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Nathan Olsen from Hamilton Middle works with students to create Hamilton Television broadcasts. See the Quick Highlights from 2020 here!

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Jeremy Payne from O'Keeffe Middle spends time re-engaging leadership students through personalized letters, phone calls and texts.

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Savanna Mahieu of Lakeview Elementary uses a sticker challenge to boost student engagement and participation during virtual learning.

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In the midst of the pandemic, Jenny Gapinski regularly collaborates with 2 other first year teachers (another co-worker from Toki, and a colleague from Jefferson) to analyze virtual student engagement, and plan their lessons across schools.

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If you are ever looking for a way to increase some staff morale, perhaps you try a collaborative Spotify playlist!  Sarah Wollner from the RAD office tried this out for a staff holiday gathering by asking for favorite songs and starting the list.

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Tony Jennaro worked with others in the LaFollette community to place flags outside of the school for Latinx Heritage Month.  Flags represented students and staff at school.

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The Toki BSU designed a school-wide wellness project.  The students received a grant to design Toki masks, stickers and an inspirational note to send to every student at school.  Students chose a Black-owned Toki family business to work with on producing the items. The project was originally designed for 6th graders as a way to share compassion with their unexpected start to middle school, but when they secured more funding it expanded to be school-wide!

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Sarah Pagel send Bravo incentive cards home to her students at Midvale Elementary to support students in goal setting.

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Sarah Williams reached out to math teachers across the country to help each other create and share prepared lessons for use in the virtual classroom.  The sharing of lesson development let them all keep focus on students in order to help them get the most out of virtual learning.

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LaFollette High School launches a Take-Out to Turn-In intervention to meet the needs of students in the virtual world to have students accessible outside the school day.  Since people thrive through connection and food, students receive a Door Dash to their home for dinner while they work with classroom teachers on assignments.  The work is led by the MTSS and Student Services Engagement team.

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Todd Hillmer leads students in sharing through the whole-school Toki Video News.

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Bobbi Campbell shares how Elvehjem builds community and increases morale through a Selfie Bingo challenge.

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At Toki Middle School, Eliav Goldman supports a group of students from Social Action Club in creating and airing a virtual protest about issues that are important to these students.

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Watch this Happy Birthday Gram put together and shared by La Follette High School's choir and Courtney Lindl as a way to celebrate all feeder school students!

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Phil Wood from Toki Middle School  finds new ways to bring in community voice through short Spanish videos in order to increase student engagement in learning.

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Phil Wood from Toki Middle School builds interactive slidedecks for teaching in order to increase student engagement in learning.

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Phil Wood from Toki Middle School  digitizes game-based learning in order to increase student engagement in learning.

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Coleen Weigel shares how a sign language interpreter at Henderson Elementary found a way to get interpreting "into" the digital book for her students to follow along.

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A kindergarten teacher at Van Hise engages students in a read aloud by posting a chapter a day to enjoy.  Many families are using it as a bedtime story.

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Earlier this semester, a student attending Metro High School completed their high school diploma and graduated!  Metro teacher Tina Geier worked with The Dane County Sheriff's Office, Roman Candle, Operation Fresh Start, and other offices within MMSD to make it possible for this Class of 2020 Graduate to celebrate their achievements with fellow residents with a full blown pizza party and homemade treats for all to share.  Personal congratulatory messages were gathered from MMSD staff, loved ones and community members to be shared at the celebration.  This tremendous achievement was celebrated despite numerous obstacles in arranging such an event.

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Toki Middle School collaborates to share all-staff messages through video in order to show support to their students.

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Dawn Liska-Tollefson works with the Foxes Team at Toki Middle School and ROCKiT to offer a Virtual Cafeteria space four days a week for 30 minutes.  Students are able to connect and socialize during this time.  The team hopes to see increases in student engagement and is working to measure any student engagement outcomes.

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Marguerite Fairchild works with the Foxes Team at Toki Middle and ROCKiT to share dialogue journals with students.  Teachers and students write back and forth to each other every week.  Teachers provide prompts and the conversation can continue with students organically.  This is a great way to hear more about students' interests and their lives that day to day and virtual learning doesn't always have space for.

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Karen Beck shares how University Houses Preschool engaged students by having them create noodle picture frames to gift to a loved one over the holidays.  Student and family feedback shared how much students valued this activity.

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A team of teachers from Sandburg Elementary works with ROCKiT to create space in their schedule for students to do creative, community-building play across grade levels in order to build the students' sense of belonging.  The teachers are working to make this experience special and meaningful and are looking to see how this cultivated belonging might impact how these students participate or collaborate at other times of the day.

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Candace Terrell shares about weekly Tik Tok dance-offs that happen around Allis Elementary to bring some fun and activity into the classroom.

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A team from RPEO in central office built a survey response rate dashboard tool to support school-based outreach to families and boost survey completion rates, particularly among students and families who encounter barriers to survey completion through typical administration methods.  They built the initial tool on a tight timeline, iterated for improvement based on user feedback, and maintained a growth-oriented mindset around a new process for gathering student and family voice.

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During face-to-face instruction there are countless quick and impromptu interactions between staff that increase morale and build community.  In this virtual world, many of these connections are lost.  LaFollette seeks to find a solution through Hallway Connections.  Their mental health team and school psychologists, nurse and other student service staff are launching opportunities for staff to connect in order to recreate those hallway connections on a regular basis.

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Educators at Wright Middle were given work signs to place in their yards to celebrate their work and boost morale during this virtual work.

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A staff member from Doyle has been working to provide daily learning plans to teachers for 4K students and families in English and Spanish so that teachers have ideas, resources and stories to share and build connections with families.  These lesson plans are focused on high quality social emotional learning and equity.

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This year, LaFollette High School flipped conferences on their head from a passive approach to actively reaching out to families and students that need them the most during virtual school.  The goal was to connect anyway they could that is best for the family.  They centered their systems around their Spanish speaking families providing 1:1 conferences and care to students needing more holistic support.  They scheduled 153 Spanish speaking conferences in this way and completed 121 even before the follow-up!

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A team from Toki worked with ROCKiT to create the Toki Community Council.  This team is a place to connect families and the community through the school.  When families are referred, they are interviewed to see how the school can collaborate with community members and pull resources to meet their needs.  This group works on closing that gap.

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In General Music, Eliav Goldman works to find new ways to engage students with music in a virtual setting.  One project used Soundtrap (a cloud-based Digital Audio Workstation) where students can produce beats and record their own voices.  During this project centered around personal and family identity, students wrote about their identities and then recorded the verses in Soundtrap.  Listen to this example from a 6th grader.

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Edie Mileham from Van Hise shares an idea rocked by 3rd grade teachers district-wide.  Edie opened up a Facebook group and invited every MMSD teacher she could find who has a role with 3rd graders.  Another person started a Google Drive where people could share their files.  It has been a better place to share materials, ask questions, and give opinions on resources.  After it opened, it became self-sustaining!

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Lauren Morris from ROCKiT, shares that Gompers Elementary is continuously finding ways to adjust to the virtual space through monthly supply pick-ups, to Seesaw lessons, to amazing community-centered classroom activities.

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The 8th grade Humanities team at Toki Middle created a community-oriented classroom through engaging projects that allow students to make personal connections to their learning.  Click on the links to hear some showcase examples of Stories from America: Princess - Spoken Word - “I Am A Black Girl” 2m, Cam - Spoken Word - 2m, Yunie - Narrative Story - “Small Cultures” 3m, Aliyah H. - Where I’m From Poem 2m, Junior - Where I’m From Poem 2m, Olivia - Narrative Story - “The Audition” 5m

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2nd grade teachers at Franklin Elementary developed virtual behavior charts.  The link is posted to students' Seesaw Journal and they can check the chart as often as they like.  The teacher simply updates it in the google slide and it links to the students' view.