Kia ora koutou,
With another week of lots going on, both inside school and outside in the wider world, hopefully you have all managed to slow down a little and have a good weekend.
As the Covid-19 outbreak continues to grow, we are all preparing to be ready for cases in our school and our families. We have communicated with you about how learning will look if ākonga are not able to come to school due to Covid isolation or sickness. To read this information, please see this Hybrid Learning article. I would now like to explain the thinking behind this approach to learning - how this ‘hybrid’ style of learning is different from our previous home learning system, and why we are moving to this hybrid approach.
In our two previous lockdowns, all ākonga were at home at the same time, and we created one single remote learning system for all students. Everyone followed this approach, even in level 3 when a small number of students learned onsite with ‘bubble’ teachers. Our current situation has now changed a lot. We are unlikely to have all students learning from home at the same time, unless we have a significant outbreak or we lose so many of our staff at one time that we cannot keep the school open. What is much more likely is that, at any given time, we will have some staff and some students needing to be offsite because they are sick or isolating, and a larger number of students and staff still able to be onsite at school. We have put systems in place at school to keep staff and students in different groups separated, so that cases of Covid are much less likely to cause a larger outbreak across the school.
Given the situation of having people both onsite and offsite, we need a different approach to teaching and learning. It is not sustainable for teachers to create a learning programme for students at school, and a separate learning programme or ‘pack’ for students at home. This may be manageable in the very short term, but staff cannot keep two systems running for long. It would also be very hard to manage students and staff who were continually leaving (if they need to isolate, for example) and continually returning when they are safe to do so. We feel it would be disruptive for our tamariki if they need to move between a learning pack at home and a separate learning programme at school.
Therefore, we have created an approach that is based on one single learning programme. The learning stays the same whether teachers and ākonga are at school, at home or elsewhere. Whānau and students can access the learning from home via our hub learning websites - all content is stored on these websites each week, and updated every Sunday. This learning website is the key place for parents and tamariki to go to when they are learning from home. Each day there will be an opportunity for students to access what is happening at school, either through watching a live streamed learning session, or joining a small online group meeting or discussion. These opportunities are called ‘school connections’ and the information for the weekly connections are on the front page of each learning website. The learning website links are here:
The most important aspect of our hybrid approach is that it is not a rigid, prescriptive system for whānau and students at home. We appreciate that every family’s situation will be different, and the learning we offer needs to be able to be adapted to fit each unique family context. Therefore we offer access to all of our learning, and to connections with school. We expect that each family will access the learning in a way and to the extent that works for them. The school connections that are set at particular times are not requirements, but simply invitations.
If you are interested in learning more about this hybrid approach to learning, here is the link to an interview between Lesley Murrihy and Derek Wenmoth (scroll down a little to see the video). Lesley was Amesbury School’s Principal for our first ten years, and has always been very involved in creating future-focused, integral learning for ākonga. She is now a Chief Advisor in the Ministry of Education. Derek is considered to be one of NZ education’s foremost future-focused thinkers. In this interview he explains his ideas around hybrid learning and why he considers it to be an important and necessary approach for the current climate.
As always, we will continue to grow and adapt our learning approach as we can see what works and what doesn’t, particularly for our students and whānau learning offsite. It is an exciting endeavour that will no doubt be challenging but also, hopefully, hugely rewarding. We consider that we are all on this learning journey together and we ask that you stay in communication with us so that we can see how this approach works for everyone.
Have a good week and kia noho haumaru - stay safe.
Ngā mihi nui,
Urs Cunningham