Day One - Welcome Aboard!
March 24, 2020
Welcome aboard. I’m Aunt Escolástica, Google guardian of three lovely boys: Gabriel (aged 17) in Year 12; Florentino (15) in Year 10, and; Juvenal (13) in Year 8. Let’s begin.
Our first ‘campus free’ day. We chose to take our own advice and started slow and simple. Understanding that off campus learning will ramp up in the days and weeks ahead.
Following a leisurely breakfast, the school day started with a meeting at 10am.
At that meeting we decided:
1. To meet each day at 10am and discuss how things are going.
2. To limit today’s school day activities to schoolwork set before the campus free period began, and to monitoring communication from school
As the boys worked the day away in their rooms (or so I chose to believe), we received a few messages from school, via email, Google Classroom and ManageBac.
One asked me to ensure I have ‘guardian’ access to the Google Classroom accounts of the two high schoolers. I had access to one, not the other. Email to child’s school year coordinator garnered a response in less than 30 minutes.
With no physical students to deal with, no face to face meetings to attend, teachers have been quick to respond to online queries. But even without enraptured faces gazing back at them, teachers are dealing with a lot right now. They’ve been great.
By the end of the day, I should have had access to the second child’s account, but the invite email didn’t arrive. I filed this under ‘start slow’ and resolved to worry about it later. Later I read that Google Classroom had ‘crashed’ (something I’m sure Google would be quick to refute), so maybe that’s why the invite didn’t arrive.
Another email from school concerned itself very seriously with the need for children to undertake physical activity. The email was multi-coloured,striped, matrixed, more complicated than a politically tinged sports club pork-barrelling funding spreadsheet. With lots of text in bold. Confronting. But the point was clear: children need physical activity to stay healthy. I got the overarching message, if not the detail, and kicked the kids out of the house for some exercise.
Two chose to climb Red Hill. The third went to tennis, on for who knows how much longer.
I will pull up there for today (slow and simple start) even though there’s (always) so much more to talk about: the fridge list, the French (pity les pauvres Francais), the grandparents, communications from the authorities, the best resources, what’s going to happen to Year 12. So much more.
Tomorrow, one of the kids has a ‘summative’. A first in the new era. Look forward to your company then.
Aunt Escolástica
Welcome aboard. I’m Aunt Escolástica, Google guardian of three lovely boys: Gabriel (aged 17) in Year 12; Florentino (15) in Year 10, and; Juvenal (13) in Year 8. Let’s begin.
Our first ‘campus free’ day. We chose to take our own advice and started slow and simple. Understanding that off campus learning will ramp up in the days and weeks ahead.
Following a leisurely breakfast, the school day started with a meeting at 10am.
At that meeting we decided:
1. To meet each day at 10am and discuss how things are going.
2. To limit today’s school day activities to schoolwork set before the campus free period began, and to monitoring communication from school
As the boys worked the day away in their rooms (or so I chose to believe), we received a few messages from school, via email, Google Classroom and ManageBac.
One asked me to ensure I have ‘guardian’ access to the Google Classroom accounts of the two high schoolers. I had access to one, not the other. Email to child’s school year coordinator garnered a response in less than 30 minutes.
With no physical students to deal with, no face to face meetings to attend, teachers have been quick to respond to online queries. But even without enraptured faces gazing back at them, teachers are dealing with a lot right now. They’ve been great.
By the end of the day, I should have had access to the second child’s account, but the invite email didn’t arrive. I filed this under ‘start slow’ and resolved to worry about it later. Later I read that Google Classroom had ‘crashed’ (something I’m sure Google would be quick to refute), so maybe that’s why the invite didn’t arrive.
Another email from school concerned itself very seriously with the need for children to undertake physical activity. The email was multi-coloured,
Two chose to climb Red Hill. The third went to tennis, on for who knows how much longer.
I will pull up there for today (slow and simple start) even though there’s (always) so much more to talk about: the fridge list, the French (pity les pauvres Francais), the grandparents, communications from the authorities, the best resources, what’s going to happen to Year 12. So much more.
Tomorrow, one of the kids has a ‘summative’. A first in the new era. Look forward to your company then.
Aunt Escolástica
Love it Ric. How do I follow all your posts? There are so many things I don't know about blogs so forgive this elementary question.
ReplyDeleteI was also intrigued by the fact that the only specific info provided to parents from the school for yr 10 was from the PE department!
ReplyDeleteExcellent, Ric, keep it coming!
ReplyDelete