Ok, hello guys. Going with a bit more of an informal tone with this post. Going to attempt to answer some of the questions that have been posed by both the Social Studies 10 class and both of the Law 12 classes. Many of you have similar questions and it is easier to just post information here for you to read.
First of all I want to send a big thank you to all of you that responded to the survey, whether you are in Canada, Taiwan or Thailand – it is greatly appreciated. If you know people in the class who have not responded and could let them know that would be great. The more responses the better I can gauge what types of work we can realistically do and if anyone needs extra supports. The link to the survey is in an earlier post.
I am glad that most of you had a restful break, even if it is snowing at your house and your parents made you do extra chores. I, like many of you would like to be back at the school with all of you and honestly being at home sucks. Personally I miss the routine, I miss being around the other teachers in the school (yes, we really do all get along well) and most of all I miss seeing each and every one of you – hearing about your interests, your stories or just about how I give you too much work in Law class.
That is probably the most difficult part of this whole time is the inability to connect, honestly the technology is great but it doesn’t beat having face to face conversations…perhaps there is a lesson there for when all of this is over.
Anyways, now to the questions. The overriding question and source of anxiety has ultimately been about your grades. I want to assuage any anxiety that you may have around this by stating that the grade that you had when you finished prior to Spring Break is generally the grade you are going to start with. Your final grade will be based on the marks you accumulated before Spring Break and those collected for the remainder of the course. I hope you will see this as an opportunity to get engaged with our new plan and work to improve your current standing in the course. Hopefully it will reduce your stress to know that the Minister of Education announced that no student that was in a passing position prior to the events causing the suspension of in-class instruction will not proceed to the next grade. So while your grade may go up or down, you will pass the course if you are passing now. If you are not passing, then you have plenty of time to improve your grade and do well in the course!
There will be an April report card, but we have had to delay the process a but while we get this new learning plan going. So please be patient. More details should come on this in the next couple of weeks. There will be also be the usual reporting period in June as scheduled. Additionally if you would like to know your standing in the course send me an email and I will be happy to inform you.
Some of you have asked about how this whole online learning thing is going to look and, in some cases that is causing a bit of anxiety. It is natural to have anxiety when things change the way they are at the moment but rest assured that I will not be asking you to do anything too complex at first (nothing you don’t generally already know how to do) and I and the other members of the Heritage Woods Staff will be here to assist you.
Some of you have indicated that you would prefer to have independent work with check-in times and others have indicated regular meeting times would be preferable. I will look at doing both as much as I can. I will probably not do a stand and deliver model with me speaking through the screen to the class but I will have meetings two times a week at a regularly scheduled time where we can pop in and have discussions about what we are doing and additionally I will be available for periods of time during the day. I will let you know exactly when the times are as I and the other teachers are working out what this will look like so that there are no conflicts with other classes. I will also record the chat’s on Teams so that if you can’t make it at that time you can always go back in and watch. And if we are chatting and you hear screaming voices in the back, don’t worry. That will probably just be my kids running around the house, most likely my son asking me to battle with him, watch Star Wars with him, or read to him.
With the move to online learning a lot of what we would have done in class will look differently if we can do any of it at all. This also means that the way in which you learn will also look different. I am looking at doing more project based learning – individually or in groups – with some other individual projects as well as some online based discussions. This means that you will probably be doing assignments that will take you roughly three hours a week. In some cases it may be a little bit more, in others a little bit less.
Some good news and bad news surrounding this. First, the bad news – you almost always ask me to tell you the bad news first and that is that, for the Law students, we will probably not be able to run the mock trials or CSI projects the way they were originally set out. We are looking at options.
Now for the good news…I’ll be brief. No tests. Most of your work will be based on your use of the core competencies such as communication, critical thinking etc. and assignments will be based around this. But really, how can I give you an online test without you opening up another browser or hacking the program….you know who you are. 😊
For the Social Studies 10 students you will need your textbook. For the Law students we will use some parts of the textbook but for those pages I will scan them for you and put them on the website and/or on Microsoft Teams. It is important that you, (in Social Studies and Law) become familiar with this as this is what SD43 has asked us to use to communicate with students etc. For the Social Studies 10 students you should also become familiar with your blog (Kodiaks.sd43.bc.ca – school email and password to login) as you can submit assignments there and receive feedback.
There was the question regarding Zoom on the survey and for the Law students Tyldesley and I are still looking to try to have the guest speakers we had lined up speak to you on various topics. This is still in the works though as we can’t use Zoom in its current form due to privacy concerns.
Ok, and that is it for now. I’ll be checking up on Forms for new questions and adding more to this post if needed. But for now…
