On Friday, March 13, 2020, our school was abruptly closed, as were all other schools in the states of West Virginia and Ohio. Thankfully, we had just returned from Spring Break, and before that the NAISAC in Philadelphia, so we had been discussing the ramifications of COVID-19 for weeks leading up to the closure. Upon learning of the statement from our governor, our head of school, Liz Hofreuter, ushered our entire student body to the amphitheater for the announcement. It was a masterclass in delivering difficult, scary news to children (and adults). Immediately following the announcement, a full faculty was called and an initial schedule was developed. While we had a moderate plan to follow, there were many questions to be answered. So the following Monday and Tuesday, school was closed while we finalized our shift to remote learning. During that time, two new websites were introduced to our school community.
First, an Information Page devoted to our response to the crisis was created. Each of our correspondence was logged, as were affected events, school actions, and CDC guidelines. Since then, we have also linked to our remote learning page.
Our Remote Learning page is everything a student (and parent) would need to attend class in our remote setting. Each class was posted, as were schedule guidelines and a student code of conduct. Since first launch, this page has gone through extensive upgrades, including class subpages and updated acceptable use policies. The plan is to continue updating this page (and our curriculum overall) in a spiraled approach, learning from our mistakes and trying new things, just as we would in a traditional school setting.
As for curriculum, Zoom has become our primary connection tool. In a time when emails are overwhelming, the more personal interactions we can have the better. We also use G-Suite, Google Classroom (3rd-7th), Weebly (PreK-2nd), YouTube and a group of other resources like IXL, Padlet, VoiceThread, and Khan Academy.