1st Semester Information and Adjustments

December 8, 2020

Dear Holly High School Students and Parents,

As we progress through the first semester, our staff continues to create and deliver engaging online content and instruction aligned with the Michigan Merit Core Standards. In our effort to provide meaningful learning experiences, we routinely reflect upon our practices to look for ways to help our students find success. With that goal in mind, we are pleased to report that our recent teacher professional learning sessions produced targeted plans and procedures to provide all students with the additional support needed to make this term a success.    

Each day, our staff will use dedicated time within each hour to provide interventions to struggling learners. This may include individual meetings with teachers, counselors, or support staff to address students’ concerns or misunderstandings related to their courses. For additional support, we will offer tutoring sessions for struggling learners, facilitated by both our teaching staff and our National Honor Society students. Those schedules will be released tomorrow.

We will not hold cumulative final exams for the 1st semester; instead, we will have end-of-term course experiences that allow students to demonstrate mastery of specified course content. These end-of-term experiences will take place from January 13 to January 22. They may be a shorter assessment, a project, a paper, a lab, a speech, etc. (or a combination of some of these). In some cases, the experience may feel the same as a regular day. Your student’s teachers will let them know what their course experiences will consist of for each course.

Teachers also created additional opportunities for students to earn credit in their courses, even if they’ve struggled so far this term. To do so, teachers will meet individually with students to create an intervention plan. While these plans will require time and effort to complete, they’ll provide a chance to “catch-up” and earn credits for students currently feeling overwhelmed by missing assignments and failing grades.

Our teachers’ Schoology pages have also been revised to promote ease of use for students and parents. Weekly playlists are posted on each course page, and there will be a “Past Work” folder organized chronologically and displayed to “de-clutter” the page and place emphasis on the current week of instruction. This change was made in response to student and parent feedback received this term. We are confident it will help parents and students find assignments easily and recognize due dates clearly.      

As you may have experienced last week, our teachers are revising their lesson structures to encourage student engagement by limiting teacher-driven screen-time, increasing the use of small group interaction, individual work time, and providing additional individual feedback and conferencing throughout the term. Our intent is to create an experience similar to what students would do if they were learning in our typical classroom setting.  

We are very confident that the interventions and strategies described above will make positive changes for our students. That said, it is important to acknowledge that students must take an active role in their learning to be successful. There are no shortcuts or substitutes for the motivation, engagement, and hard work needed to successfully complete high school courses. 

Please also let me take the opportunity to wish everyone a happy and safe winter break.  While I know that 2020 has not been what anyone expected, I know that we will all continue to get through this working together.  Take care!

Thank you,

Peter LoFiego
Principal, Holly High School