MAY 2020 PODCAST – This podcast features educators from Durfee High School in Fall River, Mindess Elementary School in Ashland, and Newton South High School discussing how the shift to remote learning due to the Covid-19 shutdown has impacted daily schedules, allowed some students to thrive, thrown other students off stride, and may create a “new normal” for education in the future.
by Greg Cunningham, Remote Learning Specialist
According to Merriam-Webster, some of the most popular words of 2019 were crawdad (aquatic animal that looks like a small lobster and lives in rivers and streams), snitty (disagreeably ill-tempered), and tergiversation (evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement).
I’m betting the most popular word of 2020 will be mute, as in “WE CAN’T HEAR YOU–YOU’RE ON MUTE!” Or “CAN YOU MUTE SO THE REST OF US DON’T HAVE TO LISTEN TO YOUR YAPPY DOG DURING THIS MEETING?” I use the word at least five times a day.
by JFYNet’s Blended Learning Specialists: Eileen Wedegartner, Greg Cunningham and Cathie Maglio
In a COVID-19 update April 2 Governor Baker apologized for not being able to name a specific date when something had happened. “I feel like March 6 to today has been one long day,” he mused. “I can’t keep track of it anymore.”
I knew what he meant. These last few weeks have been a whirlwind when life as we knew it drastically changed. Seemingly overnight, the streets in Boston fell silent and New York, the city that never sleeps, fell into a coma. Baker ordered all schools closed for three weeks and then extended it even longer, to May 4. District leaders, school administrators, teachers, parents and even students are mobilizing to try out learning in different ways. As I watch my own children navigate classroom meet-ups on Zoom and Google Hangouts, I am thankful for the efforts teachers are making to fill the void we in the community feel without school.
First and foremost, we hope all our friends and colleagues are managing to weather these extraordinary circumstances with patience, fortitude and a dash of humor.
Here at JFY, we are working hard during this period of shutdown and social distancing to guide and support our partner schools and their students in making the transition to remote learning.
JFYNetWorks has been providing online academic support to schools since 2000, but we can’t think of a time when our online curricula and teacher support were more vital. It’s almost as if the past twenty years were preparation for this rocket launch from classroom to cloud.
