October 25 Update

Dear McCall Parents and Guardians,

 

I hope this message finds you well.  During these past two weeks, some of you have reached to out to my administrative team and me to ask questions about the asynchronous learning as well as remote learning activities that the McCall teachers have been assigning to their students.  Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to clarify a few things regarding these aspects of both the Hybrid and Full Remote Learning models of instruction.

 

The first important information to remember is that during the At Home Days for Hybrid students (or the days when Fully Remote students are taking World Language and Exploratory classes), academic learning is not limited to the World Language and the two Exploratory classes students are assigned to take.  During those two days of the week, teachers are also assigning Asynchronous assignments for students to complete when they are not receiving remote instruction from their World Language and Exploratory teachers.  Your students should expect to receive about 30-35 minutes of Asynchronous assignments from each of their Team (i.e., Math, English, Science, and Social Studies) and World Language Teachers to complete for each of their At Home days.  In other words, your students have academic tasks they are required to do between 9:30 am – 3:07 pm (i.e., a typical school day for this school year) of their At Home Days when they are not taking their remote World Language and Exploratory classes.

 

In addition to the Asynchronous work that your students are expected to do for their Team and World Language classes, those teachers are assigning about two to three nights of homework per week for your students; Exploratory teachers are giving about one night of homework per class per week to your students. 

 

I strongly suggest all parents do some digging if you are noticing your students are taking part in little or no academic endeavors outside of attending their scheduled remote classes.  When that happens, it would be helpful for you to ask students to show you what their teachers are posting on Google Classroom and to check with the students to see if those assignments have been completed.  Even though most students have fifty minutes of Support Block per In-Person day to work on their assignments, it is highly unlikely students would be able to complete all their Asynchronous Work and their after school assignments during those two fifty minute periods of times per week.

 

Secondly, some parents and guardians have inquired why students are not interacting with their teachers during the entire period they are scheduled to be attending remote classes.  I encourage all parents and guardians to remember that effective instruction at the middle school level does not often involve teachers talking to students during the entire class.  Subject matter that are taught in all of our classes involve students learning by doing or discussing with their classmates.  This is particularly the case for our Exploratory classes such as Art, Music, and Technology and Engineering.  Therefore, parents and guardians should expect to see teachers delivering direct instruction to students during part of the class and providing students with the opportunity to work independently to practice what they have been taught or explore what they have been instructed more deeply either independently or with other classmates.

 

Thirdly, parents and guardians have asked about the purpose of the Wednesday Zooms and why content instruction is not taking place during that day.  Students have about 20-26 minutes of meeting time with each teacher on Wednesdays.  Teachers may use the limited time they have with students on Wednesdays to do a variety of things which may, or may not, include teaching of new content.  They might check in with students regarding the asynchronous work they have assigned, review content that was taught and/or instructions on long term assignments that were given, preview new materials that will be taught, or  help students engage in executive functioning activities such as planning for their asynchronous days. Given that our in-person time with students is so limited this year, teachers might also prioritize activities that help them build relationships and a sense of community in the class. These are all essential parts of what middle school teachers do to help students to be successful learners. It is unlikely students will be able to be learn new content effectively if teachers do not spend time on these activities.

 

In addition, it is also important for everyone to remember that students are spending pretty much their entire school day on screens on Wednesdays.  Zoom fatigue is real and does negatively impact students’ physical and mental well-being if we do not make a conscious effort to manage it.  Therefore, McCall teachers’ decisions to have students spend time away from Zoom and other screen-related activities is not just to ensure instruction is being delivered effectively, but they are also made to ensure teaching and learning are not happening at the expense of everyone’s physical and mental health.

 

The shift to Hybrid and Fully Remote models of education fundamentally changed how we deliver instruction.  However, it did not change McCall teachers and staff’s commitment to delivering quality education.  It is inevitable you are going to see education being done differently, however, that does not necessarily mean quality of teaching is lesser than before COVID hit us.  I hope everyone will always keep in the back of your minds that the McCall teachers and staff’s priority is the education and well-being of your students, and the decisions we make are always made with that priority in mind.

 

Thank you,

 

James Lin

Principal

McCall Middle School

October 4 Update

During these past few weeks quite a few parents (both of in-person and fully remote students) have reached out expressing concerns about the amount of time students are spending on screen during instructions. This is a legitimate worry, and how to modulate the amount of time our students spend on screen – particularly for our fully remote students – is something all members of the McCall faculty are thinking about. With that being said, I urge all parents and guardians to consider the following factors related to the usage of screen during teachers’ instructional practices.

The Challenge of Promoting Social Interactions While Adhering to Health and Safety Protocols – As all of you know by now, the pandemic has created a world where we all have to social distance, wear masks, and minimize the amount of physical materials we are sharing with each other. These essential safety practices really limit our faculty’s ability to facilitate learning experiences where students and teachers are able to socially engage with each other in meaningful ways. Therefore, teachers are relying on technology to create opportunities for students to collaborate with each other and to participate during instructions.  The need to adhere to public health guidelines are also making teachers to rely on digital tools so they can communicate with students and monitor their progress.  As McCall teachers work to find that right amount of screen time for your students, I hope all parents and guardians understand that due to the restrictions with which the teachers are working, it is inevitable that all students will be spending more time learning in front of a screen compared to the pre-COVID days.

Not All Screen Time are Equal – Students (and adults) use computers, smart phones, and other devices in a lot of different ways. Dr. Taren Sanders, a health scientist from Australian Catholic University, sorted the ways students use technology into five categories and they are: Passive (e.g., watching a movie), Interactive (e.g., playing a video game), Social (e.g. texting and Tweeting), Education, and Others. As all of you know, students using electronic devices to do homework or Facetime with relatives are engaging in different experiences than using the same devices to watch movies, play Fortnite, or post messages on social media sites. Therefore, if the amount of educational screen time has to increase for the reasons I just mentioned, students will need to decrease the amount of time they are spending in front of screens for the other purposes in order to maintain or decrease their overall screen time. I would like to point out that the American Academy of Pediatrics screen time guidelines changed in 2015. Its recommendation for appropriate screen usage is no longer a set time limit of less than two hours per day. Instead, the AAP is recommending that screen time does not replace children and adolescents’ sleep time and active time.  Other recommendations include adults setting no screen time zones such as during meal time and modeling positive screen usage behaviors. I am including an article published by the AAP which includes many of its recommendations on student’s digital usage for your reference. Please click here.

The McCall teachers, staff, and I do recognize the start of the school year involved a lot of screen usage. Much of that is due to the fact that teachers (especially those who teach remote classes) have to have some form of face-to-face connections with the students in order to establish relationships with them. A lot of the screen usage during the start of the school year is also to make sure students are learning how to use the digital tools that will be part of the courses throughout the school year.

COVID-19 is causing all of us to adjust and sometimes fundamentally change our practices. While we are navigating through the pandemic, we will frequently find that effective educational practices are at odds with public health and safety protocols. During these situations it is natural for us to lament what we are no longer able to do. However, we should also consider that many of the changes we have to make for our new normal are actually good changes. For example, pre-recorded lessons are benefiting students who struggles with keeping up with the fast pace of live direct instructions. Digital tools such as Padlet is allowing students who used to be hesitant about raising their hands to participate more in their remote lessons. These are practices I would encourage McCall teachers and staff to keep when we are able to return to full in-person schooling

September 27 Update

Ever since school shut down last March and caused a sudden shift to remote learning, the question of parent involvement in student’s schooling became a heavily discussed topic. Parenting is a difficult job during the best of circumstances and is now even harder, whether your student is attending school fully remotely or under the hybrid model. All of us parents are struggling with the question of when and how to get involved with our children’s remote learning. Since remote learning in such a large scale is still very new to the world of education, there is not a lot of data gathered on this topic. However, according to Dr. Erik Black, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Education in the University of Florida who studied virtual schooling at the high school level in 2008, there are a few things we do know about parental involvement in remote learning.

The first is an absence of parental involvement in a student’s education will likely impact his or her academic progress in a negative way, and the same is true if a parent exhibits uber helicopter parenting behaviors. The question then is, how to figure out when and how much to be involved. The answer is it all depends on the individual needs of the students and their families.

According to Dr. Black, parental involvement falls into four buckets: encouragement, modeling, reinforcement, and instruction. What he has learned is that some parental involvement, particularly in the area of encouraging students and modeling positive behaviors are good things. In other words, a parent learning Algebra and reteaching it to her child is probably not going to be as effective as the parent encouraging her student to work hard and showing him behaviors related to good study habits and emotional regulation. 

As a parent I can understand the unpleasant feelings one experiences when seeing your own children struggle. However, students will continue to encounter demands that will challenge (and at times overwhelm) them especially while we are in midst of a pandemic. I see parents’ roles in these situations are to guide them to resources where they can access help as opposed to solving the problems for them. If we continue to lean toward the latter, we will miss the opportunity to teach students the skills necessary to help them overcome the struggles they will inevitably face.

Therefore, if your students continue to have difficulty navigating their schedules, accessing remote classes, or learning the content that their teachers are teaching them, I suggest you encourage them to view setbacks as temporary events instead of seeing it as the end of the world. In addition, I suggest you model for your students the necessary skills to seek help from McCall teachers and staff. An example of those skills may be how to craft an appropriate email to teachers when asking for help. Consider this approach as opposed to you reaching out to the teachers and learning how to navigate schedules yourselves and reteaching it to you students. Both approaches may get you the same outcome, however, the latter takes away the opportunity for students to learn and practice the skill of self-advocacy.

One parent recently said to me that she has been working so hard getting her student ready for the start of school. If you ever feel this way about any aspect of school, I encourage you to ask yourself the question, “Am I working harder than my child?” If the answer is yes, then it may be time to consider where you are on the spectrum of parent involvement. It may be time for you to contact your child’s teachers or guidance counselor so we can help you figure out the level of involvement that would be appropriate for your student and your family.

September 20 Update

As many of you know, I have three children of my own, and my wife is a special education teacher in a public school district not that different than Winchester Public Schools. Therefore, we wear both hats – the parent one and the school official one. My two girls had a great start to the school year. They like being back in the school buildings and seeing their friends and teachers. Wearing masks and staying six feet away from classmates did not seem to bother them that much.

My son’s start of the school year was much rockier. He is the only middle schooler we have right now. He was already dreading this school year because during the summer he found out his buddies were either fully remote or due to the first letter of our last name he was placed in the different cohort than his other good friends.

My son said he felt lonely throughout the first day of school. He tried to do what my wife advised him to do to make new friends. However, having a mask on and being seated six feet away from other people made it hard to engage in conversations with students he did not know well. He reported that lunch was horrible because other kids seated around him knew each other and were talking over him like he was not there.

He was in tears when he came home after the second day of school. The terrible lunch experience of the first day of school became in his mind the stuff of horror movies. He was let out late the period before lunch so most seats in the cafeteria were already taken when he arrived there. He was then seated in the cafeteria annex with a few other kids who all happened to be girls. The horror movie escalated to the level of Stephen King’s The Shining because in the middle of lunch the Assistant Principal announced that the seats the students were sitting in were everyone’s assigned seats.

Tomorrow will be his third day back in school, and I suspect at the time you are reading this post, my wife and I are desperately trying to pump our son up and putting a positive spin on things so we can get him to go back to school. We will likely be telling him that sitting with girls gives him the opportunity to be that “cool kid who all the girls like” and that spending more time with kids he does not know will help him make new friends.

The fact is both my wife and I want to wave a magic wand and instantly make everything better for our son. However, as public school officials we both know why things have to be the way they are. Kids have to have assigned seats to make contact tracing possible. Kids have to be grouped into cohorts in order to create space for social distancing. Schools with large student populations cannot accommodate requests to place a student with their preferred peers because they will never be able to create any schedule or seating chart that make every one of the 1,000 students happy.

All my wife and I can do as parents is to help our son embrace a growth mindset and give him some TLC. This weekend, he got to pick his favorite meal for dinner which to the horror of my vegetarian oldest daughter were ribs from Blue Ribbons Barbecue in Arlington. He also got extra Fortnite time so he has the chance to be with his buddies even if it is online.

It is not easy to see our son be this upset, but my wife and I are working hard to remind ourselves that two days of school is a small sample size. We have to trust the work we have done as parents to teach our son how to be resilient will take effect, and he will find a way to work through this difficult situation. If none of this works after another week or so, we plan to reach out to the teachers and my son’s guidance counselor to see what support the school can offer him. I am hopeful by working with the school we will figure this out even though the solution may end up to be less than perfect.  Or better yet, with some time my son will figure out on his own how to navigate through this middle school nightmare.

June 21 Update

Dear Parents and Guardians,

We did it! The strangest school year on record wrapped up with the 8th grade Moving On Ceremony this Friday night. I would like to thank all the MPA volunteers, teachers, and staff who braved the heat to come out to support the event and cheer on our 8th graders. They all are now freshmen! Secondly, I would like to thank Ms. Lainie Higgins as well as students Natasha Dalvi, Heneni Dong, Karine and Leilani Takaki, Sophia Tsiantos, and Caterina Miotto who worked hard before the event to clean up and decorate our greenhouse to make it a wonderful backdrop for the ceremony. Lastly, I would like to give thanks to our two MPA co-presidents, Ms. Beth Lepore and Ms. Adrienne Spignesi, who spent months putting all of this together. Thank you all for your hard work!





















I would like to take this opportunity to give a special thanks to Adrienne, who along with her 8th grade son, will be moving onto WHS. Adrienne has been the MPA co-president during the two years I have been here at McCall, and she has done a marvelous job serving in that capacity. I value the counsel she has given me regarding important school decisions from the parent perspective, as well as all the support the MPA has given to the school under her leadership. Most importantly, I value the sense of humor and the cheerful nature of Adrienne. Regardless of how tough a circumstance is or how complex a task is, I can always count on her to bring her positive outlook which will inevitably make the situation more manageable. Thank you and best wishes to Adrienne!


I would also be remiss if I do not take this time to wish our beloved librarian Ms. Jane Henchey a happy retirement. Jane announced her retirement in the Spring after our yearbooks went into print, so we did not have the chance to honor her with a yearbook dedication. Jane officially retired this week after over 15 years of service to McCall as our librarian. She proudly referred to her career as her “checkered past” during which she traveled all over the country, worked as a waitress, an elementary school teacher, a computer programmer, and lastly as a middle school librarian. Fun fact about Jane: She rode the commuter rail to her job in Boston while working as a programmer, and during one of those commuter rail rides she met a dashing fellow passenger, fell in love, and married him.


Jane is proud of her work promoting students’ literacy skills by matching them to the books they would enjoy reading. She fondly remembers watching an English Language Learner develop fluency with the English language as the student repeated came by the library asking Jane for more book recommendations. Among all of Jane’s accomplishments, I will mostly remember her work promoting inter-generational learning with the Literary Lunches she has held throughout her tenure at McCall. I have always enjoyed watching our young students bonding with senior citizens of our community over their shared love of reading and books. I wish Jane a happy retirement and a wonderful journey to the next chapter of her life. McCall will miss Jane dearly!


Ironically, the singular event I will always remember about this school year has nothing to do with school closure. This event occurred at the very start of the school year when I ran opening day assemblies for all three grade levels during the first week of school. Those events were memorable because they bombed spectacularly. I used an application called Pear Deck to solicit students’ input and project what they had written in real time. Clearly, it was a bad idea to give an auditorium full of students a platform to post their opinions anonymously and not expect inappropriate and silly responses from those adolescents. In retrospect, giving the students the ability to vote on different categories would be much more effective than asking them to submit responses through freeform text.


We will be heading into a summer and fall that are full of uncertainties. We are all anxiously awaiting what the State will be asking us to do for the next school year. Despite all the hard work that will go into the planning and executing for the 20-21 school year, I expect some of what we do will bomb spectacularly because we have never done those things before. When I feel the anxiety that comes with an uncertain future and think about all the potential struggles we may encounter as the result of those unknowns, I go back to my roots as a first-generation immigrant. Like many of you who experienced being the first of your family to come to a new country, this is not the first time I have started from the bottom, learned from other’s and my own past experiences, and built things from the ground up. I may be wary of uncertainties, but I am also excited, hopeful, and optimistic that I, with all of your support, will have the opportunity to reimagine what a more inclusive and better McCall may look like, and work toward those goals. I am looking forward to going on this new adventure with all of you!


I wish you a happy and restful summer, and I am sure I will be in touch again very soon.



James Lin

Principal

McCall Middle School

June 7 Update

Dear Parents and Guardians,

I hope you are doing well.  The work of Beverly Daniel Tatum, prominent psychologist, clearly indicates that children are aware of racial differences and the impact of racism at a very young age.  Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some resources that may help your middle school students (and maybe you) process and talk about complicated issues such as racism, activism, and social justice.

CNN/Sesame Street Racism Town Hall – This show was broadcasted yesterday, and it offered answers to complex questions related to racism and protest delivered in manners that are accessible to children.  Although Sesame Street characters are at the center of the show, the intended audience is not just for young children.  It featured prominent leaders and scholars (like the previously mentioned Beverly Tatum) who provided practical advice to parents and caregivers about how to guide children through the complicated events that occurred during the past two weeks.  The information and content of the show is appropriate for middle school aged students as well.  You may be able to get your teenagers to watch it if you frame it as a way for both of you to take a trip down memory lane to visit with Big Bird and Elmo.

Socialjusticebooks.org – This website offers a collection of both fiction and nonfiction books for children and young adults at various age levels on a variety of topics related to social justice.

I would also like to recommend to you two books I read during the past year that really challenged my thinking about racism and equality.  The two titles are included below.

How to be an Antiracist by Ibram Kendi – This book really probed my thinking about what is a racist and what needs to be done to dismantle racism and push back against racist ideas.  Dr. Kendi was featured in Brene Brown’s Unlocking Us podcast during which he talked about some of the main ideas featured in this book.  I included the link to the show here.  It is definitely worth a listen.

Raising White Kids by Jennifer Harvey – I am married to a white woman, and we are raising three biracial kids.  This book really helped us think through the privileges my children possess by being able to assume a white identity as well as the responsibilities that come with those privileges to promote racial equality.  Dr. Harvey was also featured in the aforementioned CNN/Sesame Street Town Hall.  She touched on a few of the topics discussed in her book during the show.

I hope you will find these resources to be helpful.  Thank you and I wish you all well.

James Lin

Principal

McCall Middle School

May 31 Update

Dear Parents and Guardians,

I hope this message finds you well.  I am writing to you from the comfort of my home and neighborhood surrounded by people who care for me and are cared for by me.  However, given the recent news of lives being so needlessly and unjustly brutalized in Louisiana, Georgia, and Minnesota, I am reminded of the fact that many fellow citizens do not enjoy the privileges afforded to me.  Our race, ethnicity, gender, and different aspects of our identities we are born with determine what resources we are able to access and how we are treated by other members of this society.  The recent event that happened in Central Park between a black bird watcher and a white dog walker showed us that regardless of the level of education we have attained, or our professional achievements, we all have the capacity to turn to our biased selves when we are dysregulated, and the resulting behaviors we exhibit can bring about devastating consequences for others and ourselves.

As Dr. Evans stated in her email, the district is working on various options for what schooling will look like in the Fall.  Even though we all yearn to get back to our “normal” practices and schedules because they are familiar and therefore comforting, we have to remember there are parts of that “normal” we should no longer accept.  I am reminded of the Faculty Meeting we held a week before school closure when I shared with the McCall teachers and staff the quote below from writer and scholar Ibram Kendi:

“One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist'. The claim of 'not racist' neutrality is a mask for racism.”

How we will teach our students to embrace anti-bias thinking and exhibit anti-bias behaviors has not left my thoughts since March.  Given the uncertainty with the Fall, I cannot tell you specifically how we will be moving forward with this endeavor at this moment.  However, inaction is not an option, and returning to a “normal” where we do not address behaviors such as racist graffiti on our walls and various forms of microaggression proactively and through a whole school approach is not one we should want to return to.  My staff and I will will be working on this in the coming months, and I will share with you our plan as soon as we develop it.  I hope I can count on all of your support even though the process may bring about some level of discomfort within all of us.

Lastly, I would like to share with you this article which outlines a conversation with Beverly Daniel Tatum and Erlanger Turner, both psychologists, on how to help our students process the events related to the deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd.  I hope you will find it helpful.

Thank you and be well!

James Lin

Principal

McCall Middle School