WEEHAWKEN TOWNSHIP SCHOOL DISTRICT
BOARD OF EDUCATION
Mr. Eric Crespo
Superintendent of Schools
WEE Are Still Learning:
Whether in the Classroom or in their Own Living Rooms, Weehawken School Teachers Continue to Educate Your Children
The Learning Hasn’t Stopped
Dear Weehawken Township School District Community,
I hope this letter finds you and your family healthy and thriving, even under these very challenging conditions. Fortunately for our district, these dire conditions have brought out the best in everyone, including our teachers and counsellors.
I want you to know that in the Weehawken Township School District, the learning hasn’t stopped. The teaching hasn’t stopped. And the counselling hasn’t stopped. This past week, Supervisor of Guidance K-12 Jenna Wendolowski and our high school counselling department took non-stop calls from students and parents so that they could help plan next year’s schedules, as well as to address anxiety about how to cope with the pressures that this pandemic has brought to bear on all of us. And Theodore Roosevelt’s School Counselor and 504/RTI Chairperson Cory Ferrer is still carrying on the weekly half-hour sessions he has always held with his students, only this time they connect virtually instead of in person. He feels it is important to have his students stick to the same routine they had in school.
This past week, our district had a scheduled professional day, where staff focused on bringing our virtual learning to another level, with Zoom meetings, videos and small group instruction seminars. We will continue to enhance our lessons and methodologies in the weeks to come. Amazingly, that professional day was planned months before we ever knew there would be a pandemic.
Every Friday, I will spotlight some of the ways our teachers are remotely educating your children. With a backdrop of their own living room walls instead of whiteboards, our instructors are making sure that we continue to adhere to the standard curriculum.
At Daniel Webster School, academic support teacher Ms. Isabelle Scordo is keeping it real for her first and second-graders. If you view her video of Wednesday’s class, you’ll see what I mean.
“Normally in class, you'll be reading to me,” Ms. Scordo tells her first and second-graders. Instead of reading to her,she tells them, they will be reading “more than once out loud to parents or grandparents or your sister or brother.” She explains, “You were reading to me, but now you're reading to them and you can show them what a great reader you've become.”
Weehawken High School students are using the same online method of turning in work, “Google Classroom,” that they have been this entire academic year. “Hangouts,’ a messaging, voice and video chat app, and ‘Meet,” a group video call app, have also been effective ways to deliver material to students, Social Studies Subject Area Coordinator Mark D. Perry says. But now he is also using an app called “FlipGrid” as a venue for students to ask for help privately, instead of in front of others. This app allows students to record videos of themselves asking questions before uploading them to a site where Mr. Perry can view and answer them with his own video recording. “Although able to be used by all students, shyer students may prefer this method to something more public like a chat board,” Mr. Perry says.
Right before the school closure, Roosevelt Fourth Grade Reading teacher Ms. Maura Darcy provided every fourth-grader with a book to bring home. She is now using an app called “SeeSaw” to help enhance the assignments based on those books.
Students can respond to Ms. Darcy’s assignments through a choice board filled with nine reading response options that include recording; writing, drawing; photographing and video. Whichever way they choose, the app allows her to send feedback through comments. The students’ posts are displayed on a feed, so students can play each other's recordings and videos. Other students can comment on each other's work, too. “Providing students choice is always important,” says Ms. Darcy, “but it is essential now as students are learning virtually. Providing choice increases student motivation and gives them the capability to make important decisions about their reading work.
Our virtual classroom on SeeSaw joins us together even when we can't physically be present.”
Throughout this challenging time, our teachers and staff are demonstrating exemplary dedication and commitment to their students. Not having a classroom is not holding them back at all. Our teachers are not letting the education of Weehawken Township School District students be disrupted by a virus. Instead, they are finding new and creative ways to circumvent it through collective resiliency.
So even though we are not physically present with each other, we remain present in the education of your children, and will continue to do so, one way or the other, through the end of the academic year.
Your Partner in Education,
Eric Crespo