Thursday, March 18, 2010

I'm all for parent-school communication, but this??

Because I defy you to read it through to the end of the e-mail text below without your eyes glazing over and forgetting what the message is supposed to be about, I’ll tell you before you start reading – it is all by way of telling us that the third snow day will not need to be made up after all.

A two sentence message would have found me (and certainly, the kids) content.

But, we aren’t paying the 20,000 Euro tuition per child from our pocket. Ex-pat parents aren’t . However, the school has increased the number of local Germans who attend the school and, perhaps if I was paying the tuition for a school that has a cumulative 2 months of vacations out of a 10-month school year, I might have a laser focus on the number of days actually spent in the classroom!

And, if all the vacation isn’t enough, the Seniors are done with classes at the end of April. They graduate in early June, three weeks before grades K – 11 are done with school. Wow! Gives new meaning to “senior skip day (s!)”

Here’s the e-mail below, cut and pasted exactly as received… it came with the title: “School Closure Make-Up Day Decision” Huh?

Dear Mr Geipel and Mrs Geipel,

The frequency and amount of snow this winter was off the charts. The conventional wisdom is that we experienced a once in 30-years weather pattern. We lost three days of instruction due to snow conditions.

Our school policy requires that if more than two days are missed that we use e-learning to make up time lost or hold an extra day of school. Board policy #1.402 states, “Where e-learning is not practical, instructional time lost as a result of emergency closure will be rescheduled at the earliest appropriate opportunity…” E-learning was made possible. Fully 90% of our upper school faculty and 30% of elementary and ISW faculty used our school’s Studywiz online learning platform during our last emergency closure. Some of our upper school students (89% used Studywiz on the snow day) report that too many activities were assigned – but with this being the early stages of our implementing an online learning platform, our teachers gave a very strong accounting of how Studywiz is an important tool. We did our best to impact learning. Our teachers have also observed that the emergency implementation of Studywiz was helpful and important as a follow-up to their training with the system.

The concept of considering a make-up day confirms the importance of what happens in the classroom. The practical side of determining WHEN the make-up day can be held within our already established academic calendar is another matter. There is no available day to schedule a make-up day between now and the end of our school year. We do have spring vacation and religious holidays ahead of us, yet so many families have long-standing plans. The religious holidays over long weekends in May and June were announced 18 months ago and the bus companies we use have scheduled other customers. We considered adding time to the school day but this compromises both the lives of our youngest learners and negatively impacts an already short season for our cocurricular season and REAL PROGRAM. We looked at shortening our parent-teacher conference schedule but to do so compromises the work of our teachers toward creating student-led sharing of classroom work and setting goals. As an aside, I am proud to point to the fact that we are teaching our younger learners to evaluate their academic performance and setting goals for continuous improvement. Our parent-student-teacher conference needs to be implemented in line with our new reporting system to you as a parent. Finding the opportunity for a make-up day has proved logistically impossible with the consequences of greater negative impact than the original problem.

The above paragraphs make it painfully clear that I spoke too soon about the make-up day. Our online learning day promoted a high percentage of participation, exactly as we had hoped. Teachers at all grade levels have adjusted their instructional planning to ensure full coverage of material within their curriculum, prior to the end of our school year. As always, our IB teachers will continue to work with our grade 11 and 12 students, both within and beyond classroom hours to make sure students have the support, knowledge and skills essential for success with their exams in May. (This includes after hours and weekend coaching sessions as students approach their IB exams).

We will not schedule a make-up day for this school year. Our students and teachers deserve credit for implementing and using our online learning tools. However, we will continue to refine our school’s use of e-learning tools to be even more prepared in case of an emergency closure.

I am the one who must take full responsibility for calling for a make-up day too quickly. With the above explanation, please accept my apology and my hope that we have another 30 years to wait for a winter like this one.

All Good Wishes.

Mark

No comments:

Post a Comment