Hope to Home Learning – June 5, 2020

Hope to Home Learning: Day #I’ve-completely-lost-count by Kristen Okabayashi

We did it! This third trimester has been surreal, unique, unprecedented, insert whichever extreme adjective you want to use – this trimester has been TOUGH. I am incredibly proud of our students in particular, but also our teachers and parents for leading them in this academic journey. Overall, our students made good progress in their learning despite such huge changes to their structure and environments. If you are on Facebook, you must check out Sally Heit’s Facebook Live celebration dance from this morning to appreciate how all of us feel today!

I expect to hear more from the state regarding decisions on fall schooling on Monday, June 8. We will not have a plan to share immediately on Monday, but the directives that are shared will help us form and shape our own Hope plan. From serving in the private school task force that I shared more about last week, I anticipate/hope that we will hear about private schools being able to have flexibility about opening as long as we follow safety protocols laid out by the Department of Health. I hope to allow our classrooms to permit students to learn within social distancing guidelines, and not have to limit our class sizes to an arbitrary number such as the limit of 10 which has been required for summer camp. I am positive we will have many safety protocols we will have to enforce (and that we will share with you as well), but our focus continues to be implementing at-school learning as much as possible.

In addition to COVID concerns, this past week or so has brought up other real challenges for our country as well. Some of you have requested resources and materials that you could use to share with your children regarding having discussions about race, and I am working on gathering some websites and books that you could use. I hope to finish that up next week to send out.

Congratulations to everyone on completing a school year with the best display of partnership between school and home that we can recall ever! We look forward to seeing everyone next week at the Hope Handover.