Episode 11 - Return to School Secondary Student Information with Dr. Matt McKinley

SHOW TOPIC
Return to School Secondary Student Information

SPECIAL GUEST
Dr. Matt McKinley, Seneca Valley Assistant Superintendent for 7-12 Instruction

Dr. Matthew McKinley serves as Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Instruction, grades 7-12. Prior to his assistant role, he served for six years as principal of the Seneca Valley Senior High School. He also served as assistant principal of the Seneca Valley Senior High School and as a mathematics teacher at the same building for six years. Prior to coming to Seneca Valley, Dr. McKinley taught as a mathematics teacher at Mercer Area Junior/Senior High School.
Dr. McKinley earned his bachelor of art’s degree in mathematics from Grove City College and obtained his Master of Education degree and his Doctor of Education from the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. McKinley developed the Academy of Choice Program in the district, which includes a growing cyber program and a one-of-a kind performing arts department. He is also author of the Seneca Valley Random Drug Testing Policy, which has been lauded locally as well as nationally and was cited as a model program by the White House Drug Policy Council.

IN THIS EPISODE, WE WILL REVIEW
• Learning Models and Phases
• 2020-21 student schedules
• A typical day in the life for a  secondary student in our schools
• Differences in Remote Learning
• Supporting students and parents through resources

USEFUL INFORMATION
www.svsd.net/ReturntoSchool
www.svsd.net/LearningModels

Transcript

FULL TRANSCRIPT (with timecode)

Voices E11 Matthew McKinley

File Name: Voices E11 Matthew McKinley.mp3

File Length: 00:11:42

SPEAKERS

Int - Introduction

JK - Jeff Krakoff

MM - Matthew McKinley

00:00:02:24 - 00:00:07:24

Introduction: Welcome to Voices, a Podcast brought to you by the Seneca Valley School District.

00:00:10:20 - 00:00:19:21

Jeff Krakoff: I'm Jeff Krakoff with Dr. Matthew McKinley, assistant superintendent for 7-12 instruction at Seneca Valley. Thanks for joining us today.

00:00:19:23 - 00:00:20:16

Matthew McKinley: Thank you.

00:00:20:28 - 00:00:25:15

Jeff Krakoff: A little background on you. You've got your bachelor's degree in mathematics. Then

00:00:25:17 - 00:00:36:09

Jeff Krakoff: Then you earned your masters in education, a doctorate in education from University of Pittsburgh, starting out many years ago as a math teacher.

00:00:36:11 - 00:00:49:03

Jeff Krakoff: You've been with the district at Seneca Valley for about 32 years as a teacher, as an assistant principal, principal, and now assistant superintendent. So you've you've seen the process from every angle possible, right?

00:00:49:05 - 00:00:52:07

Matthew McKinley: That's right. Yeah, we've grown quite a bit during that time too.

00:00:52:09 - 00:00:52:24

Jeff Krakoff: Yeah.

00:00:52:26 - 00:00:59:15

Jeff Krakoff: Yeah for sure. So why don't you walk us through you know this isn't your typical year with the pandemic.

00:00:59:17 - 00:01:04:19

Jeff Krakoff: Can you walk us through the learning models and phases for secondary education this year?

00:01:04:21 - 00:01:35:25

Matthew McKinley: Sure. Yeah I'd be happy to. Thank you. And I'm going to start with our our yellow phase because that's what the decision the school board made on August 10, this past Monday, that that we are going to be starting in the yellow phase. So for for traditional students, students that chose or the parents that chose to do in-person instruction, we will be splitting them into two cohorts the one cohort is on Mondays and Wednesdays typically, the second cohort will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

00:01:35:28 - 00:02:13:13

Matthew McKinley: If it's an opposite day that you're in person we will have some interaction, live interaction from teachers, and also some remote learning or some asynchronous learning on those opposite days. And then Friday, we're also going to try and tie in some some remediation or some enrichment for students should they need that. So that's what our traditional model's going to look like. Our hybrid models very similar students who chose that learning model have also they're going to they're going to split some of their time with our full-time cyber program.

00:02:13:15 - 00:02:50:21

Matthew McKinley: And so they may be coming to school a little bit later than the typical student or they may be leaving a little bit earlier. They will have some in-person instruction in those cohorts, as I discussed, and they will also have some full-time a synchronous learning through our our cyber program. And then the third learning model is our full-time cyber program. And no matter what phase we're in, the yellow, green, or red, those full-time cyber students will have a similar schedule. They will be learning asynchronously with some synchronous options from their teachers to to in their learning.

00:02:50:23 - 00:02:54:13

Matthew McKinley: And that will remain unchanged throughout any of the phases.

00:02:54:25 - 00:02:55:10

Jeff Krakoff: OK.

00:02:55:23 - 00:03:03:21

Jeff Krakoff: So if I'm a student I'm scheduled for for this fall. Are there any changes that I'd need to know about?

00:03:03:23 - 00:03:41:11

Matthew McKinley: Yeah. Yeah. In the past, we've tried to accommodate student schedules as best that we can. We've we've had a cyber program here for about 15 years. And because of that we've been able to add great flexibility in student schedules. With this pandemic and and the number of students that chose full time cyber has risen greatly. We've had to make some staffing changes and because of the staffing changes the the large number of courses that we have to offer are greatly, not greatly reduced, but they're they're very tight with our staffing.

00:03:41:13 - 00:04:12:08

Matthew McKinley: And so the master schedule dictates what we can and can't do with our scheduling our students scheduling. So we we're going to have to keep a tight eye on that. And we have talked to parents and said that you know should should you want to change your learning model throughout the year. We're hoping that that change can occur at the end of a grading period and when that change occurs it might be difficult to move students back and forth from one learning model to the next. So

00:04:12:10 - 00:04:17:12

Matthew McKinley: So scheduling in that way is going to be a little challenging for us, but not something that we can't overcome.

00:04:17:14 - 00:04:30:01

Jeff Krakoff: Sure. That's understandable. So can you kind of walk us through what what is a typical day in the life for a student? Secondary grades 7-12 going to look like this fall in the schools.

00:04:30:03 - 00:05:02:29

Matthew McKinley: Sure, I'd be happy to. The I'm going to go with a typical in person schedule, most of our students and parents have chosen that option, and it starts the beginning of the day as it as any day where students will either arrive by bus or be driven by their parents. We expect a greater number to be driven by their parents and we even encourage that to help kind of ease the load on the buses, even though we're on a split schedule to start the year. It will be easier to remain socially distance on the buses with less students on them.

00:05:03:01 - 00:05:30:06

Matthew McKinley: If a family chooses to ride the bus they will students will be expected to wear masks. Upon their arrival at school students will be able to come in and as in any typical day they would be able to go and get a breakfast, purchase a breakfast. It will look a little different they won't be going to the cafeteria for that it will kind of be a grab-and-go style and then all students, whether they ride the bus whether they

00:05:32:16 - 00:06:29:01

Matthew McKinley: ride with their parents, they will be going directly to their classrooms, which is a bit of a change in the mornings. And in those classrooms again we're going to we're going to be socially distanced. They move throughout the day from period to period. In the hallways, they're going to have their masks on and even in their classrooms if they're not socially distanced they will have their masks on. With if we are able to socially distance,  we'll be able to get some breaks from mask-wearing in the classroom if there's more than six feet apart. You know in a Phys-Ed class if they're students and teachers are able to go outside they'll again be able to socially distance and take their mask down, but all other times they will be expected to have their mask on and wearing those. When we move to the cafeteria for lunchtime again students will need to be socially distanced because in order to eat of course you need to have your mask down.

00:06:29:03 - 00:07:14:09

Matthew McKinley: We are going to have plexiglass in some areas. We've removed some tables and chairs and even to the fact that some students at the secondary may be eating outside of the cafeteria. We've created a fourth lunch for this year so that's going to look a little different just to divide up the numbers a little bit more and ease the number in the cafeteria so that we are able to socially distance. Then one other thing I'd like to highlight is is in our project-base classrooms in robotics, in a tech-ed class, and a family consumer science class, where they're doing projects in other classes as well we will be providing gloves for students to wear in those classes if they're handling certain equipment.

00:07:14:27 - 00:07:45:10

Matthew McKinley: And then at the end of the day, we are going to have a staggered dismissal. In our 11th/ 12th grade senior high school student drivers will be dismissed at 2:33 p.m. and asked to leave campus as quickly, safely, but quickly as possible, and then we will have a phased dismissal with the remaining students to get on their buses and leave campus that way. So that's that's fairly general but that's what a typical day in person might look like for students.

00:07:45:17 - 00:07:50:04

Jeff Krakoff: OK, so we talked about in person, what are the differences in remote learning?

00:07:51:12 - 00:08:19:25

Matthew McKinley: Yeah remote learning, we've learned a lot from from the past spring, in March April and May, and in the survey in which we gave parents and students to fill out, and one big change is, well we have a couple of changes, one big change is that we're going to have a lot more emphasis on interaction between parent I'm sorry between teacher and student and the live interaction is a bit of a gap that we missed.

00:08:19:27 - 00:09:04:19

Matthew McKinley: Some teachers were doing that, but others were not. And so that's an expectation that we're placing on our teachers this year. Also we had a wide variety of resources we're blessed at Seneca Valley that we do have a large number of resources and we left it on the teacher to pick which ones they were most comfortable with and use those with their students. We are really at the secondary going to have a strong focus on our our Portal that parents and students are familiar with and on Microsoft TEAMS which we really opened up last spring and we've done some trainings this summer in the opening professional development days, we're going to continue with those trainings with teachers, and that that's going to be a big improvement

00:09:04:21 - 00:09:42:13

Matthew McKinley: I think. And an opportunity in which they can interact live with their students. And then I guess my final point is live streaming, we are opening that up for our teachers and for students that are home, either because they're going to need to be quarantined, they're ill for whatever reason, we are having our teachers work through Microsoft TEAMS to be able to communicate live, whether it's 15 minutes or 30 minutes in a day with their students so that at minimum students can hear the lecture and the communication that's going on inside the classroom.

00:09:42:17 - 00:09:45:16

Matthew McKinley: So those are some of the changes that we have planned for this fall.

00:09:45:18 - 00:09:51:27

Jeff Krakoff: Ok, well you can tell there is definitely an emphasis on live interaction.

00:09:52:02 - 00:09:59:25

Jeff Krakoff: I'm curious is that something that you are hearing from students and parents, that you're hearing from faculty or all of the above?

00:10:00:02 - 00:10:34:03

Matthew McKinley: I would say all the above. Like I said in the survey the parents get back to us and said "Yeah, our students were missing that," the our the teachers and the principals even had some interaction with students say "Boy, if we could see our teacher more;" that "we miss that so much from the live in-person" and and also the teachers said "we just miss our students." And they may have not been up as up on technologies they wanted to be. So through these trainings I think they're going to have more opportunity to do that with their students.

00:10:34:05 - 00:10:44:12

Jeff Krakoff: Sounds great. So if I'm a parent what what what are some of the main takeaways I need to be thinking about as we re-enter the schools this fall?

00:10:45:03 - 00:11:21:16

Matthew McKinley: Yeah I would ask for parents patience and flexibility. I think that's been our main theme since March. It's been a lot of effort from a lot of people and it's going to there's so many unknowns that we still don't know even through all this planning and preparation, but I would ask for their patients and their flexibility. The challenges are going to come. I know we can overcome them. We have a great staff, an awesome staff, so I don't hesitate in saying that at all. But I would just ask that they communicate with us quickly and clearly and we will do the same with them.

00:11:21:18 - 00:11:30:09

Jeff Krakoff: All right. Well Dr. McKinley thanks so much for taking the time. I know this is a very busy time of year. Best of luck for the new school year.

00:11:30:11 - 00:11:33:03

Matthew McKinley: Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity.

00:11:33:05 - 00:11:33:27

Jeff Krakoff: All right, take care.