"State of the Academy" One Week into Distance Learning

First, compared to expectations, this has been a fantastic week for Compass-Schuylkill!

That is not to say that this experience has been easy. Technical issues, trying to motivate ourselves or our children, and trying to understand how to use JEd and ZOOM, has made this a challenge. Compass - Schuylkill serves 8 different school districts. Some districts have offered to help with distance learning devices. Some have not. The academy has 20 students from 19 families. Some families already had access to the internet and own laptops. Other families are making distance learning work on phones without carrier plans by "borrowing" WiFi from their neighbors. And, by the way, most of Pennsylvania is under a stay-at-home order while we wait out a pandemic.


Even with these challenges, we have had 16 of the families log on to Jupiter Ed and attend at least one ZOOM meeting! For the families that are still working on getting access to digital distance learning, the academy has been attempting to locate resources for them.

Statewide, if you exclude the big cities, PA schools are reporting 80 to 85% engagement. For a small alternative education school, we are doing awesome!
We can do better. Attendance in the ZOOM classrooms might be confusing. Attendance issues were noted yesterday. Most of the students did attend one of the two subjects scheduled yesterday. Half of the students who attended one class failed to attend the other. Five students made it to Mr. K's Math class and not to Language Arts, for example.

If two different classes are offered on the same day (in the blue boxes on the schedule), students need to attend one session for each subject. Currently, this only happens on Thursday for Mr. K's Math students and Friday for all of the students.

Green boxes on the schedule are for students who have questions about assignments or need assistance. Students are not required to attend those sessions.

Each student is asked to have contact with a teacher - ZOOM or phone call - every day.

Hang in there. None of this is normal.

Parents - your efforts are appreciated.

Students - Keep learning. Keeping improving. Don't be afraid to "raise the bar".
If you need us, reach out.

Thank you from the Compass - Schuylkill Staff

P.S. - Do your CNN! It's an easy "A".