These may be relatively quieter days at Stettler’s Christ-King Catholic School, but educational opportunities - and community outreach - continue just the same.
“Overall, it’s been going well given our circumstances. It’s definitely an adjustment not only professionally in that we are teaching in a whole different way now, but also emotionally as we aren’t able to see the kids everyday. It’s an adjustment for everybody,” said Tara McMillan, the school’s principal.
She noted that some staff were a bit uncertain when it came to teaching remotely. But since things started rolling, everybody is totally on board and coming up with lots of ideas to make teaching online as interesting and engaging as possible.
“I’ve got to say that I’m so incredibly proud of my staff because they dug deep. We’ve had training sessions on different programs, and they all tackled Google Classroom which is our main delivery platform,” she explained.
“Now, they are just running with it! It’s incredible - some of the ones who were the most overwhelmed, they are now coming to meetings saying, ‘Hey, I found this resource!’ It’s been great being able to bring everybody’s strengths together and use them to benefit our students the best we can.”
For students, it’s of course been a huge adjustment as well.
“I think as time has gone on, they are doing well with their studies as best they can depending on family circumstances,” she said. “I know for sure they are also missing us and we are missing them. You just don’t have that same social interaction throughout the day. But we have set up Google Hang-outs with the kids,” she added. “They were excited to see us and talk to each other.
“You can definitely tell that when we are given the go-ahead to all go back, they’ll be running here,” she added. “But in terms of learning, kids are resilient. It’s amazing. They’ve all adjusted as best they can to the technology. They are also creative.
“And our parents have been awesome,” she said, referring to how moms and dads have adjusted to the online teaching models as well.
“They’ve taken to it, and they’ve done their own research, too. The support they’ve provided the kids is just awesome.”
As the weather warms up, physical education staff have also been working hard on programs to help keep students active while still staying at home. “We are planning to release that in the next week or so.”
McMillan also explained how the school receives a Nutrition Grant from the government to fund the breakfast program.
Since classes are not in session, the funds will be used to support school families and some will even go to the help with community need as well via donations to the Food Bank.
“The government released a statement giving us the responsibility of getting it to our families as best we can,” she explained. “We were really excited by that news.”
The school has partnered with the Stettler Food Bank to provide donations for this month as well as in May and June.
“We will also be purchasing gift cards from Sobeys and No Frills each month for April, May and June. We will be sending out set amounts to our families with grocery gift cards to help out a little bit.
“We are pretty excited to be able to support our families,” she said. “These are difficult times, and families are dealing with a lot. So it’s another way we felt that we could help out.
“As teachers, we live to help our kids - that is our job. Not having them here and not being able to provide for them in that way, it’s been hard. So it’s really great that we’ve been able to do this for them now.”