East Central BOCES Announcements

Terms:  The stipends will be paid out on a first come, first serve basis.  Once the budgeted amount has been expended, no more funding will be available to be paid out.  Hard deadline: May 28, 2021 (if the funding lasts through that date).  Please submit as soons as you have completed the training, and gathered the documentation.  Almost 50 stipends have already been paid out which is about 1/3 of the funding available for the stipends.

Email a scanned copy of the Stipend Request Form, W-9 and certificate of  of the successful completion of an approved training to:

Mitzi Swiatkowski (mitziski@ecboces.org)

East Central BOCES

719-775-2342 Extension 114

The stipends will be paid for with Federal funds and are approved only for payment to certified teachers for completing CDE approved and provided online, or face-to-face online PD.

The following are not eligible for stipends: Holding a State of Colorado Endorsement as a Reading Teacher or Reading Specialist, CDE-approved Alternative Assessment, Undergraduate or Graduate Reading Course.

As per CDE guidance, the state provided training, and payment of the stipend will be limited to K-3 teachers and other teachers providing literacy instruction for students grades K-3, such as a Title I teacher, EL teacher or Special Education teacher.

Good Morning All,

One of the consortium teachers emailed me with a question about the EL and READ Act PD requirements.  She had been reviewing the READ Act online module introduction.  It indicated that many ELL strategies are included in the online program.  This was her question, "Is there a possibility that this class/program could also count toward the 45 hours of ELL training that we need in order to renew our teaching license?"  I emailed Jennifer Simons who works in licensure at CDE in Educator Talent as an Educator Development Principal Consultant.  She responded with, "This should be fine."

If you choose to earn the EL PD hours as you are completing the READ Act PD requirements, please take notes that will allow you to provide a description of how the module addressed the selected elements in the EL PD Matrix.  Jennifer at CDE has told me that "justification is key".  

From my perspective, the READ Act PD will most likely meet EL PD Standard III, Elements A and B related to literacy development.

CDE provided reading training online is now available. 

Reading Course Details:

• Registration for the online asynchronous training “Building a Strong Foundation: Developing Early Literacy Skills” by the Public Consulting Group, Inc. is now open.
• After registering, participants will receive access to the course in the Pepper Learning Experience Platform.
• Access to the online course will expire one year after the enrollment date.
• Completion of all course modules and a score of 80% or higher on the end of course assessment are required to meet the evidence-based training in teaching requirements.

Use this link to sign-up for the online training with CDE

https://www.cde.state.co.us/coloradoliteracy/onlinecdetraining

WIDA Resources:  eLearning Professional Development 

WIDA (Wisconsin Center for Educational Research, at University of Wisconsin, Madison) provides eLearning courses for Colorado educators as part of their contract with CDE. These courses are free and count toward the English Learner Professional Development Quality Standards Professional Development requirement for relicensing. Educators can request access to WIDA eLearning by contacting the WIDA Client Services Center (help@wida.us) from their school issued email. Please share this information with new and veteran teachers in your district.

 

CDE has training courses available for K-3 teachers needing CDE hours to meet the READ Act requirements.

Reading Course Details:

• All face-to-face sessions will be held virtually as synchronous sessions.
• Class sizes will be capped at 30 participants.
• If a minimum of 15 participants do not register for a cohort, the cohort may be canceled.
• Registration for courses will close 2 weeks prior to the first training session to allow for manuals to be mailed to participants. 
• Course manuals will be mailed to participants soon after registration closes.
• Attendance at all training sessions and a score of 80% or higher on the end of course assessment are required to meet the evidence-based training in teaching requirements.

Visit this link to sign-up
https://www.cde.state.co.us/coloradoliteracy/cdeprovided-readingtraining-f2f

We are collaborating with Belize to provide some teachers to share a session or so for their teacher training conference this summer.  If you have a great idea, are considered innovative or just have something that you want to share with other teachers, ECBOCES, through the help of the Morgridge Foundation is offering stipends for teachers who would be willing to teach a session or so via Zoom/Google.  Please contact Emma Richardson (emmar@ecboces.org) for more information.

ECBOCES is looking for a part-time Spanish teacher to teach over our Distance Learning system.  Please see  https://www.ecboces.org/course/view.php?id=19 for more information. 

Hello Families, Students, Staff and Service Providers. 

As part of the Office of Special Education Programs’ (OSEP) results-based accountability process, OSEP requires states to gather information from students one year post high school exit as part of our State Performance Plan Indicator 14. In Colorado, districts are responsible for contacting students to collect data on special education students who have graduated, dropped out, or aged out and report that information to the Colorado Department of Education. This survey is intended for students who have left high school or a transition program, not those currently enrolled in a secondary education program. 

These calls will begin around June 1st to families of students that graduated one year ago.  Please respond to the call so that we can gather the appropriate data in order to support our special education programs. 

Thank you all! 

(Edited by Lorie Coonts - original submission Monday, May 11, 2020, 9:44 AM)

Hi All,

I realize you have had so many resources and links passed on and it can get a bit overwhelming to keep track of all of them.  

In the last several weeks CDE has passed on info about serving students including:

• COVID-19 and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education
• Colorado Provisional Identification and Placement of English Learners
• Re-designation of English Learners
• Colorado EL Distance Learning Guidance
• COVID-19 and ESEA 

Links to all of these resources can be found in one place on the EC BOCES website:

In order to access them, log into the website.

Look for the "COVID-19 Resources for Districts" (orange rectangle on the right side of the homepage).

On the next page look for "CLICK HERE FOR FEDERAL PROGRAMS RESOURCES" (on the right side of the page).

Clicking on that link will take you to the resources CDE has shared with me.  I will continue to add the the list as the resources are made available.

Best,

Mitzi

Need Resources and Support with Transitioning to Remote Learning?

We recognize the unprecedented moment in education across the country.  Are you in need of support with maintaining student engagement in scientific practices through remote instruction? PEER Physics has online resources to help with timely and effective web-based support for teachers and parents.

Remote learning link for resources: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kOOmCOl9XHQo-iSP1wsIl2LbBx7TW19e

Jonathan Mann

Director of Educational Partnerships
University of Colorado, Boulder | School of Education
jon.mann@peerphysics.org | Cell: 303-887-6216
PEERphysics.org 

East Central BOCES has started a webpage of resources for our districts that might be looking at closing down during this COVID-19.  This page will continued to be updated as we continue to research options for our schools that might need to support their students remotely.  A link to the page is found on the ECBOCES website or the page can be found HERE.

For those teachers who have school email addresses associated with a Google Apps account, we have now enabled Google login so that you can log in to our website with your school credentials.  Currently, this is set up for the following districts:  Agate, Arickaree, Arriba Flagler, Burlington, Hi Plains, Idalia, Limon, Kiowa, Stratton. 

To take advantage of this, you have to do the following:

1. The email in your ECBOCES profile must be your school email address.  (If you are unsure, when logged into the site, click on your name in the top right hand corner of the site, click on Profile.  If the email there is not your school email, click on Edit Profile, update the email and click on update profile)

2. If you are logged into the ECBOCES website, log out.  Then, from the home page, click on the Google icon in the Login box.  Enter your school login.

3. You will then be sent an email to connect your Google login to your ECBOCES website account.  Once you have clicked on the link in the email, the two accounts will be linked and you will then be able to use your school login to access our website.

We hope that this will make it easier for you to access our site.  I hope to be able to add more districts as they confirm that the emails will match correctly so if your district is not listed and you know that you have Google Apps, please put in a help desk ticket and we will follow up.  A few districts (Bennett, Byers, Deer Trail) do not have your school email linked to Google and so we cannot set those up as yet.