With our Term drawing rapidly to a close, I can’t help but reflect on the massive changes the last three weeks have brought. It has been a sudden switch from a term busy with school and sporting events to one conducted by a staff working on a flexible roster delivering remote learning to our students. I simply cannot congratulate our staff, students and families highly enough for the way they have worked to embrace this new model of learning.
Delivering teaching and learning remotely is certainly not without significant challenges. Our staff have been on an exceptionally steep learning curve as we look for ways to ensure our students are able to receive quality teaching, while we assess, monitor and differentiate learning. And we know that students and their parents have been on that learning curve right along beside us.
So to our families I would just like to say, thank you and congratulations!!
This is an incredibly difficult situation for us all; but I really feel that in many ways it is most difficult for our parents. I know that so many of you are at home with your children, following the advice of the health professionals to help 'flatten the curve'. Many of you are working from home in at least some capacity, trying to balance your own work demands, with doing house work (with extra rigorous cleaning); looking after preschoolers or teenagers; refereeing sibling warfare; cooking meals; and all while managing the rationing of toilet paper. The fact that you are doing all this AND supervising some remote learning is simply astounding. Whatever you are doing and however much you are managing, it is far and above anything that has ever been expected of parents. Our staff all want you to know that the work we are providing is to support your children and is not meant to be a burden for families that are already stressed. Being at home is not the same as being at school and we do not have an expectation that students will be engaged in intense learning sessions at home to the level they are when they are here. It is okay if you need to take a break, it is okay not to get everything done on a particular day. Be kind to yourself, if there ever was a time to put your family’s wellbeing first, this is it.
As we look towards continuing the current social distancing protocols beyond the Easter break and into Term 2, our staff are developing our remote learning, mindful of the needs of our families who are supervising their children’s learning.
To support our students and their parents, we are working to keep our delivery as simple and predictable as we can. We are introducing an Eleebana Public School Hub that will be our one stop directory to all our school’s remote learning resources. We will continue to use the Google Classroom platform and to incorporate recorded lessons and Zoom conferencing. Our single unit of teaching will continue, ensuring that all students, be that at home or at school will be doing the same classwork.
More information and resources will be sent out to support our learners early next term. Information will be available on Google Classroom and sent home via email (to the email address that this newsletter link was sent to -if you did not receive a newsletter email please contact our office).
Finally, I wish you all a happy school holiday break. Although it is likely to be a holiday like no other, I hope you can take the time to relax and enjoy the quieter and slower pace the 'lock down' brings us.
Stay safe and well
Lucinda Farrell
Principal
