Our Teachers as Learners and Leaders
When we learned that we would be shifting to remote learning, it was amazing to see how our teachers rose to the challenge. As I walked through the halls of SJK the day after the announcement, I met many teachers with broad smiles on their faces. They spoke to me about their exciting plans to move our teaching and learning to our students’ homes.
I stopped to chat with Ms. Mouton, our Junior Kindergarten teacher and resident SeeSaw expert. Seesaw is a platform for student engagement that inspires our youngest students to share their learning at school and at home. Students use creative tools to take pictures, draw, record videos, complete assigned activities and more to capture their learning in a digital portfolio. Teachers find or create content to share with students and track progress. Ms. Mouton has been busy working over the March Break helping teachers plan engaging lessons for their students.
Several of our teachers, Ms. Hunter Stewart, Ms. Beltramo, Ms. Paleczny and Mr. Brooks signed up for a course with the eLearning Consortium Canada. The ELCC is a unique cooperative not-for-profit organization of member schools mandated to deliver quality online curriculum for the benefit of students in member Independent schools. The ELCC has partnered with our provincial association of independent schools, CISOntario, to offer a free course e-learning crash course for all teachers CISOntario schools. This week, five of our teachers have taken part in this course out of an initial cohort of 80. Three more cohorts of 100 teachers are signed up for the next few weeks including many SJK. I’ve been popping in and out of the course and it’s been great to see what everyone has been learning. I look forward to our teachers sharing their knowledge with others.
Our teachers are also learning how to use new tools. This week we have really ramped up the use of Google Hangouts Meet to connect to each other. We’ve had a virtual staff room where people could drop by to answer questions, many remote meetings and three of our teachers even used it to have a remote work out together. In the coming weeks, it will be very important for us to stay connected to each other. I’m so proud of our faculty and staff for being open to learning new ways to create community.
There is no question that we are entering a new phase in our development as a school. I am so proud of our teachers and how they are leading the way as learners and leaders.
St. John's Kilmarnock School
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