BRIDGEWATER, S.D./ EMERY, S.D. (KELO.com) — What student, parent, teacher, or school administrator…in their oddest of dreams…would have dreamt way back in August when the school year started…that this school year would likely be finished on the internet?!
That may happen, as the governor has physically shut down schools through at least May 1st.
State basketball tournaments are on hold. The status of spring sports is unknown.
But one thing is for sure. The academics must go on.
After a week of “coronavirus days” off school (kind of like snow days, but much more Twilight- Zonish)…school districts across the state launched into action.
There’s never a good time for global pandemic, but there has never been a time in history when our schools were more ready for such a situation. Technologically ready.
There is no shortage of tools available for teaching remotely: Google Classroom, Zoom, and Loom, are but three of the plethora of programs available to be used for online learning.
And even at a small high school like Bridgewater-Emery, that made lesson planning shockingly easy.
Principal Christina Schultz says it was announced last Wednesday that teachers needed to have the first week’s lesson plans ready to go by Monday, and all the teachers had their plans turned in by Thursday or Friday of last week.
What about internet access in these small towns?
Bridgewater is served by Golden West, which operates in a large swath of central and western South Dakota.
Emery is served with a fiber connection by a small internet service provider called TrioTel.
Of the handful of families that do not have internet access in the two towns, none of them are out of reach, thanks to the generosity of those two ISP’s: Golden West placed a tower on the Bridgewater (K-5th grade school) creating a wireless hot spot, and Triotel hooked up internet access to the previously unserved homes in Emery (where the district’s 6th through 12th graders go to school).
Schultz admits that not all students will easily excel in online learning. She says while some kids have the drive to succeed that will propel them to success in any learning environment, some kids don’t have that drive.
That’s one reason she believes that now more than ever, learning may become very individualized.
Schultz says that the special needs students in the district are doing less online learning and more pencil- and-paper-based assignments work that will be picked up and dropped off as necessary by school employees.
For all other students, the teaching is a mix of virtual classroom lectures and online self-study reading or work sessions done by each individual student.
All students have regular video conferencing sessions with their teachers.
Students want to be back in school with their friends, but they do enjoy getting a little more free time and being able to get up and get a snack when they feel like it.
Schultz says that while the first week has been filled with experimentation, more formal steps are in order for next week, now that they’ve tread for a week on this never-before-seen-ground.
She says students, teachers, and parents are embracing the challenge of online learning, and they are preparing to ride the online education wave out to the end of the semester.
