6. School Update

St. Joan of Arc School Update


As you know, St. Joan of Arc, like all schools across the state, made the switch to distance learning and Governor Evers made the announcement that all public and private school buildings will remain closed for the rest of the school year. There are so many mixed emotions about this announcement, and we’ve seen overwhelmingly that our children would just like to go back to ‘normal’ and see their friends. Graduations for our Kindergarteners and 8th graders have been postponed, as have sacraments, and we are working with the Archdiocese to determine when those ceremonies can take place safely. I continue to be thankful for an agile and flexible teaching staff, so we are able to pivot and move quickly to meet the ever evolving needs of our families.

This, along with the timing of my writing, right at the end of Teacher Appreciation Week, leads me to where I would like to continue to bring focus – the incredible blessings and wonderful things happening in our community. I am so incredibly proud of our teachers, I could shed tears just thinking about it. Teachers everywhere are doing wonderful things for their students and giving of themselves, but what I’m seeing from our people is truly incredible. There is a reason our students continually outperform their peers, and that is our teachers.

Each of our teachers is working longer days than when we were in the school building, although it looks different for each grade level. Middle school lessons take an average of four times as long to prepare, between research, converting to an electronic format, loading pieces into digital work formats, loading into Google Classroom, and providing individual feedback to each student. Children also learn in different ways, and several of our teachers have rewritten and customized portions of the curriculum to the needs of specific students. One of our teachers meets with all of her students every school day via Zoom. This is a labor of love, and helps her to keep a connection with her students. Our younger grade level teachers are making multiple videos of lessons and reading books each day, and scheduling individual Zoom sessions with students and parents. I communicate with parents all hours of the day via phone, text, email and Zoom and I’m actively connecting with each school family to see how we can meet their specific needs, whether they be school related, emotional, or physical.

With the extension of the Safer At Home measures and school buildings being closed for the rest of the school year, we provide new lessons 4 days per week, with teacher office hours on the 5th day. We want to ensure the pace is sustainable for students, parents, and teachers for the duration of the time distance learning is in place. It is my goal to continue to provide the highest quality educational product we can to our families, while continuing to care for their spirits and emotions. Our schedule allows families the opportunity to pace their curriculum according to their needs and schedules, teachers the chance to plan content rich lessons and communicate with students, and for parents to nurture and attend to their children’s mental and emotional needs.

For the future, we are continuing to monitor the best course of action in this new world. We are working on answering questions about how we best deliver our uniquely successful education, how things will look in the building in the future for teachers and students, and what changes we might be making to our marketing plans to continue to communicate our high quality education. We provide an excellent, Catholic education and we want everyone to know it.


Blessings,


Mrs. Holly Cerveny

Comments

There are no comments yet - be the first one to comment: