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Special Message from the Administrator Team at St. Isidore Virtual Learning School

Dear Parents and Care Givers, 

I am writing to provide you with an update regarding remote learning at St. Isidore K-12 Catholic Virtual Schools. First, I would like to take a moment to thank you for your patience as we work through this unprecedented task of creating an entire school for over 3000 students in just a few short weeks. We know you are anxious to have your children begin their online learning classes, and we are very eager to meet your children and begin building relationships with them to create vibrant learning communities. There are several items I would like to provide updates for. I know you have many questions, so hopefully this will help to address some of them. 

The sheer size of the school has created unanticipated challenges and as such we have had to adjust our start dates – BOTH elementary and secondary students will begin their classes on September 17th. 

Early next week your child’s teacher will make contact to introduce him or herself and to make sure your child is ready to begin learning on the 17th. At this time, the teacher will provide you with details regarding the learning platform to be used (D2L or Google Classroom) and well as some details regarding the class schedule.

All students should be prepared to attend learning from 8:30 to 3:00.

However, please rest assured that they will not be sitting in front of a computer for the entire time – there will be body breaks and recess/ lunch breaks as well as times to work independently, to engage with their peers and to speak 1:1 with the teacher. We are planning to vary the teaching and learning activities and routines to help students engage in their learning and be active partners in creating the learning environment. 

If, in the Board Return to School Survey, you indicated that your family needed a Chromebook, your home school will be in contact with you to arrange for you to borrow one from the school. Please watch for messages from the school regarding this process. Since the survey closed, you may have identified that you will need more support. Please contact your home school Administration as they will help arrange this for you.  

You may have seen in the news that the WCDSB is providing Elementary Student Learning Kits to all students in K-8. IF you would like one, please contact your home school to arrange to pick one up, as they were all delivered there.  

Finally, on behalf of our staff, we would like to continue to welcome you and your children to St. Isidore.  We are so excited to begin this journey together. There have been bumps in the road as we get things up and running, and I am sure there will be others along the way, but I believe that when we work together, when we support each other and keep your children’s education and wellness at our guide, that we can do great things together.   

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @IsidoreVirtual for up to date information. Our Web page will also be live soon! 

Peace and Blessings,  

Carla Santomero, Principal

Dawn Butson , Elementary Vice Principal

David Jaeger, Secondary Vice Principal   

 

September 11th, 2020|

Upcoming Board Meeting – Monday, September 14, 2020

The next meeting of the Board of Trustees is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. — Monday, September 14, 2020 — at the Waterloo Region Catholic Education Centre.

Meeting Agenda

General Information About WCDSB Board Meetings

Information About the Board of Trustees

The Waterloo Catholic District School Board, representing more than 96,000 Catholic school supporters, operates 48 schools and five adult education facilities serving more than 40,000 elementary, secondary and continuing education students in Waterloo Region – continuing a 184-year tradition of quality, inclusive, faith-based education. Follow us on Twitter: @WCDSBNewswire – #WCDSBAwesome.

September 11th, 2020|

Special Message from the Administrator Team at St. Isidore Virtual Learning School

Dear Parents and Caregivers:  

Welcome to St. Isidore K-12 Virtual Learning School. We are excited to work with you this year and are looking forward to many exciting learning opportunities.  Currently, we are reaching out to update you on our Elementary and Secondary Virtual Learning. We know there are many questions, and we will try to address some of them here. Our school website is currently under construction on the https://www.wcdsb.ca/site and will provide you with more information once complete.    

St. Isidore students will be assigned to a qualified WCDSB teacher and will be with other same grade children in a Virtual Learning classroom. This class will have its own digital learning platform (either D2L or Google Classroom) and instruction will occur online through asynchronous and synchronous learning opportunities. The amount of time students will spend in Virtual Learning will be equal to the same amount of time as students who chose in-person learning (approximately 300 minutes/day). Students in both Elementary and Secondary will ‘attend’ school daily between 8:30 am and 3:00 pm. It is expected that students in the Virtual Learning Model participate every day; attendance will be monitored and recorded.  

Ontario curriculum will be taught, assessed and evaluated according to Ministry of Education Curriculum documents and following Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting in Ontario Schools. St. Isidore teachers will provide synchronous learning opportunities which will include a combination of whole class instruction, individual or small group support (video conferencing via Google Meet / Teams, phone calls, etc.), student presentations, mini-lessons and content/skill-based instruction, as appropriate.  

Children who have IEPs or are English Language Learners will continue to be supported and your child’s home school Special Education and ESL staff will work with St. Isidore staff to create or update IEPs and individualized learning plans for students requiring support. Guidance, and social work support will also be provided via your child’s home school.  

Over the next few days, we will continue to staff St. Isidore and create class lists. We have approximately 3100 students selecting the Virtual Learning option and as such this process takes time. During the week of September 8 – 11 teachers will be reaching out to the students in their classes to introduce themselves. Staff will seek to ensure that all students have the necessary technology to support the virtual learning and that they can access the Learning Platforms so that we can begin creating classroom communities. Classes for Elementary students will begin on September 14th, and our secondary students will begin classes on September 17th.   

Once again, we look forward to the opportunity to learn with your children, and we appreciate your patience as we work to ensure a strong start to the coming year.   

 Your Administration Team, 

Carla Santomero, Principal

Dawn Butson , Elementary Vice Principal

David Jaeger, Secondary Vice Principal   

 

September 4th, 2020|

A Special Message for Our #WCDSBAwesome Students!

Things will be looking a little different this year as we welcome our #WCDSBAwesome students back to school.

Here’s a special video to give students a sneak peak at some of the things they can expect.

To view our previous “Welcome Back” message for our #WCDSBAwesome staff – and Director of Education Loretta Notten’s personal video answering our most common back-to-school questions, please click HERE.

 

 

September 3rd, 2020|

Last Call for Parents Who Did Not Complete the WCDSB Back-to-School Survey

Dear Parents:

On July 31st we launched a survey asking parents to indicate to the school board your intentions for your child(ren) to return to school for face to face learning, or to opt to learn remotely instead.

In the busyness of summer, it is understandable that some families missed completing the survey. We have made every effort to advertise the survey and personally contact all our families from whom we did not have a response after the survey closed.

However, there are still some families for whom we do not yet know their intentions regarding whether their child will attend face to face or virtually in September.

Since the first day of school is rapidly approaching, if you have not yet indicated your intentions, we respectfully ask that you please contact your school by noon on Friday, September 4.

Contact information for our schools is available by clicking HERE.

If you do not contact your school by noon on Friday, we will assume that you have chosen for your child to attend school in person, and your child will not have access to our Virtual School, should you desire it, until after Thanksgiving.

Thank you so much for your cooperation in letting us know your intentions for your child(ren).

September 3rd, 2020|

It’s Back-to-School Time! You Have Questions — We Have Answers!!

It’s back-to-school time, and we know that along with the usual excitement, this September brings with it some apprehension and more than a few questions from parents.

Last week we asked the WCDSB community to send us those questions.

Please click the link below and follow along as Director of Education Loretta Notten personally answers the most common questions we received.

 

 

September 2nd, 2020|

We Want to Hear Your Back-to-School Questions!

Dear Parents –

We know you have questions about our WCDSB Back-to-School Plan.

So, we invite you to send your questions to Backtoschool@wcdsb.ca.

We will look for all the common questions, and our Director of Education, Loretta Notten, will address those questions in a video.

We are so looking forward to welcoming our students back. Please review our Back-to-School Plan and our current Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page.

 

August 28th, 2020|

Important Back-to-School Information from the Director of Education

Print Version – Letter to WCDSB from the Director of Education – School Re-opening August 27, 2020

Dear Waterloo Catholic Community –

The start of school is now just around the corner and it is our most sincere hope that while you may have some questions or apprehension about the return, that there is also an equal measure of joy and celebration to be returning just a little bit closer to life and learning as we previously knew it.  Throughout the summer planning has been taking place and as we have said before, at the forefront of all our thinking has been a concern for Health and Safety. As you may know, frequent announcements and clarifications continued to be received by WCDSB senior staff and as a result, our plans did continue to be refined and did evolve.  We have done our very best to not deviate too greatly from those plans upon which you based your decisions back in early August regarding your learning preference for your child as we return to school.

There is a fair bit of information contained within this letter, but I know you will agree that it is important to communicate what we know and to ensure you understand the plan.  With that said, I would like to offer a few very important updates.

The Parent Survey:

We thank you for responding to our survey – we have heard from the greater majority of all families, but we must account for every student, so if you have not completed the survey – you MUST do so through your local school.  We would ask that if you have completed the survey that you do NOT revisit the survey.  The survey has been removed from our Board website.  We can no longer allow parents to change their mind without compromising the safety of our students.  We are planning based on survey responses and the information that informed your choice has not substantively changed since we launched the survey.  We appreciate your understanding in this regard.  We have approximately 13% of families who have selected to begin the year in our virtual school, now called St Isidore (the patron saint of the internet).

Virtual School Versus Home School:

If your family/child has selected to begin the year learning virtually, then the student becomes shared between their home school and St Isidore.  For full clarity – the student is no longer assigned to their home school teacher, but to their teacher in the virtual school, and all communication during that time will be with the virtual school teacher and administration.  Should the decision be made to return to face to face learning – the student returns to their home school and is placed in a class with space.

Secondary Model:

As you know, our secondary model begins with 150 minutes of face to face instruction in the morning, by cohort.  The afternoon features a synchronous (live learning with a teacher) period everyday for every student, followed by a 75 min asynchronous (not live) period everyday for every student.  The model remains similar to what we previously published, but the addition of the 75 minute asynchronous learning period, which will follow their every afternoon synchronous class of 75 minutes, is new.  This will mean that each student experiences a full 300-minute learning day.  This 75-minutes of asynchronous learning will flow from the previous synchronous lesson.

Transition Dates:

We previously published that changes could be made from virtual learning to face to face learning (or vice versa) at 4 week intervals.  The deeper we have gone into the planning and with the number of students to schedule in our virtual school, we have had to make an adjustment.  To that end:

In Elementary School:  families/students may transition after the first 4 weeks of instruction (Thanksgiving – accounting for the staggered start), but after that it will be only at Progress Reports in November and first Report Card in January.

In Secondary Schools:  families/students will be confined to transferring between learning modalities at the end of the term (November and thereafter end of January)

Staggered Start:

We know that there will be many new routines for our students to learn.  And we are continuing to work hard to prepare our schools and to prepare our staff to welcome our students.  We feel it is prudent and critical to a successful start to stagger the start of school for our students.  We are also challenged to fully schedule and staff our virtual school(s).  To that end, the following is the start up schedule for September:

Accessing My Cohort & Schedule:

All information relevant to cohorts and student schedules will be available as of Wednesday Sept 2nd.  We apologize that this is a little late, but in addition to all the challenges that come with preparing for this unique new reality, as a board we are also transitioning to a new Student Information System – a decision made long before COVID has become a reality.

Therefore – all students may log into their WCDSB student email cloud account, where you will find 2 emails with cohort and schedule information which will be available to you.

Busing:

Students need to be reminded that seats on the bus are assigned and they are not to sit anywhere other than their assigned seat.  Masks are required by all students to ride the bus.  There will be masks on the bus available for a child who may have forgotten their mask.  Secondary students should only report to buses on the day that their cohort is experiencing face to face learning.

Health and Safety/Masking:

As we all know, life for each of us has evolved.  Masks are now part of our daily reality.  Masks are a way of both containing the virus and protecting us from the virus.  Per provincial direction and the public health authorities, masking will be mandatory for all students in grades 1-12.  If a child needs to be exempted from wearing a mask, an exemption form must be completed and approved by the principal.  The policy on masking will be found on our website shortly and the exemption form will be linked.  Masks are also required by our students in Kindergarten, but no form is required for an exemption if a child cannot wear a mask.

Students are encouraged to have their own refillable water bottle, to be encouraged to wash hands frequently and parents are asked to ensure that a self-assessment is completed everyday before coming to school.  https://covid19checkup.ca/

Those students attending our Extended Day program must login to complete the digital (self) assessment form each morning before arriving at the program.

Operational Guidelines:

WCDSB has now published on its website our Operational Guidelines.  They make clear the expectations for all members of our WCDSB community, as well as giving insights into the protocols required in our various program areas.  While lengthy, I encourage you to review them, and in particular any area that is relevant to your child and their learning.

https://www.wcdsb.ca/operational-guidelines/

Outbreak Protocol:

On Tuesday August 26th, the province outlined its Outbreak Protocol.  It will be available on our WCDSB website in our Operational Guidelines, and the Minister has also referenced it in his letter to you.  Rest-assured that there will be a prompt and transparent response anytime we are dealing with a staff or student member who has tested positive for COVID.  We will coordinate that response with Waterloo Region Public Health.  We do ask all students and parents to ensure a self-assessment has been done each and every day before coming to school.  We also ask students to stay home if you are not feeling well.

A reminder that our plan for re-opening schools is available on our website and that we continue to update both the FAQ section and any other material as need be.  Reviewing the plan and the Operational Guidelines when you have any questions is a great place to find answers.

https://www.wcdsb.ca/plan-for-re-opening-schools/

https://www.wcdsb.ca/plan-for-re-opening-schools/#faq

Student Kits:

Every year we think about preparing a student’s backpack.  This year we have many more considerations as we prepare our students for their return.  We want to ensure that we get off to a strong start and so we are currently preparing a personal learning kit for each and every student in our system.  It will have all the basic learning materials a student needs for their learning and will ensure there is not sharing of those everyday items.  And as outlined in our Operational Guidelines, we will have protocols to ensure we are not sharing/breeching safety when dealing with other items within our classrooms.  The Learning Kits will not leave the classroom, for those students learning face to face.  Contents of the kit can be seen within our Operational Guidelines.

So as I said – lots to process – and certainly a great deal more on our website, but the most important message is this:  we cannot wait to welcome our students back!  We have missed you and there is going to be great joy in being reunited, in hearing chatter and laughter in our classrooms and playgrounds once again.  We are rooted in a faith that reminds us at every turn that we are people of hope.  We know that we are a community that is strengthened by Christ and He teaches us to love unconditionally.  We may stumble at times on our path, but if we pick each other up, if we walk side by side, if we show mercy and grace while seeing the face of Jesus in all whom we encounter, we will have a great year of learning.  We are ready to welcome you back!

Please reach out to us if you need help or guidance, and remain confident that we are here to support you, as we walk together as a hope-filled community.  #WCDSBTogether.

Sincerely,

Loretta Notten

Director of Education

August 27th, 2020|

Upcoming Board Meeting – Monday, August 24, 2020

The next meeting of the Board of Trustees is scheduled for 6:00 p.m. — Monday, August 24, 2020 — at the Waterloo Region Catholic Education Centre.

Meeting Agenda

General Information About WCDSB Board Meetings

Information About the Board of Trustees

The Waterloo Catholic District School Board, representing more than 96,000 Catholic school supporters, operates 48 schools and five adult education facilities serving more than 40,000 elementary, secondary and continuing education students in Waterloo Region – continuing a 184-year tradition of quality, inclusive, faith-based education. Follow us on Twitter: @WCDSBNewswire – #WCDSBAwesome.

August 21st, 2020|

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