LAURINBURG — Students everywhere aren’t currently in school … or are they?
“We’re having school, we’ll just be having school in a different location; and we’ll just be having a different type of school.”
Those words by Scotland County Schools Superintendent Ron Hargrave recently on WLNC radio couldn’t have been more prophetic recently, since Gov. Roy Cooper announced on Monday that all public schools will remain shuttered until at last May 15.
Despite the odds against the schools, the district has found a way to continue teaching students.
“I have seen schools and employees mobilize in herculean ways never before imagined as part of the state-wide effort to provide essential services and academic supports to our students during this unprecedented school closure,” Hargrave said. “We will continue to make every effort to ensure that our students have the resources they need to be successful and will continue to support our teachers as they navigate this new way of delivering instruction.”
High school students began their coursework online on Monday, middle school students began both online and packet work while elementary school students were able to pick up packets from the schools last week and so far from reports all is going well according to Hargrave.
“For now, the work that the students are doing has all been review and no new content has been given,” Hargrave said. “Knowing that we will be out through May 15, we will — at some point — need to start teaching new content. However, this is not as simple as it may seem, if you teach new content, you also have to provide additional instructional support for our EC students which is challenging to do remotely. Superintendents throughout the state are working with DPI to come up with some creative solutions to many of the challenges that we’ll face in the coming weeks.”
Hargrave added that, while there is no substitute for face-to-face instruction, having a teacher in the classroom or the additional support of a traditional classroom, the district is working to create ways to engage students.
“In the classroom, teachers are challenged to differentiate instruction based on each child’s learning style and specific needs,” Hargrave said. “This skill set becomes even more critical when you don’t have the students in the classrooms but are having to do that remotely. But again, our teachers and staff are meeting this challenge head-on. Whether it’s via phone calls or video chats in Google classroom, our teachers and staff are making it work.”
Despite school closure coming with no notice to teachers, Hargrave says it has been an impressive thing to witness the teachers working quickly to build plans to continue to teach students.
The support staff is also playing a critical role with teacher assistants helping teachers deliver instruction and making calls to check on students while mental health workers, counselors and social workers are reaching out to students and their families to help in any way they can and find resources that they might need. All this is to make sure the whole child model of educating is being followed even if students aren’t in the buildings.
But Hargrave has a message for parents who are now facing having children home every day.
“We are here for them and we want to support them in any way we can,” Hargrave said. “If they are having trouble helping their children with their work, please reach out to their child’s teacher for help. If there are resources that they may need, please reach out to their child’s school for assistance. I would want them to know that we are all in this together and that our mission remains that we do whatever we can, wherever we are, to ensure that all of the students have the best opportunity to experience success.”
Reach Katelin Gandee at kgandee@laurinburgexch.wpenginepowered.com
