Head of School Community Email: Checking In after Day 2
March 21, 2020
March 19, 2020
Dear TA Parents & Guardians,
How are you holding up with the new reality of remote learning and your children being at home all day? We are all trying to figure this out – families, students, teachers, the community. Thank you for doing your best and please let us know how we can better support you.
1. I sent a short survey to students yesterday evening asking them to rate their first day of remote learning on a scale of 1-5, ranging from ‘pretty much a disaster’ to ‘really well’. Fortunately, fewer than 5% of respondents rated the day with a 1 and 47% of respondents gave the day a 4 or 5. A solid 30% were neutral, rating the day a 3; and 17% gave a somewhat negative rating of a 2. To see a bar graph presentation of the responses to this question and a list of the open-ended questions asked, check out these slides.
Ask the young people in your household what rating they gave day 1, and check in as the days go by. My guess is that we will all feel a pendulum swing at times: some hours or days might feel like on the edge of disaster and hopefully others will go super smoothly.
2. Tomorrow 3/20 is an inservice day for teachers. What does this mean during remote learning – is there school or no school?
- Teachers will be meeting with one another and working on their own professional development tomorrow. Therefore, they are not expected to post new work to their Google Classroom tomorrow morning and will not be available for instructing during the day.
- Families can decide how to structure student time tomorrow during the day. Most classes have multi-day assignments posted and tomorrow could be a good day for students to make progress on their class work and continue to develop the routines they just started to put in place on Wed and Thur this week.
3. We have developed TA’s Remote Learning Plan – and a shorter How-To Guide for Parents & Guardians derived from the longer plan. Please check out these resources on the new Remote TA page of our website: www.thetfordacademy.org/remote-ta. Read the daily announcements on this page for reminders and updates about school resources including daily lunches for all students, parking lot wifi, and library sign-up times.
Thank you for keeping up with all of the information we are sending your way and keep asking us the questions that are on your minds.
Carrie Brennan, Head of School