Local school divisions in the planning stage to continue student learning following COVID-19 precautions

Teachers and school administrators are describing this as a fluid situation.

Today teachers and administration were working to figure out how they can continue learning for their students.

Superintendent of Prairie Rose School Division Roger Clarke assures parents that staff will be there to help students.

But what that will look like will be different for every household and grade level.

Clarke says teachers are preparing different media to help at home and there may be physical learning packages or online with the use of technology.

But teachers and administrators in local divisions and across the province are very much in a planning stage and will be in contact with parents and students to continue learning.

“Our teachers are preparing in each different location, each different school -some ways they can support learning at home. We know that’s going to be hard because not every parent is at home, maybe some children have parents at home and other children that don’t. Maybe we have high school kids that can organize themselves a bit better than maybe a grade one child could,” Clarke said.

Medicine Hat Public School Division Superintendent Mark Davidson says in terms of programming directly in our community, they have a team of teachers across the system to build a plan.

“And that programming will include opportunities for face to face work with teachers in a controlled setting. Meaning the number of students present and where they are so that we’ll still have an opportunity to see students face to face and provide them with some tutorial support and so on. We have teachers who are working from home of course,” Davidson said”

Davidson believes MHPSD should have something by Monday of next week in terms of a framework for families.

But he says plans may have to be revised along the way because the school system hasn’t provided blended learning programming to over 7-thousand students at once before.

Meantime, Medicine Hat College says their faculty also needs time to shift and that work is underway right now in post-secondary.

According to Medicine Hat College’s Executive Director Advancement & Community Relations Mark Keller, “It’s a challenging decision but I think everybody is welcoming decisions that are going to help protect the community. That’s something that we all must be engaged in. So it will take us a couple of days to make sure that we have everything done. Obviously, we don’t want to surrender quality points, we don’t want to be doing a poor job.”

The Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education admin team is also working with Alberta Education regarding steps moving forward. They will update staff and families when available.

According to the province, K-12 students will receive a final mark and students will progress to their next grade level next year.

Teachers and administrators are expected to continue to work, but encouraged to stay home if they are feeling unwell or if they have flu-like symptoms.

A letter to Medicine Hat Public School Division families from March 16, 2020, can be viewed by visiting this link.

by Chantal Wagner

Local school divisions in the planning stage to continue student learning following COVID-19 precautions

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