Technology has helped save the day for elementary teachers, students and parents in the South Montgomery School Corporation.
For the past six weeks all students in the state of Indiana have been forced into distance learning situations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but a decision to equip all students with a device has made the transition much smoother for elementary students at Ladoga, New Market and Walnut schools.
“All of our students in grades K-12 are equipped with Chromebooks, which has allowed our elementary students to have continual learning through Google Classroom and various educational apps,” Southmont superintendent Shawn Greiner said.
Kindergarten through second grade students have transitioned from iPads to Google Chromebooks, and New Market second grade teacher Susan McVay says it has been helpful because students had already been submitting assignments through Google Classroom even before schools changed to E-Learning full-time.
“It’s really helpful for us in first grade and second grade, because those kids have been doing it for the last couple of years,” she said. “Even at second grade where my kids are 7, 8, 9 years old, they pretty much know what they’re doing, certainly at this point in the year.”
Greiner said packets have been made available for students who don’t have adequate internet access, but overall the virtual learning capability has helped bridge the gap in more than just turning in work.
“For me it’s helpful with the technology, and I’m lucky that the vast majority of my students have that technology available to them,” McVay said. “For the most part I’m touching base with my kids and my parents regularly, which I think is a drawback to paper packets. Not that you can’t reach out to them, but you’re not seeing the work that they’re doing.”
McVay doesn’t use zoom to teach lessons, but does offer video chat sessions a couple times of week so her students can interact with her and each other.
“That’s the main reason I use it,” she said. “The first day I did it, they were so excited to see each other. I really use it more for the social and emotional part of it, just because these are young kids and all the sudden their day-to-day life, that routine is not there.”
In order to overcome a loss of connectivity between the students and staff, New Market has implemented a common teaching delivery method school-wide.
“For students and families we moved to a common e-learning template K-5, that has video announcements from myself and a morning message from their teacher,” New Market principal Brittany Cooper said. “Throughout the e-learning lesson plan template the students are able to click on video links of their teacher teaching lessons, as well as opportunities to meet virtually with their teacher and class.”
Cooper’s initial message to her teachers was simple, and with the kids’ best interest in mind.
“My message was simple,” she said. “Relationships before rigor, grace before grades, patience before programs and love before lessons. At the core of our mission is doing what is best for kids, and a large part of that is recognizing that we are teaching the whole child — academics, social-emotional, health and beyond. The teachers at New Market along with Southmont Schools have gone above and beyond to teach and support the whole child while providing a quality education.”
Cooper said to keep students engaged they have had a virtual spirit week, talent shows, show and tell and recently just started a wheel of winners.
McVay made ‘Mini Mrs. McVay’ cutouts and sent them to all of her students for a project. She said the response from that and overall communication has been tremendous.
“My parents overall have been very supportive of me and what I’ve tried to do in helping them,” she said. “They’ve just been very appreciative of me and very understanding, and I’ve had to do that in return. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be in a situation where you’ve got young kids, you’re working a full-time job, and now you’ve got to do this. It really puts things into perspective.”
McVay assigns work on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, that typically takes a student on average an hour to an hour and a half. Wednesday’s also have some required assignments and is used as a catchup day, while Friday’s tend to have a virtual field trip or an optional assignment.
Math and reading/writing have been the focus to try and keep the learning gaps at a minimum, but McVay has continued to teach some social studies lessons, and assign science experiments as optional assignments.
Teachers plan to get together this summer in order to get a better understanding of what learning gaps have occurred, and what subject matter will need to be covered more heavily in the fall.
While students at the middle and high school levels have been primarily responsible for the work they’ve done remotely, it’s no secret parents of younger students have been just as equally deserving of recognition.
“This can’t be successful if the parents aren’t involved now,” McVay said. “We’ve talked about that with this week being teacher appreciation week, we feel like we need to send the parents something. They’re dealing with the behaviors, and they’re dealing with the kids that maybe don’t want to do stuff.”
And Cooper said it’s been that way all along.
“Our parents have been amazing,” she said. “The partnership we have worked all year to create has been put into play as parents have worked to monitor and implement the lessons provided by our teachers. Parents have been quick to ask questions, offer suggestions and work with us as we work to navigate these unchartered waters.”
Cooper, McVay and staff across the school district have received the highest praise, as Southmont has truly made the best of a difficult situation.
“Many of our teachers and principals have gone above-and-beyond to make learning from home a fun experience for our younger students,” Greiner said. “In the same effort, they are supporting students by making weekly (or in some cases, daily) phone calls to check on e-learning assignments and the general well-being of the family. Southmont Schools has said since the beginning of this crisis that we would do everything we can to support our community, and our teachers have really embodied that.”
