Day 7: Schools Closed for the Remainder of the Year!!!!
Day 7: Schools Closed for the Remainder of the Year!!!!
WOW! Just heard that announcement. While this is something I pretty much predicted and thought likely even from the time we first closed, the reality of it is sobering. I haven't had any time to process this at all, except harkening back to my earlier recognition that this has already been an unexpectedly early start to my retirement from Compass.
The list of implications of this closing of schools are more than I can (or care to) detail here. Obviously one area of regret is the impact on graduation and this celebration of student growth and accomplishment. There are countless other elements of our spring programming that will be sorely missed. As I often say about Compass, while our 12th graders may not always be the most hard working in the US the rest of the year, they probably do more in the last month of school that almost any other senior in other schools.
While entailing hard work, the end of year work for our 12th graders is the highest of "higher order" learning where they are asked to synthesize, analyze, and evaluation the totality of their learning experiences, both in and outside of school. The two major requirements are their senior project and their graduation portfolio roundtables. Hopefully, we can develop processes where these so valuable learning experiences can still be done in a more remote format.
I think the portfolio formats for all the grades can be adapted to on-line meeting formats. It won't have the same intimacy as in person roundtables, but we should be able to look at student work and do much of the meaningful dialoguing in an on-line meeting. We may even be able to include more participants in a roundtable if people mute themselves and the work is available electronically.
......After an interruption for dinner (I've been spending a good amount of time cooking, although the tortilla soup I made tonight is super easy) and a long walk right near sunset, it's now almost 10 pm and another day where I've made it to what I figure is time for mindless relaxing and not time for thoughtful blogging.
This was a wonderful day for being outside--skate skied at Trapp Family Lodge for a couple hours of very slow snow under very sunny skies, and then went to Stowe ski area to skin up in more sunshine that made me feel totally drained but every little turn in the trail made it seem like I'll just drag myself to the next rise, and I eventually made it to the top and skied down in pretty excellent spring snow.
All that time outside, plus the added bonus of finding flour and toilet paper at the store, and it feels like another successful enough day. Still not sure if I should be pleased enough with this relatively lax scheduling and doing what feels right at the time or if I should somehow be doing "more." As trite as I think the adage of becoming more of a "human being than a human doing," this being in the moment has been good enough for me when things were pretty uncertain. Now that in-person school is really off for the remainder of the year, it feels like somehow I should have more definite plans. Maybe after time to process this latest development, I will feel moved to something more deliberate, but maybe with all the continued uncertainty about almost everything else in our world, maybe not....
WOW! Just heard that announcement. While this is something I pretty much predicted and thought likely even from the time we first closed, the reality of it is sobering. I haven't had any time to process this at all, except harkening back to my earlier recognition that this has already been an unexpectedly early start to my retirement from Compass.
The list of implications of this closing of schools are more than I can (or care to) detail here. Obviously one area of regret is the impact on graduation and this celebration of student growth and accomplishment. There are countless other elements of our spring programming that will be sorely missed. As I often say about Compass, while our 12th graders may not always be the most hard working in the US the rest of the year, they probably do more in the last month of school that almost any other senior in other schools.
While entailing hard work, the end of year work for our 12th graders is the highest of "higher order" learning where they are asked to synthesize, analyze, and evaluation the totality of their learning experiences, both in and outside of school. The two major requirements are their senior project and their graduation portfolio roundtables. Hopefully, we can develop processes where these so valuable learning experiences can still be done in a more remote format.
I think the portfolio formats for all the grades can be adapted to on-line meeting formats. It won't have the same intimacy as in person roundtables, but we should be able to look at student work and do much of the meaningful dialoguing in an on-line meeting. We may even be able to include more participants in a roundtable if people mute themselves and the work is available electronically.
......After an interruption for dinner (I've been spending a good amount of time cooking, although the tortilla soup I made tonight is super easy) and a long walk right near sunset, it's now almost 10 pm and another day where I've made it to what I figure is time for mindless relaxing and not time for thoughtful blogging.
This was a wonderful day for being outside--skate skied at Trapp Family Lodge for a couple hours of very slow snow under very sunny skies, and then went to Stowe ski area to skin up in more sunshine that made me feel totally drained but every little turn in the trail made it seem like I'll just drag myself to the next rise, and I eventually made it to the top and skied down in pretty excellent spring snow.
All that time outside, plus the added bonus of finding flour and toilet paper at the store, and it feels like another successful enough day. Still not sure if I should be pleased enough with this relatively lax scheduling and doing what feels right at the time or if I should somehow be doing "more." As trite as I think the adage of becoming more of a "human being than a human doing," this being in the moment has been good enough for me when things were pretty uncertain. Now that in-person school is really off for the remainder of the year, it feels like somehow I should have more definite plans. Maybe after time to process this latest development, I will feel moved to something more deliberate, but maybe with all the continued uncertainty about almost everything else in our world, maybe not....
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