Bristol County Agricultural High School: Aggie Weekly- April 3rd

Good Afternoon Students, Parents, and Community Members:

Message from Bristol Aggie Staff:
We miss seeing everyone on campus and thought we would send along a little message to say hello and let everyone know what we have been up to! We hope everyone stays safe and healthy!
We miss you CLICK HERE!

This week we worked with our staff to develop our DRAFT Bristol County Agricultural High School Distance Learning Plan (DLP): Bristol County Agricultural High School recognizes that there is a strong need to provide educational opportunities for students during this national health crisis. The staff at Bristol Aggie will work to develop curricula through distance learning to increase engagement, enrich skills, and further increase student subject matter knowledge. As Commissioner Riley has stated, distance learning is not synonymous with online learning. Distance learning can take many forms, particularly project based learning. Click here to view the DRAFT DLP

We understand that many of you may have some questions about the DLP or otherwise, so we wanted to create a Q/A Session with Administration: Monday, April 6th at 5:00 pm (Waiting room will be open at 4:30) - Please see a separate email with meeting ID and password to access this meeting.

Agenda for Admin Q/A

Check in with Bristol Aggie Family
Distance Learning Plan Questions
Video Conferencing/Virtual Classrooms Expectations
When will the school year end?
When is school going to return? Sports?
April Vacation
Graduation, Prom, and other Senior events
Grades (Quarter 3 & Quarter 4)
MSBA Update
Parent/Student Q/A forum

How to use Zoom:

Go to. www.zoom.us At the top right of the screen, click "Join a Meeting"
You will need the following information to join the meeting: Meeting ID: & Password: Please see previous email for meeting ID and password
You may be asked to create a username (if you do not have a Zoom account). This username is what will be displayed during our meeting.
On Monday, starting at 4:30 pm, you will be allowed to enter the “Waiting Room” prior to the meeting started. The agenda will start promptly at 5:00 pm
You can enable/disable video when entering the meeting
Upon entry everyone’s microphone will be muted during the meeting.
Students and parents may submit questions using the chat feature (at the bottom of the screen) or raising your hand to ask a question.
See below for helpful links

Light One Candle #Candles4SBRHS: On Tuesday, the following message was sent to the BA Community:

Greetings Bristol Aggie Community,

I hope you and your family are well. We wanted to share tragic news within Bristol County, specifically the Somerset-Berkley School District. In the past two weeks, Somerset-Berkley Regional High School has lost one current student and two very recent graduates of the Class of 2019. As you'd imagine, individually, those tragedies would be difficult to grieve as a school community, let alone given the back-to-back events, and especially the inability to gather as a community to support one another right now.

We are looking to support these families in our Bristol County community. Since they cannot gather as a community, families in Somerset and Berkley are lighting candles in their windows to demonstrate support for these grieving families. If you would like to show your support for these families, you can create messages, maybe even including the candle (real, drawn, whatever) to share with them via social media. Those interested can share messages, photos, videos etc through this GoogleDoc. If you post to social media, we encourage you to use #Candles4SBRHS to help unify the effort. We just thought with the importance of being together during an unimaginable time like this and given the inability to do so which social distancing prevents, it might help to know that others stand with them. I will be collecting the images on this Google Doc to send to the school principal so she can pass it along to her community. Any support is greatly appreciated. If you have any questions, please contact Mr. Braga (KBraga@bcahs.com). Thank you

We encourage families to use common sense and abide by fire regulations. We do not recommend using open flame in your window. We encourage battery operated devices to ensure your family's safety. Even a sign in the window is very much appreciated.

Bristol County Agricultural High School

From the Braga Family, Taunton, MA

In our thoughts, One community.
From the Costa Family, Berkley MA

The Costa Family

Somerset, MA

Two Schools Strong

Parent/Student Engagement Pictures: We are requesting students to share (kbraga@bcahs.com) some of the work they are doing at home. If you are working on an assignment and you want to share your work, please send it along to me so we can keep up the Aggie Weekly classroom updates. Additionally, if you are working on your baseball/softball/LAX swing/skills in your backyard, please share those as well. Feel free to tweet @BristolAggie if you use Twitter.

Landscape Contracting and Design: Freshman Keegan Carr took full advantage of the beautiful weather outside last week and installed this beautiful paver walkway at his house! Keep up the great work!

Bristol Aggie caring for classroom turtles from across the state during school closures: Click here for the full story in the Taunton Daily Gazette

DIGHTON — Massachusetts schools have been closed for weeks because of the COVID-19 pandemic and closures are expected to last for several more. Coincidentally and unexpectedly, this also left some teachers with Plymouth Red-bellied Cooters, a turtle native to the area, in classrooms across the state in a very difficult situation.

Dr. Mike Jones, Massachusetts state herpetologist, contacted the Bristol County Agricultural High School Natural Resource Management Department to help with this unusual situation.

The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife (Mass Wildlife) began head-starting hatchling cooters in 1984 when the entire population was estimated to be only a few dozen animals in a half a dozen ponds. Head-starting is the process of raising young animals in captivity until they have passed their most vulnerable stage. Zoos, aquaria and natural history museums partnered with Mass Wildlife to help raise the endangered hatchling turtles. Mass Wildlife also recruited teachers and students from around Massachusetts to help and take an active role in protecting our rare turtles. Now, with classrooms empty, the turtles find themselves in need of a home.

“Of course we will help! Give me 48 hours to get ready”, Brian Bastarache, NRM department chair. The NRM department is well versed in caring for these turtles. Over the past nine years the department has raised 258 Plymouth Red-bellied Cooter head-starts for Mass Wildlife. The NRM faculty has been deemed essential school personnel as they now must provide the specialized care for all of the wildlife currently held at the Bristol Aggie campus. Bastarache and Kourtnie Bouley, NRM instructor, quickly set-up a third 500-gallon, recirculating aquaculture system to accommodate the cooters from the empty classrooms.

Throughout this week, Jones and teachers will bring their cooters to Bristol Aggie’s NRM Conservation Aquaculture Lab. The first arrivals were from Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical High School and Hingham Middle School. With the additional cooters from across the state, the Bristol Aggie cooter populations will reach nearly 100 animals. The Taunton Hannaford Supermarket generously provides the bags of greens needed to feed these herbivorous reptiles. Bristol Aggie’s conservation aquaculture laboratory is a unique facility designed to accommodate large numbers of turtles and other aquatic wildlife. Each year Bristol Aggie takes-in the remaining hatchling cooters that Mass Wildlife still has after all of the participating schools and other cooperating partners have received their animals. This year 54 cooters have been living and growing in the Bristol Aggie facility.

Bristol Aggie’s NRM department is no stranger to working with external agencies having partnerships with several environmental agencies, both state and federal, on a variety of wildlife conservation projects. Typically, the NRM students conduct all of the necessary work to maintain the animals involved in our projects. However, like all schools in the state, the students are not allowed on campus at this time. Robin VanRotz, director of Community Partnerships, was glad that the school could be a resource for the agencies.

“Our school has been a partner in this project for some time now and we are fortunate to have the resources to foster the turtles for the time being. The agriculture and environmental community always comes together, especially in unprecedented times like these,” VanRotz said.

The fostered turtles will be cared for in the Aggie school’s lab until they can return to their classrooms or be released once the warm weather returns.

In the Virtual Classroom:

Daily Workouts with Ms. Lindrooth and Mr. Poloskey:Ms. Lindrooth and Mr. Poloskey have been posting daily “at home” workouts in the PE Google Classroom. Check out the 10 minute Abs workout video on Youtube Ms. Lindrooth made for Thursday’s workout! Ms. Lindrooth's Abs Workout

#ManiMonday with Ms. Szurley:
If you have Ms. Szurley in class, you’ll know she loves doing her nails. While staying safe at home, Ms. Szurley wanted to share with you all her Monday manis!