April 9th Letter to Parents
April 9th
Dear Parents / Guardians,
We hope you and your family are doing well. With two full weeks under our belts, we are hopeful that many of the minor glitches of our learning delivery are worked out. Most importantly, we continue to look at ways to connect with students in meaningful ways. As our own realities at home and at work continue to change for all of us, our goal is for students to continue to learn, engage and connect and receive feedback on their learning from their teachers. We also want students and families who need support to be connected with us and we want to be supportive of the type of learning experience that best fits for the different needs of families. Simply put, if anything from the school end is causing undue stress on your end, we need to know. The most important thing for all of us is that we remain healthy, connected and happy and no assignment is larger than that. Please continue to reach out to teachers and administrators with feedback.
As you aware, Zoom is a platform that was introduced in many educational, business and personal settings to connect with students. As many of you are also aware, Zoom has also been recently discovered to have potential malware and privacy issues. As a result, the Division will not be supporting it on our networks and we will be utilizing Microsoft teams for video conferencing, instructions and connecting. Students are already using this platform to access learning material and we will share tips and instructions for these other features after the break.
All staff and students will be on spring break from April 10-19 so teachers will not be online during this time. Learning materials can still be submitted during the break if that works for your family. Teachers will send out the next learning activities on Monday April 20th but will not have office hours for student chats and conferencing that day as it remains a Professional Learning Day for staff.
After Easter, we will be conveying more information about fall registration for both Gilbert Paterson and the high schools. LCI will be registering at the beginning of May online. The middle schools are also solidifying an online registration and option selection procedure and want to make sure it is effective and reliable before roll out. This will mean registration may not take place until after May 4th. We will continue to send home information in the coming weeks. We also will have more information about school activities and theme days through our online learning to bring a little pep and spirit to both students and staff this spring. Please also remind students that if they have any pictures for the yearbook, they can use the information on the attached flyer (Click Here) to upload them by April 20th.
Lastly, I wish you and your families peace, health and joy for the Easter break. I hope you are able to connect with friends and families in different ways.
Take care,
Darryl Christiansen - Principal