By Pepper Parr
April 6th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
Students will not be on school buses for the next couple of months.
Classrooms won’t have students in them this morning – but there will be thousands of students sitting in front of computers communicating with teachers at the other end of an internet connection.
Every restaurant in town will be empty – except for those who have decided to offer a take-out service.
Just about all of them are not certain they will ever be able to open again.
The schools will, at some point, re-open.
The Gazette will report on the hospitality industry later in the week. The federal government loan program has been announced – it will take a few days for the hospitality people to get a clear sense as to what this will mean for them. A $40,000 loan doesn’t really go all that far.
Kerry Sagar didn’t know that she would be teaching from a computer screen several months ago.
This morning Kerry Sager will begin her classroom session with the iStem students at Aldershot high school. Sager
Julia Hunt Gibbons is a Superintendent with the Halton District School Board. When the schools were closed by the province her work load increased as she, along with all the other Superintendents who had to reflect, refine, and plan roll outs of continuity of learning/distance learning.
Superintendent Julie Hunt Gibbons will be doing a lot more explaining and advising for the next few months – by telephone and online.
Hunt Gibbons won’t be doing any direct teaching to students, although she does spend a lot of time “answering their questions on the Board FAQ.”
Her primary role is “more of a supporter of teachers, a writer — along with Secondary Program Department members offering lesson suggestions, assessment and evaluation, IT on-boarding, problem-solving and Ministry/board messaging.”
What Superintendents really have to do will become much clearer in the next few days as both parents and students adjust to how an education is going to be delivered.
One of the ironies with how students are going to be taught now (electronically) is that this was one of the issues teachers were fighting the Ministry of education over. Teachers wanted limits on just how much education would be delivered electronically – now that is all they a have to work with.
The biggest job now for everyone is facilitating the sharing that has to take place between teachers across the system, largely through Google Hangouts these days.
The Gazette has created a small team of parents who have children in elementary classes. They are as concerned as the teachers who have to make the best of what they have. We will report on what the parents have to say. You can follow their views and comments in the Coping series.
As for Kerry Sagar, she is organizing her day getting ready to teach.
Related news story
How parents are coping with having the kids at home.
