Our school did have the benefit of our regular spring break falling exactly on our first week of "Shelter in Place" (SIP), but I am impressed that the teachers and administration were not taking a break, and were instead coming up with a plan for distance learning. The school was deep cleaned, and many of the teachers came in, got their doc cams, laptops, and teaching materials from the school during break and set up home "classrooms". Other teachers come into the (mostly empty) school and teach from their classrooms, maintaining social distancing, which is pretty easy if most teachers are home and the classroom is only used by that one teacher!
Without missing a single day of school, we had one day of independent work posted online before live, distance learning started. On that day of independent work, the teachers attended training for distance learning.Both of my children (4th grade and 7th grade) have teachers who teach from home and I'm super impressed with how smoothly its going. There are only a few technical glitches (For example, on day 2, Gsuite was down, so no one could get on the Google Meet for the first 15 minutes), and the students are already getting new content and being graded on it, not just reviewing like a lot of schools are.
Monday through Friday, students log on to Google Meet with their classes for two one-hour sessions, with a 30 minute break between. This might not seem like a lot, but it has allowed them to stay on track for English Language Arts (ELA) and Math. From what I can see, the pacing is on schedule. I wish that they were still getting Social Studies and Science instruction, and would happily accept perhaps an additional 30 minutes each of Google Meet time to do so, but I understand that it's easier to catch up in those content areas in the fall with their teachers in the next grade.
On FaceBook, I see that teachers have a lot of challenges, but the beautiful thing about all of this is that they are rising to the occasion and still giving our children a world class education despite having small children of their own in their laps or playing and getting into things nearby! From what I can see, the students are also thriving in the online environment and it's a supportive and effective virtual space. In some ways, I think my kids actually prefer this format and its efficiency. As schools roll out their plans for distance learning (especially as the dates for return continue to get pushed back), it is apparent that not all children are in as good of a situation as mine and there is a lot of debate out there about how schools should handle this situation. I will be addressing some of these topics in future blog posts as things develop.
Now that the children have school, we have a little less time on our hands, but we still try to have a bit of a structure for time outside of school and homework hours to keep us from having lots of screen time or mindless time (it's good to have some, but not all day, every day!).
Here is what our first day of distance learning looked like:
