Good afternoon NAMS Families,

We are all so excited, and a bit nervous, for the start of the 2020-2021 school year. Excited because we miss our students and can’t wait to begin this new school year together. Nervous because this will be new for all of us, but I couldn’t work with a better group of people than our NAMS staff. 

The first day of school is scheduled for this Wednesday, September 16th. This is a remote day of learning as will be the 5 subsequent days, September 17-23, 2020. All students will begin the day on Wednesday by watching a live welcome video by our NAMS leadership team. Students will need to be logged into their gmail accounts to enter the google meet to see the video. You may find the link to the video here. You won’t be able to see the video until Wednesday morning around 8:00 a.m.  Additionally, you may find the schedule for the first day of school and the next 5 days of school here.

Team teachers will be emailing families on their teams information about the first day of school this afternoon, so please be sure to check your email later today.

After the first day of school, my messages and those of teachers will be focused on preparing students for a return to school in person. These messages will include information about health and safety procedures, virtual tours of the building, arrival and dismissal procedures, breakfast and lunch procedures, and so much more. These types of messages will begin on Thursday, September 17th.

In an effort to prepare for Wednesday, September 16th I wanted to share the following information with you:

• PowerSchool is now open so that students and families can see schedules. You may find a video explaining how to read the schedules in PowerSchool here.

• Please note that students will be attending RA Day 1 classes for the first half of Trimester 1 then will be attending RA Day 2 classes the second half of Trimester 1. Students will begin the year only attending RA Day 1 classes. I explain this in the video above.

• You may find a short video explaining the schedules for the first 6 days of school here.

• Students will not be in cohorts for the first 6 days of school and will all be together in virtual classes using google meet.

• Students will be provided detailed information on how to log into the google meets that will be created for them in upcoming messages.

• Team teachers will be sending information to all of their students on the afternoon of Monday, September 14th welcoming them to NAMS and also providing them an overview of what to expect on Wednesday.

• Students and families may find their teams’ supply lists through one of the following websites. Please select your team and open the supply list on that team’s website.

• Grade 6 Teams

• Grade 7 Teams

• Grade 8 Teams

• You will see that all supply lists also include the Related Arts supply lists as well.

• There will be school materials that we will need to get to all of our OLA students and we will be scheduling dates and times to do this next week.

What do the Hybrid schedules look like beginning September 24th?

Although our Hybrid learning plan is not scheduled to begin until Thursday, September 24th, I would like to share with you the schedules for all of our students (In-Person & OLA). You may find the hybrid schedules here and a video explaining the schedules here.

NAMS Parent/Guardian Guide

I will be sharing the NAMS Parent/Guide with you tomorrow. This guide is very useful for new and returning students and families to NAMS. Much of the guide refers to attending school in person and still needs to be updated to reflect the most recent updates and changes.

I’m sure that you have many questions and I want to assure you that we will continue to share information and videos with you that we hope will answer many of these questions. Stay tuned for more information and lots of videos!

Be well,

Jorge Goncalves

Principal