Dear Parents,

Pause for a moment please and give yourself a huge pat on the back! Your household has nearly completed four weeks of emergency remote online learning. We have chosen the term ‘household’ here because we know that ensuring your child’s continued learning has required the commitment and support of not just everyone at school, but also everyone in your homes. Whether it is access to a device, providing a quiet work space, stepping in to help out when your child gets stuck with something, or checking in and offering words of encouragement, the support you and other family members give at home is more important than ever right now. We can’t thank you enough for all of your efforts.

The good news for you: you all get a bit of a break for a couple of weeks. In alignment with our school calendar, April 12-24 is a school holiday. While you may not get to head to the beach or have large gatherings, we do wish for you and your families to take a break and enjoy your time together without having to ensure that everyone is meeting daily deadlines. During this time, our staff will also be taking a break, but continuing to develop our programs for the final term of school. If you are looking for some fun, non-academic, ideas, please see our Wellbeing Website for helpful suggestions.

Looking Ahead: While we won’t entirely rule out a return to school this year, we are staying realistic. It is unlikely that we will return to normal classroom learning on campus this term and teachers are working hard at present to make adjustments to their planning, instruction and assessment to facilitate balanced and meaningful learning to be delivered online.

Based on the incredibly valuable and overwhelmingly positive feedback from students, parents and teachers, we continue to adjust and refine our online learning practice. Some key points effective from our return to learning on April 26th:

● Modified schedules to account for both Ramadan and manageability of online learning for students. Student contact time will be 9:00-1:30 and staff working hours 8:00-2:00 daily. This schedule will continue for the duration of online learning.

● More cohesive online learning modules which will allow more flexibility in how students and families organize their time. These modules will include paced out tasks, video instruction, update and feedback, as well as connections and interactions with members of staff via Google Classroom and video-conferencing.

● Further, more specific, details on programs of study, end of year assessment and reporting will be sent from specific school divisions in the coming days.

We wish you and your families a restful, safe and peaceful break.

With our kindest regards,

Allison Fleet and Matt Topliss

Principals