandemic. What does seem certain is that it will be devastating — and that the effects are likely to be long lasting. READ MORE

Back to school amid the COVID-19 pandemic: Balancing students' right to education against public health The Brookings Institution As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the U.S., K-12 schools are preparing to reopen with inconsistent guidance from federal and state authorities. Not only has remote learning exacerbated existing inequities in the public education system, it has created new ones. The federal government has urged the reopening of schools but the decision of how and when lies with state and local communities. READ MORE

Schedules for distance learning are all over the place (and it's making parents crazy) The Hechinger Report "I feel so defeated," the mom wrote as she posted a screenshot of an email she had just received from her young child's elementary school principal into a parent's group on Facebook. The email, written by a principal for an elementary school in central Texas, detailed a complex new plan for remote learning in the fall and was full of jargon: asynchronous time, maximum continuous minutes and a separate plan to teach special subjects like art, music and physical education. READ MORE

Survey finds rising approval for nation's schools, online high school classes Education Week Amid the coronavirus pandemic that has pushed many K-12 classes online, parental backing for having their children take some high school classes virtually has hit 73% in an annual education survey's latest poll results — 17 percentage points higher than it was just over a decade ago. In addition, the poll by the policy journal Education Next indicates that overall support for the nation's schools has grown significantly in the last half-dozen years, even as those the survey called political populists are much more skeptical of them. READ MORE

What is esports and how does it work in education? Tech & Learning Esports is fast becoming a powerful tool in education as schools, colleges and universities adopt the technology as a way to help educate students. This isn't just for traditional learning though, as it is also a way to help socialize students. Research has shown that students who are involved in extracurricular activities are more successful with greater performance and overall well being enhanced. READ MORE

Teens struggle to balance school, family, work amid COVID-19 The Associated Press via ABC News With her baby brother in her arms, Kara Apuzzo tried to follow along in an online class as he squirmed or slept. Other times, the 18-year-old rushed to get ready for work at a front-line job at Target as her virtual high school lessons were still wrapping up. Last school year was further complicated by computer issues that kept her from logging in and online tools that bedeviled even her teachers. READ MORE

Kids are bigger coronavirus spreaders than many doctors realized — Here's how schools can lower the risk The Conversation The first U.S. schools have reopened with in-person classes, and they are already setting off alarm bells about how quickly the coronavirus can spread. Georgia's Cherokee County School District, north of Atlanta, had over 100 confirmed COVID-19 cases by the end of its second week of classes, and more than 1,600 students and staff had been sent home after being exposed to them. READ MORE

Individualize instruction, remove barriers, track student progress: Some tips for making distance-learning special ed work The 74 "Can you give an example of an online lesson that's effective for students with disabilities?" That's the question Elizabeth Barker has fielded over and over as schools have prepared to reopen. But it's the one question that Barker, a special education expert with NWEA, a nonprofit data and assessment provider, can't answer. READ MORE

Trump administration guidance says school staff are 'critical' workers Education Week The Trump administration has released nonbinding guidance that teachers and other school staff are "critical infrastructure workers" as it pushes for schools to resume in-person classes this school year. In a document by the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, teachers and others in the K-12 education field are identified as part of a long list of "essential" workers "who conduct a range of operations and services that are typically essential to continued critical infrastructure viability" and who "support crucial supply chains and enable functions for critical infrastructure." READ MORE

NYSSCA Today   Connect with NYSSCA Dennis Hall, Director of Publishing, 469-420-2656 | Download media kit Hailey Golden, Senior Education Editor, 469-420-2630 | Contribute news New York State School Counselor Association P.O. Box 217 | Leicester, NY 14481 937-969-7722 | Contact Us | www.nyssca.org Click here to unsubscribe. Learn how to add us to your safe sender list so our emails get to your inbox. ADVERTISE SUBSCRIBE PAST ISSUES 7701 Las Colinas Ridge, Ste. 800, Irving, TX, 75063