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5 Things Your Teachers Want You To Know

Can you believe it’s almost back to school time? As administrators work feverishly to get ready for another year, teachers are also gearing up for school — and in a recent survey, gave us some insight into challenges they expect in the 2013-2014 school year.

Do you know what challenges your teachers are facing and how you can help? We asked nearly 500 teachers what they find most challenging about lesson planning and material preparation for the classroom, and here’s what we found out.

Not Enough Time

Not surprising, 55% of respondents said they struggle with time to prepare lessons and materials for their classrooms.

Overwhelmingly, teachers said they do not have enough time during the day to prepare for lessons and often work in the evening and on weekends to get ready.

Stumbling blocks to lesson planning during the day included:
• Meetings
• Paperwork
• Grading
• Parent Communication
• Data Assessment
• Student Behavioral Issues
• Interruptions

As one teacher put it, “With more demands from state and district assessments and increased testing (hence grading), there never seems to be enough time to focus on planning and preparation.”

Specifically, teachers said they would like more time for differentiating lessons for different learning levels, collaborating with their team, researching and finding relevant materials.

Questions to Think About:
  • Are any teachers getting “burnt out” with lack of adequate planning time?
  • Do our teachers have uninterrupted planning periods during the school day?
  • Are unnecessary meetings pulling our teachers from their lesson planning?
  • Are we giving teachers flexibility to develop plans that meet the needs of students?

Varied Student Needs

Districts are increasingly focusing on meeting the needs of students at many different levels, and accordingly, 33% of teachers mentioned addressing varied student needs as one of their greatest challenges.

This area is challenging due to the extra preparation time required and also the lack of resources addressing each learning level.

Here’s how one teacher explained it: “I teach classes that are learning the same material, but are at different ability levels and filled with students with various learning styles. Trying to create lessons that meet the standards while meeting each student where they are can be difficult, but doable!”

Questions to Think About:
  • Are our teachers trained to address students at various learning levels?
  • Do our teachers have resources to help them differentiate lessons?
  • Do our classroom sizes allow teachers to effectively instruct all students?

Lack of Resources

A third of respondents also cited lack of resources as one of the most challenging aspects of preparing lessons.

One teacher explained she has trouble “finding materials that help my students understand the concept being taught,” adding that her students are usually learning below grade level.

The most common frustrations revealed that relevant materials were unavailable, too hard to find or too expensive. Many teachers said they also struggle to find resources that are aligned to district and state standards.

Questions to Think About:
  • Are we providing our teachers with adequate teaching materials?
  • Are our current resources aligned to mandated standards? 
  • Can we curate or recommend resources to aid our teachers in lesson preparation? 

Aligning With Standards

Out of the teachers surveyed, 21% struggle to address the many requirements of the Common Core, as well as district and state standards.

Problems included:

  • Feeling the need to “teach to the test”
  • Textbooks, assessments and curriculum don’t align
  • Losing time on too many assessments
  • Lack of flexibility in lesson planning

One frustrated teacher explained it this way: “Lesson planning in my district is not functional for the teacher. Rather, it is designed for principals to “keep tabs” on what teachers are doing in the classroom. It is more time consuming than it should be to write a district lesson than if I were to write one that would really help me as the classroom teacher.”

Questions to Think About:
  • Are our textbooks and assessments consistent with our curriculum framework?
  • Do we help teachers see the value in assessments and support them in this process?
  • Do our principals support teachers in creating relevant plans that align to standards?

Technology

Technology: we love it and we hate it. Most of the time, teachers love it but 17% said they struggle with technology in their classrooms. 

For some, technology is still too unavailable or unreliable.

“Some rooms have great technology set ups and some don’t,” one teacher said. “It makes it difficult to teach the same lesson to all my students fairly.”

Others don’t feel properly trained on new technologies.

“I feel overwhelmed by the inundation of technology and my ability to implement it effectively,” one teacher admitted.

Questions to Think About:
  • How can we prioritize updated technology for our classrooms?
  • Are our teachers adequately trained on new technologies?
  • How can we encourage teachers to use technology for lesson creation?
What other challenges do teachers face – and how is your district addressing them?

Friday Feature – Employee Requirements

I am happy to report that many of our customers are hiring new employees. Yay!  And, I am happy to report that Escape Online helps you enter all of the data a new employee requires.

First, if you are in a COE-wide implementation, you get to piggyback on the data already entered by other organizations in your County Office of Education. (Often times, even though an employee is new to your district, they have worked in another district within the COE.) Second, even if you are a district-only implementation user, we have lots of helpful features.

Let’s start with the COE-wide user. You have the benefit of others already having entered credential and retirement information. So, when you create a new employee record for a teacher, if that teacher already has credentials in the system, Escape Online is going to “hook” into that and display those credentials automatically in the record you just created.

But that’s not all.

If the teacher has an employee record in another district, Escape Online is going to “hook” into that teacher’s retirement record and download a ton of fields for you, like (take a deep breath because this is quite the list!) first name, middle name, last name, address, home phone, cell phone, birth date, gender, emergency contact name, contact phone number, contact phone extension, contact relationship, emergency doctor, doctor phone number, doctor phone extension, and PERS member Id.

It is all based off the individual’s social security number.

Employee Defaults

Employee Defaults

When you enter the SSN for the first time, Escape Online searches the database to see if any Person (retirement) records have that SSN, and if there is one, Escape Online loads the info.

(BTW, you can tell this is the first time I entered the SSN because (1) you can see the whole thing, and (2) the header of the record doesn’t have a status or type or pay cycle or anything.)

Employee Requirements

Employee Requirements

But what about you district-only implementation users? Well, we have some helpful features for you too!

We know school business, so we know what information simply must be input.  We make those required fields.

Hiring new employees is always joyous. It’s great that Escape Online can help make the data entry pleasant too!

Friday Feature – Following the Blog

As of this week, every Friday Feature ever written is now on our blog. We took the time to put the “archive” Friday Features on the blog so you can search through all of the Friday Features in one fell swoop.
Now if you want to read the Friday Feature on Saving My Reports, written in August of 2009, you can!

Our blog is a great resource and we are always working (writing) hard to post more content that matters to you. We have more employees blogging too. You can get technical updates from John and Mike, and learn more about testing from Robin and Stephanie.

I am so excited about the growth and direction of our blog. I want everyone to benefit from it.  So, I am urging you to follow our blog.  It is really easy.

Follow the BlogAt the bottom of your browser should be a “follow” button. Click on it and enter your email address.

It is that simple.

Then, every time we post a blog — be it about a feature, a release, a training synopsis, a change to our installation process — you will be notified through email with a quick summary and a link if you want to read the entire article.

Sweet!

Friday Feature – An Abundance of Attachments

Almost every record in Escape Online now supports attachments. And, almost every type of file can be attached.  Here is a comprehensive list of the types of files you can attach to a record:

  • Adobe PDF

  • Microsoft Word (rtf, doc, docx)

  • Microsoft Excel (xls, csv, xlsx)

  • Report/Documents (eodf, rpt, xps)

  • Text files (txt)

  • Graphic files (jpg, gif, png, bmp)

  • Video files (swf, flv, mpeg, mpg, mpe)

  • Audio files (mp3, ra)

  • Emails (eml)

  • HTML files (htm, html, css)

  • Script/App files (xap, xbap, js, vbs)

  • XML files (xml, xaml)

  • Help files (chm)

Attachments

Now that’s an ABUNDANCE of file types.

But, that’s not all.

Attachments are smart, too.

Attachments can  be viewed by anyone (except for employee attachments, which have permissions), but only edited by the user  who attached them.  They can be deleted and updated. They can be generated automatically (like change notices for vendor requisitions or using the new Mass Attachment feature for employees).

Our customers love the ability to attach files. Every single one of our customers uses this feature, no exception!

And, just like the Superintendent at Placer COE, our customers keep giving us great ideas for how to improve them. So, we are currently looking into adding the ability to print and email attachments, and to provide a “quick-link-like” access for easy viewing from a list.

Now that’s an abundance of smart thinking.

Friday Features – The Beauty of Snapshots

July is a beautiful month. The sun is shining and life is green. And Escape Online snapshots keep our world shiny and green. In case you are new to Escape Online (welcome!), a snapshot is a “quick” report of an individual record (e.g., a vendor requisition) that is generated by clicking the Snapshot button or selecting a task within an activity. Snapshots are shown immediately, a great time saver. They can also be saved to your workstation as a PDF or emailed.

What makes them so beautiful is the depth of information you can get with a click of a button. Check it out.

Beauty of Snapshots

Here you have a list of requisitions that are awaiting your approval.

There’s some great information on the list but you want to know more, like who has already approved these requisitions and what accounts were used.

With a click of the Snapshot button, you get a choice of running a report for the whole list (All Requisitions) or just the one you have highlighted.

Snapshots can also be run from a task. For example, in the Year End Closing activity, if you run the Year End Processing Report snapshot from the Task menu, you get a big picture of all the items on your list, including account information for each requisition, invoice, etc.

Sounds great, but there’s more.

Snapshot – Year End Logic

Snapshots can be smart, too.

There is logic built into the Year End Processing Report snapshot. So, if you run the report and there is nothing on it — meaning you have completed your review of all finance documents — then the snapshot unlocks the the Close Fiscal Year task, letting you move forward in your year-end processing activity.

So, snapshots are quick and smart and green, giving you lots of information fast without wasting time or paper.

Now, that’s a beautiful thing!

Friday Feature – More on Crossing Fiscal Years

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a Friday Feature about how the journal entry list crosses fiscal years. Today, I wanted to take that a step further and talk about how Escape Online gives users the super-power ability to see across multiple fiscal years in almost all areas: searches, lists, and reports. In particular, I want to talk about the Journal Entry Detail (Ledger01) report.

This report is designed to print detailed information about journal entries. The account number, comment, line sequence number, debit and credit amounts print for all journal entries selected.

It includes totals for debits and credits for each journal entry and a grand total.

Here is a screen shot of the report parameters. Notice how I “cleared” the Fiscal Year field and entered a requisition number.

Obviously, I could have entered more requisition numbers or filtered by accounts or any one of the myriad of other options, but let’s just take a look at one requisition so we can see the incredible usefulness of the report.

And, this is the report that our criteria produces. (Click on the graphic to open a PDF and see the whole report.)

The report shows the journal entries for a requisition that was created for a summer school program. The first page shows the encumbrances and the “year end closing” journal entry that brings the requisition into the new fiscal year. The second page continues showing the year-end journal entries and, finally, the expense JE.

The ability to see across fiscal years is almost as cool as a time machine, allowing you to see the past, present and future all at once.

Now that’s an awesome super power!

Friday Feature – Rolling Forward Leave Balances

Today is the last working day of the fiscal year. For some employees, that means that if you didn’t use all of your leaves — vacation, sick leave, personal — it is too late, that time is gone.  For others, the unused time rolls forward to the next fiscal year. The roll forward leave balance process in Escape Online is very easy with tons and tons of automation. Check it out.

All you have to do is select the Roll Forward Leaves task in the Fiscal Year Status activity. Escape Online automatically creates an appropriate “balance forward” transaction for every employee.

Let’s take a look at the setup of two different LIVE Leave Balance Profiles to see how this works.

Roll Forward Leaves Max

Roll Forward Leaves Max

One Limit for All. In this case, the Limit Carryover flag is set to YES and the Carryover Max field is set to 50, limiting all employees with this balance to 50 hours for carrying over.

Roll Forward Leaves Ranges

Roll Forward Leaves Ranges

Limits Based on Years of Service. You can also create a matrix. As you see here, you can limit the number of hours carried over based on the number of years of granting.

  • Row 1. An employee working for the district for 0-4 years receives 8 hours every year, with the ability to carry over up to 2 years of granted leave (or 16 hours).

  • Row 2. An employee working for the district for 5-9 years receives 10 hours every year, with the ability to carry over up to 2 years of granted leave (or 20 hours).

Pretty tricky, huh?

Just imagine if you had to open every employee, calculate years of service, hours granted, and the carry-over limit and then make an adjustment.  That’s one crazy imagination!

That’s why Escape Online calculates everything for you.  With a click of the mouse, all of the calculations and balances and transactions are automatically posted for you!

NOTE: The Roll Forward Leaves task is time sensitive. You must do this AFTER June leaves have been entered and BEFORE July leaves have been loaded.

Friday Feature – Journal Entries Across Fiscal Years

I attend all of Terri’s Escape Online webinars. You might think that after 13 years at Escape (wow!) that perhaps I wouldn’t go, but I find there is always something to learn, if not two or more things.
So, it was no surprise to me that when I attended her Year End Webinar a couple of weeks ago, I learned how awesomely convenient it is to see multiple fiscal years on the journal entry list.

Journal Entry Fiscal Year Search

Journal Entry Fiscal Year Search

Check it out.

Let’s say that I want to see all of the journal entries associated with a single requisition across fiscal years.

Super easy!

1. Go to the Journal Entries activity.

2. Enter the Requisition Number.

3. Clear the Fiscal Year field. (Escape Online defaults it to the current fiscal year.)

4. GO!

And just like that, lickety-split, Escape Online gives you a list, where you can readily see the requisition was originated on 7/17/09 (highlighted) and carried forward in 2010, 2011, and 2012 (first three lines).

Of course, the list also shows all of the encumbrances and expenses, too!

Journal Entry Fiscal Year List

Journal Entry Fiscal Year List

Friday Feature – Favorites 1-2-3

Ok. Ok. I know I have already written four Friday Features about favorites: Search Favorites, Default Favorites, Employee Favorites, and Updating Favorites. But, just like my children, I find new ways to love them each and every day. And, today’s new way to love favorites is to reorder them.

So, as you know, you get 20 favorites for each search and each report. If you are like me, you take advantage of this and have numerous favorites for every activity and report.

With so many favorites, there are bound to be some that get used more often than others. And, there are some that are bound to get used more often at different times. Like right now is year end. I bet you have search and report favorites for year end. I know I do, several of them.

So I move them up the list so that they are at the top of my menu, as my 1-2-3 favorites.

Renumber Favorites 1

Renumber Favorites 1

We are all familiar with this screen, but let’s have a quick review. Each favorite is associated with a number that defines where it is on the menu.

What you may not be familiar with is the arrows (circled in red) that allow me to reorder my list.

Now I always want My Purchase Orders to be #1 on my menu, but I am constantly moving different favorites to the #2 spot. Really, whatever is my fancy at that time of year.

Renumber Favorites 2

Renumber Favorites 2

All I have to do is highlight my favorite and click the arrows to move it up and down the list. Like so. I really like this a lot. It keeps what is important to me at the top of the menu.

Others may memorize all the numbers and never want to change because they use quick starts. (You number-people know who you are!)

For those of us that are not as number-oriented and prefer to use menus, the ability to move search favorites up/down is definitely a feature to love.

Friday Feature – Only Uncompleted Flag

I am a big fan of “working lists.” At the end of every work day, I make a list of tasks I have completed and list of tasks for the next day. My whiteboard has a list of tasks for the month.
This deep-rooted need for working lists is why I love the “Only Uncompleted” flag in the Vendor Requisition search.

Vendor Requisition Search - Only Uncompleted Flag

Vendor Requisition Search – Only Uncompleted Flag

The Only Uncompleted flag allows you to focus your list on only those vendor requisitions that have not been cancelled or completed.

In other words, requisitions in the Open, Submitted, Approved, Denied, Printed, Ready for Payment, and Check Pending statuses.

As you can see, it is as simple as setting a flag to YES. What a fabulous feature for Year End or any time.

For Year End, this flag allows you to work your requisition list BEFORE using the Year End Closing activity, letting you get ahead of the game.

For any time, you can use this flag in conjunction with the Requisitioner field (requisitions created by you that are not yet done) or the Buyer field (requisitions assigned to you that you are still working) or any of the other three dozen-plus fields on the Vendor Requisition search.

Now that’s a list worth making, and a list worth working!

Friday Feature – Prepay Employee Payments

Last Friday, we talked about prepaying requisitions associated with a vendor requisition. Now, let’s talk about the other side, prepaying for items that are not associated with a vendor requisition, or as we like to call it — a direct payment or an employee payment.

These prepay payments have the same types of rules as the prepay vendor requisitions: accounts have to be rolled forward and multiyear processing has to be turned on.

The processing of these payments is also super easy, just like the vendor requisitions.

For example, let’s say Celeste Michaels, an employee, has a conference she’s attending in July but needs to have her per diem before she leaves. This is what we would do:

Prepay Employee

Prepay Employee

Notice how the fiscal year and the invoice date are not the same. This is the essence of a multiyear payment.

Escape Online will automatically create the liability and expense journal entries for each year when the payment is processed.

The ability to achieve this most awesome feature is controlled in the Organization record. The system manager can decide when the prepayment extravaganza begins.

Multiyear Setup

Multiyear Setup

Some organizations do not enter any dates in these fields; thus disallowing multiyear processing for employee payments. Others enter May 25 or June 25.

Escape Online provides separate dates for employee payments and direct payments, and for each department’s vendor requisitions (e.g., purchasing and the business department both set up multiyear processing, but each wants a different start and end date).

That’s the kind of flexibility you need for year end!

Friday Feature – Closing Cash

There is no denying it: cash is king. Really, at any time, but especially at year end. When it is time to stop spending cash, cash must be closed (by order of the king or COE or district). Escape Online gives you an easy-to-use tool to enter cash-close dates and a cascading hierarchy for COEs and districts to work in tandem.
We actually give you two activities to control the dates: the Fiscal Year Status (System) activity for COEs and the Fiscal Year Status activity for districts. Of course, the system activity takes precedence. But they both work on the same premise.

The dates entered control when each accounting period stops allowing changes to cash (no journal entries – manual or system – can post to cash), and when the period is completely closed (no transactions can be posted).

Fiscal Close Dates

Fiscal Close Dates

Check it out!

See how you can enter separate dates for cash and close. I took a peek at how our customers are using this and there is a wide variety of philosophies.

Some COEs enter the dates in their activity and then their organizations enter even more restrictive dates. Other COEs don’t enter any dates, giving their organizations complete control.

One of our stand-alone districts only has close dates for interim reporting. Another stand-alone district only has close dates for the end of the year.

As always, Escape Online provides tons of flexibility!

Let’s take a closer look at the live sample shown here, particularly the June dates, marked with the red arrow.  Notice how the dates are different. Let’s talk about what that means.

The June Close Cash date is 7/31. If a user tries to post a journal entry (manually or through a system process) that affects June cash after July 31, Escape Online is NOT going to post that journal entry. Instead, it is going to give the user an error message, put the journal entry on hold, and write a history record to the journal entry stating why the JE did not post.

The June Close date is 9/30. This works the same as the close cash date, except it goes past worrying about affecting cash. It simply won’t allow any journal entry transactions to post for June after September 30.

Now that kind of control is worth a kingly sum.