April 24th, 2020

As we near the end of April, we want to say thank you to our students and their families for helping to make our distance learning efforts so far a success. We know this looks, feels, and sounds very different from what you are used to and that questions remain. Thank you for your patience and we all appreciate the feedback you’ve sent along and will use it to make the process a better one.

We know it isn’t ideal to have our students out of their classrooms and away from their friends and school staff. Distance learning can’t replace the classroom and so we will set expectations accordingly. We all need to keep in mind the challenges distance learning presents. Your child matters to us and their learning and well-being is a job we take very seriously. We want to provide as much help and support as we can during these times.

We felt it was important to provide some specific information, organized by grade, to our students and families. Please find these messages below:

We know that some students and families have had questions about live video and audio conferencing. We have conducted a very careful review and have decided that individual educators will use their professional judgement to choose which platform(s) to use and how best to engage students and families – including video learning tools. Any decision needs to be made with the safety, privacy and security of students and staff in mind. Our priority continues to be making sure that all students can access the learning opportunities being provided.

Goals for Next Week (April 27 to May 1)

We will continue to:

  1. Provide students with learning opportunities/activities and provide feedback
  2. Ensure ongoing communication with every student (contacted at least once during the week via phone, email, Google Classroom or VLE/D2L) to see how they are doing, to get feedback and understand some of your concerns.
  3. Beginning next week, teachers will be reaching out to you to provide you with an update on how your child has been progressing.
  4. Determine and address any access issues or technology challenges you may be experiencing.

We would like to remind you of the WRDSB@Home site. It is updated with new resources regularly to support you as we all engage in distance learning.

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We know many of you are feeling increased anxiety and stress as we navigate these uncertain times but please don’t let any of this work become a burden for you or your child. We have listed some resources to support mental health for children and adults and hope you will reach out to your child’s teacher or other school staff who will be able to support you during this difficult time.

We are keeping an eye on when the classes might return and will communicate this as soon as we hear.

Thanks for continuing to work with us and we will provide our next update in a week’s time.

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