Photo courtesy of Bob Schneider

By Scott Roblin

Teaching From Home

Local teachers given option to work from home, province releases education guidelines

Mar 20, 2020 | 7:44 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – Teachers in a pair of local school divisions are being given the option to work from home as the first week of no classes winds up in Medicine Hat.

Earlier this week, the Alberta government announced that all schools in the province would be closing and learning would shift from the classroom to online.

That sent school divisions in the area scrambling, with most teachers electing to still work in their classrooms and lead online lessons there.

However, both the Medicine Hat Public School Division and Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education will be allowing teachers the choice of where they would like to instruct from.

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MHCBE began allowing teachers the opportunity to work from home on Friday and will be following the province’s recommendations in hat aspect.

As for MHPSD, they will be taking a similar approach beginning next week.

“Beginning Monday our instructional staff with have the opportunity to elect to work from home if they like,” said superintendent Mark Davidson. “That doesn’t mean they’re not permitted to come to school to gather resources or work at the school if that’s what they choose.”

According to Davidson, they’ve already permitted over 120 teachers in the division to work from home. Most of those were cases of instructors needing to self-isolate or those living with those with compromised immune systems.

Teachers are also being asked to prepare for worst case scenarios with COVID-19, including the possibility of a shelter in place ban as many countries around the world have enacted.

“We’re strongly advising them to take all of the resources they think they might need in order to program for their students home with them in case we get an order where you’re just supposed to shelter in place,” said Davidson.

Prairie Rose School Division has not yet presented the option of working from home to all its instructors, however have approved some teachers to follow that route.

“Anyone who is feeling ill of course is asked to comply with any guidelines that have been set forth by our chief medical officer,” said assistant superintendent Reagan Weeks. “We also have had some teachers who have sought out the opportunity to work from home for a variety of different reasons. We will continue to monitor the situation and collaborate with Alberta Education.”

New learning tools

The switch to online learning has been a massive undertaking for the three local divisions, having to revamp their entire teaching methodology.

Luckily, the transition has been helped by a number of video conferencing platforms available to connect students with their teachers.

“We have many teachers that are using Google Classroom along with other types of tools like Screencastify or you can launch YouTube Live to help support student learning,” said Weeks.

Just as the students have been learning the material, teachers and support staff have been learning to utilize new tools for off-site learning.

That includes staff at Bow Island Elementary School and Senator Gershaw School in Bow Island, who have been using the Google suite package to relay information to students.

Scott Angle, principal at both schools, said this technology will make life easier for the teachers and students, as well as the parents who might feel the extra burden these days.

“I think parents are feeling some anxiety with what’s going on with the students being at home,” said Angle. “One thing we’ve been saying is it’s family time first at home and we’ll work through it. Our staff has been still available to make sure we’re helping out at home, we’re just learning new modes of doing that.”

Still the shift to increase online education has posed challenges for Prairie Rose, as they cover one of the largest rural areas in southern Alberta.

“We serve a very large, rural geographical area and we do have some internet dead zones,” said Weeks. “In those areas we have worked with Southland Transportation and we’ll have a system where we’re able to deliver packages to families who aren’t able to access the internet.”

MHPSD has been loaning out the division’s Chromebooks to students at no cost as a way to keep up to date on their school work, but like Prairie Rose have students who can’t access high-speed internet.

Davidson said they’re working on a plan to solve that issue for families affected.

“We’re working right now with TELUS to figure out how to get high-speed internet to every family that has indicated to us that they don’t have it,” he said. “They’ve been really great in connecting with our director of technology to figure out how that might happen.”

Provincial guidelines released

On Friday, the provincial government also rolled out its list of guidelines for students and divisions regarding the new education format.

Diploma exams officially were given the axe this year, as Grade 12 students in Alberta will no longer have to write the year-end exams to move in line with cancelled Provincial Achievement Tests at the Grade 3, 6, and 9 levels.

High school students on track to graduate with 100 credits will still be eligible to receive their diploma, while principals have the ability to award up to 15 credits to Grade 12 students whose program has been ‘negatively impacted by class cancellations.’

Students of all grades will still be receiving final marks in their respective classes and will also be receiving report cards.

Recommended hours of school work at home were also listed by the province with students between Kindergarten and Grade 6 advised to complete five hours of work per week.

Junior high students will see that number bumped up to 10 hours of school work per week, while high school learners will be expected to complete an average of three hours of work per course per week.

More information on the Alberta government’s student learning guidelines can be found on the province’s website.