Health Notice - UPDATE 7/1/2020 | Kehillah Jewish High School

Health Notice – UPDATE 7/1/2020

Deena Riddle

On Wednesday, July 1, 2020, Daisy Pellant reached out with her first communication to our community. In case you missed it, we’ve included it below:

Dear Kehillah,

This is my first communication with you on my first official day as your new head of school. I bet none of us thought my first ask of our community would be to participate in a pandemic-related survey.

Every day I am reminded of the strange world we are living in and the importance, now more than ever, of working together for our community. I’d like to express my appreciation for the faculty and leadership team at Kehillah who welcomed me and allowed me to engage in early collaborative work through a most unusual transition period.

To our parent and student community, thank you for your active response to our surveys! We received more than 170 parent responses and heard from 60% of our students. We appreciate the thought and care that went into providing us with important feedback about this spring’s pivot to emergency distance education and your willingness to share your hopes and worries for our fall opening.

With the goal of making data-driven decisions, our two Reopening Task Forces daily review the latest information from government, health, and independent school organizations, and engage with experts in education, health, and safety. Your efforts on these surveys also help us continue to make informed decisions as we move forward.

The purpose of this communication is to share the results of our surveys and provide you with an update on our current thinking around reopening for the fall.

I’m reminded, however, of the quote attributed to both Mark Twain and Blaise Pascal, “I apologize for such a long letter – I didn’t have time to write a short one.” This will not be a short letter. Feel free to skim.

HOW DID KEHILLAH DO WITH THE PIVOT TO DISTANCE LEARNING?

Of those who responded, well over 95% of our parents and 75% of our students were either satisfied or very satisfied with the online experience.

84% of student respondents and 93% of parent respondents found online learning to be the right amount of challenge.

85% of parents felt very confident/confident of their child’s progress during online learning. Interestingly, student confidence was lower with 56% of students feeling very confident/confident about their progress.

49% of parents expressed concern about their child’s emotional well-being. Not surprisingly, students report less concern about themselves.

We were delighted to see that 85+% of respondents were very satisfied/satisfied with the amount and clarity of communication during this time. We recognize the importance of getting communication right and the challenge of doing so.

Almost everyone took the time to share details of this experience and we can’t thank you enough for the valuable narrative.

Some of what we heard:

“The move to the virtual world was incredibly seamless and fast. The schedule also became consistent and reliable which was needed during this uncertain time.”

“I think the teachers did a great job of creating a consistent, high quality learning environment.”

“My teachers continued to be extremely present. Made a rich and deep learning experience with conversation and continued to expect a lot from students.”

“Maintained a sense of community through engaging kids in virtual class sessions. Kept a business as usual approach, with very little disruption in class curriculum.”

“BRAVO!”

“Each teacher had their own unique strategies. All my teachers were incredible during this time.”

“They were always available and willing to meet with us outside of class for any questions we had.”

“First of all, teachers tried to maintain as much normalcy as possible which was appreciated and made it possible for us to still do activities we had been waiting for.”

CHALLENGES

We also heard some themes related to the challenges of learning online:

Too much time on screen for many kids –94% of our parents observed and 75% of our students reported spending between 7-12 hours daily in learning activities on the screen.

Being online missed many communication cues and this made learning much more difficult for some.

It was difficult to focus for long periods of time.

It was a social-emotional struggle being disconnected from friends. Losing the connection with peers affected the ability to learn cooperatively.

For 25% of our respondents, it was difficult to arrange 1:1 support outside of class time.

Some of what we heard about challenges:

“It was hard being in front of the screen all day for classes and then I also had to do homework on my laptop.”

“I think online learning was not that big of a deal to students that already have an established work ethic, but I imagine to those that aren’t as self motivated (understandably so), this shift kind of shook them up academically and personally. That said, I think teachers managed to be both understanding of the circumstances but not to a point where it sacrificed learning the content vital to a class.”

“I found it very challenging to stay motivated during this time. Also, I find it very hard to pay attention to a Zoom.”

“Not that difficult at first, but as time went on it was hard to stay engaged and connected for my child. My child really missed the in person contact with the school, students and teachers. I think that for my child staying on task was difficult at home and completing assignments was difficult as well.”

“A smile or hello from another student or teacher in the hallways and being surrounded by others that make me a better person every day was something that I missed shifting to online learning. Knowing that when I walked into Kehillah every day I was being welcomed by kind and caring people that gave me a sense of community is something that made my learning and day much better. Over zoom, I stared at my friends and teacher’s faces through a little box on my screen, making it much harder to get a sense of community. While we did have class check-in’s I still didn’t get the same feeling of community I did in the Kehillah building, making my learning much more difficult.”

SO, WHERE ARE WE WITH REGARD TO REOPENING PLANS?

As you read in our Principal Patti Carbery’s recent letter asking you to participate in the survey, we have two main task forces, one academic and one facilities/operations, focused on reopening with the physical, social-emotional, and academic wellbeing of our students as top priorities. These task forces have spent countless hours learning how to mitigate risk and provide the best and safest program for our students within a changeable landscape and for a community that has varied needs.

We are currently considering three broad possibilities for schooling next year (subject to change):

100% ONLINE — While we are preparing to be moved to an online program at some point or points during the year as a result of a confirmed case in our immediate community or a spike in local cases, we are not currently planning to begin school online.*

HYBRID — There are many hybrid models that we are exploring but we are confident that our hybrid could accomodate 50% of the students on campus while the other 50% are online.

100% ON CAMPUS — Another option we are exploring is finding the space and safety protocol to have all of our students on campus.

*ONLINE OPTION:

We will allow any family to remain 100% online OR choose to move their student online at any time for reasons of health and safety.

Mitigating risk involves all of us:

For any on-campus presence, we will combine building health protocol (cleaning, HVAC), capacity measures, physical distancing, handwashing, masks, self-screenings, and temperature checks to mitigate the risk to our students, faculty, and staff. We will have clear expectations for our students, parents, faculty, and staff with regard to following safety protocol.

Over the next two weeks, our Reopening Task Forces will continue to monitor developments that relate to education in the time of COVID-19 and will be constructing the specifics of our plan to reopen in the fall.

We will be working in collaboration with Kehillah’s Board of Directors and will share our plans with you, following the mid-July board meeting. We appreciate your patience and understanding.

In summary, our surveys showed us five things:

1. We were very successful in the pivot to an emergency online program.
2. There are ways to make the remote learning experience better as we consider our hybrid program and anticipate being moved online at some point this year.
3. Almost everyone wants to get as close to normal, in as safe a way as possible, yet we all understand there will be limitations.
4. Flexibility, patience, and resilience will be key assets to our community’s success next year.
5. We love our Kehillah!
  As I’ve shared with our faculty and staff, this will be in our rearview mirror at some point and we’ll look back on what we’ve endured with a healthy dose of incredulity. Sharon Salzberg, co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts reminds us that, “Resilience is based on compassion for ourselves as well as compassion for others.”

Let’s work together to maintain compassion for ourselves and for one another.

Warm regards,
Daisy

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