A Glimpse into DSST E-School Day 1

DSST Families, 

We launched DSST E-School today with our 6,300 students in Denver and Aurora!  It was fantastic to be back in “school” with our students learning together! I want to thank all of our families for working hard to support their students and getting them ready for school!  I want to share some highlights from Day 1. 

DSST E-School Day 1 Celebrations

• Students started the day at 9 AM filling out an Advisory Survey checking them in for the day and sharing with us how they are feeling and doing.  We want to stay deeply connected with our students each day - building a strong sense of virtual community.  
• Students engaged in virtual classes delivered through our video and chat platform, Microsoft Teams. Assignments were given and learning resumed!  Everyone was excited to be back, learning, chatting (LOTS of chatting), and seeing friendly faces. 
• We had well over 85% attendance rate at E-School today based on multiple data points.
• 96% of students network wide are now connected to the internet, and our team continues to work tirelessly to ensure that all 100% of our students will be internet connected.
• Our students were very excited to see their friends and teachers and be back together - perhaps too excited by the “exuberant” use of the chat feature on our Teams platform! 
• Our awesome School Directors are all thrilled to be back in “class”... check out these fun and hilarious videos they created to get students just as excited: 

What We Learned

We learned a lot about how to do DSST E-School in 6 short hours today and are already implementing changes for Day 2.  Here are a few things we learned.

• Advisory surveys - we need to double down on getting all students to fill them out every morning. 
• Technology directions and how to access resources for our middle school students need to be different than are directions for high schoolers!   
• Students love Chat functions - perhaps too much.  Need to create more clear etiquette for Chat usage in our classes!

Learning and making daily adjustments to our program to better serve your children will be a focus for us.

Three Ways Families Can Set Up Their Children for Success!

• Ensure that your child takes the advisory survey each morning before 9:00AM.  This is a critical first task that must be completed to start each day! 
• Make sure your child has a dedicated workspace - you can borrow a desk, chair, and headphones to help ensure an optimal learning environment at home if you need to. 
• Fill out our parent survey Friday so we get your feedback! We’ll be sending a family survey on Friday to hear their feedback and thoughts on E-School so far. 

Many of us became homeschoolers for the first time last month, and we acutely feel the challenges this has posed to many families. A fellow DSST parent  shared out some helpful tips to get students and families ready for E-School. 

I am so glad to be back in “school” today.  We have a great eight weeks ahead to finish the 2020-21 school year on a high note.  I look forward to sharing with you on a regular basis how we are doing. Thanks for your ongoing support of our DSST community.   

All my best,

Bill