Fulfill your Act 48 Continuing Education Requirements from the Comfort of your Home

Brain Power specializes in online professional development for teachers. Our teacher professional development courses are developed by neuroscientists, doctors, and education experts with an emphasis on the scientific research behind the logic. Our PowerPD and Brain Bite courses empower you with new skills and tools for social-emotional teaching and remote learning based on the latest scientific research. Complete your continuing professional education hours here!

Job-Alike Virtual Meetings

The New England League of Middle Schools is proud to announce a series of one-hour job-alike virtual meetings, online from 7:00 - 8:00 pm. These FREE virtual meetings are designed for middle school educators as a confidential place of collegial sharing and insight in a safe and supportive setting. Come with your challenges, dilemmas, or new ideas. For many of us, our middle school is the only middle school in the community. There is little opportunity to share our concerns and ideas. Our job-a-like meetings now provide that chance.

With virtual classrooms, remote learning, hybrid models now a part of our everyday lexicon, this is an opportunity to hear and share practical solutions, learn innovative practices, and even conclude…I am doing a pretty darn good job in my classroom and in my school.

Talking points include, but are not limited, to:

• What is working in our school as well as what are some of the struggles regarding remote learning?
• What is the best way to assess student learning?
• How do we address concerns regarding student non-participation?

We currently have the following meetings scheduled:

• Guidance - January 7, 2021
• Visual Arts - January 19, 2021
• World Languages - January 21, 2021
• Performing Arts - January 26, 2021
• Math - January 28, 2021
• ELA/Language Arts - February 4, 2021
• SRO/School Resource Officer - February 9, 2021
• Social Studies - February 11, 2021
• Science - March 4, 2021

To Register for any of these FREE meetings CLICK HERE. Share these meetings with your co-workers!

Do you work in another department/content area? The New England League of Middle Schools would like to add more of these sessions. Just contact us so we can track interest and keep you notified.

From Jack Berckemeyer

It's Time to Register!

Nuts and Bolts- The Never-Boring Conference for Educators and Nuts and Bolts - Ready To Lead Conference! Returns LIVE in 2021 With Three Locations!
Mobile, Alabama - Never-Boring Conference - June 10-11, 2021
Stillwater, Oklahoma - Ready to Lead - June 15, 2021 and Never-Boring Conference June 16-17, 2021
Destin, Florida - Ready to Lead - June 22, 2021 and Never-Boring Conference -June 23-25, 2021

Meridian Stories is a Maine-based nonprofit that delivers creative digital storytelling projects in LA, STEAM and History to middle and high school teachers for use in a remote learning environment and the classroom. Working in partnership with NELMS, we are proud to offer two free digital storytelling projects - called Challenges - that are designed to deeply engage students’ interest in the curriculum through digital story creation. NELMS will be offering two free Meridian Stories Challenges for the next six weeks!

• HISTORY – Forgotten Female Heroes: This Challenge asks you to research an important but neglected woman in history and communicate that information about her in a simple, but fun game show format – tentatively titled, “What Did I Do?” - followed by a short biographical documentary. LINK: https://www.meridianstories.com/units/forgotten-female-heroes-history-project/
• STEM – Water Corruption: Investigative Report: In this Challenge, your team must research the source, cleanliness and rechargeable nature of your community’s water supply. Then, identify a plausible threat to that supply: contamination? development? accessibility? Create an on-the-scene investigative report as if that threat is coming to pass, detailing a) the problem; b) what could have been done to prevent it; and c) what is being done to contain or fix it. LINK: https://www.meridianstories.com/units/water-corruption/

Kelly Johnson, PAMLE Northwest Region Board Member, has shared these good resources with us:

Fake News Resources
https://teachingkidsnews.com/fakenews/

Black Lives Matter
https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/summer-2017/bringing-black-lives-matter-into-the-classroom-part-ii
https://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2020/06/15_classroom_resources_for_discussing_racism_policing_and_protest.html

Academic Integrity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8kokDHV-DA

DCNR is providing help for educators - Free subscriptions, fun resources, earn Act 48 hours, & online/in-person learning this summer! https://pamle.org/DCNRSummerResources

Population Health Innovations: COVID-19 Return-to-School Screening Program and Self-Reporting App
As you may know, Population Health Innovations, Inc. (PHII), parent company to Health eTools (and this year’s recipient of PAMLE’s Executive Director Partnership Award), has launched the COVID-19 Return-To-School Program in response to widespread concerns about safe and prudent return. It is in use across hundreds of schools in PA today. The program leverages the secure, cloud-based Health eTools electronic health records (EHR) platform. It is available to PAMLE constituents at a significantly discounted rate through September, using Discount Code - "PAMLE".

For schools wishing to implement this cloud-based program to do COVID-19 screening and surveillance among faculty and staff, IT’S NOT TOO LATE!! On-boarding is fast and easy, and pricing is reasonable.

Many schools are engaged in remote/virtual learning, for the time being, due to local conditions with COVID-19 data and/or state and local guidance from health authorities. This program offers the tools, the convenient and secure infrastructure, and the ease of implementation needed to enhance safety and provide reassurance to families and employees, as you make that transition from predominantly remote learning back to a more traditional on-campus approach. You will have access to the PHII COVID-19 screening and surveillance tools, as well as a Self-Reporting Web App that can be used by employees and parents to enter COVID-19 screening data prior to heading to school. Schools can purchase this for both students and employees. Call or email for more information. 717-735-8105 support@healthetools.com – and please don’t forget to mention discount code PAMLE!

A 1-page flier on the program is attached. Below is a brief description of the key COVID-19 Return-To-School Program components:

1. Core of program is implementation of a HIPAA-compliant EHR platform to capture COVID-19-related student and employee health data in a central repository, outside of human resources files as recommended by the EEOC. Data capture is done securely and allows for monitoring of trends and surveillance of your overall population.
2. Second key component is the option to use a Secure Self-Reporting Web App link for daily data entry, enabling users to self-screen prior to coming into school. No login or app download is necessary – self-report from a phone, tablet, or computer. Data is automatically integrated into the core, secure platform, allowing for consolidated tracking and reporting.
3. Third key component is a set of materials to make a school’s task easier in navigating the complexity of the current situation, including: customizable templates, based on CDC and other expert guidance, for creation of specific new policies; in some cases flow charts for key decisions such as when to come to work; and also key situational communications to employees or others.

Horace Mann is here for you. Horace Mann, a Platinum Level corporate sponsor, understands COVID-19 has impacted the daily lives of educators and caused disruption to the school communities we serve. The task before you is monumental. As you adapt to these critical responsibilities, please know that Horace Mann is ready to support you. Click here for free resources for K-12 teachers adapting to remote learning, including online lessons, “brain breaks”, curated articles and quick links. Click here to learn how Horace Mann, is responding to concerns about Coronavirus (COVID-19).

And like so many of you, Horace Mann’s response to COVID-19 continues to evolve, and they’re pleased to share their Teacher Appreciation Giveback Program – a program designed to have a meaningful impact on the educators they so proudly serve. Learn more about the Teacher Appreciation program here.

To help keep members connected, Horace Mann is offering a “Wednesday Webinar” series of no-cost virtual workshops over the next several weeks on topics important to educators. Topics will include student loan forgiveness, DonorsChoose funding, retirement planning and more.

Plus, those who join a webinar will learn how to enter Horace Mann’s $10,000 DonorsChoose sweepstakes!

AMLE is supporting our middle schoolers! Check out this month's Newsletter from AMLE to find ways we can supporting our studnets while schools are closed.

Jen Cort Educational Consulting -  Check out my latest blog post, "Caring for teachers, students, and the parent-teacher relationship" and register for a free webinar! And here is my latest list of resources. Follow any of the links in the footnotes for updated lists to come out weekly http://bit.ly/COVID19SCHOOLSJC. It is simply an organized list, not an exhaustive list and not an endorsement. I will be updating it regularly and invite you to share your contributions at jencort@jencort.com. Wherever possible, I credit the author or curator and ask you to do the same. Wishing you well in these and all times

Perfection Learning - This is a moment in time none of us expected. But I know we have a choice during this crisis. As I’ve told everyone on our team, we have an unprecedented opportunity to look beyond our own personal circumstances and reach out to all the educators, students, and parents that have been at the core of our mission for almost 95 years. We need each other, especially now when we are being pushed apart by this epidemic.

Here’s how we can help: Administrators and Teachers: Effective immediately, we are releasing our entire catalog of Perfection Learning and AMSCO e-books and teaching support. When you sign up, you will receive links to both teacher and student accounts on our Perfection Next platform for the remainder of the school year at no charge. AMSCO® Advanced Placement, Language Arts, Reading, Math, Science, Social Studies, and World Languages – everything is there for you. Please complete this online access form: https://www.perfectionlearning.com/request-next-access

Saddleback Educational Publishing -
Join Saddleback and Dr. Katherine McKnight on August 13 at for this FREE webinar where you’ll find out how e-learning is different from classroom learning and also explore the many important ways in which it is the same. You’ll discover how to avoid getting distracted by all the “bells and whistles” that are available and, instead, select high-leverage tools that will help your students stay on track. We’ll conclude by looking at grading and assessment options.

Register today: 

https://app.robly.com/archive?id=6498e4f2e2c9617a076314b4ae0a1777&v=true

Amplify is a team of curriculum experts, engineers, and artists who develop innovative and nationally recognized reading, math, and science materials for grades K-12. To help educators and families, we’ve pulled from our top-rated programs to create a series of remote learning experiences that are high quality, easy to use at home, and totally free. On this new website, you’ll have quick and easy access to quality academic resources—from self-guided science videos to early reading instruction to guidelines for starting a virtual book club. These resources will remain available to you until July 1.

America's Best History is a website for Social Studies that has a large variety of articles, timelines and national parks for secondary students. They will releasing a daily article on significant and lesser known historical events, as well as articles on popular and lesser known national parks. You can go to the main website or follow on twitter: https://americasbesthistory.com or @ambesthistory