Patience, grace are watchwords for school year

Demopolis City Schools Supt. Kyle Kallhoff gave the following update on the first two weeks of school during the novel coronavirus pandemic:

As a new school year begins, many of the Demopolis City School System teachers are delivering instruction virtually.  In DCSS, almost 45 percent of parents chose the virtual route when given the option of on-campus or virtual delivery of instruction for their children. 

Of those, 37 percent of the students at Westside Elementary and 49 percent of those at U.S. Jones Elementary are starting this school year in the new K-5 Virtual Learning Academy.  Almost half of the students in grades 6-12 are also starting the school year with virtual learning. 

Although teaching and learning virtually is not a new concept in Alabama, it is in several of the schools in Alabama’s Blackbellt region, including Demopolis.  

Many of the teachers in the Demopolis City School System began learning this new way of instructing in mid-summer. Our teachers jumped right in and dedicated most of July and August to finding new ways to serve our students, especially the students who need us the most.

The DCSS is using Schoology as its learning management system and SchoolsPLP as the foundation for curriculum and content. Both programs are being provided by the State Department of Education for all Alabama schools. 

Teachers in grades K-5 are supplementing the state provided programs with other resources, and in grades 6-12 teachers are using Schoology, recorded lessons and Zoom to offer a more hybrid delivery of instruction for the 560 virtual students and 610 traditional on-campus students. 

Using Curriculum Associates’ iReady Program, students in K-5 take a diagnostic assessment in reading and math. Based on this data, students are grouped by proficiency levels which informs how many live Zooms students have to attend each week. The iReady reading and math data is also used to customize instruction and learning paths for students both virtually and on-campus.

We are doing things never done before in Demopolis. Our teachers, both on-campus and online, are making educational history as they navigate our system through this COVID-19 era school year. I could not be any prouder of our students, parents, teachers, staff, administrators and stakeholders.

 Like any school or school system in America, this is new territory and we are going to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes as we go. Our motto this school year is patience and grace. We all have to be patient and offer grace in order to make this work. So far patience and grace is working. It is not easy; however, neither is managing personal lives and careers during a worldwide pandemic.

Some of the new challenges for on campus teachers and students are adhering to all of the new sanitizing protocols, mask wearing, eating breakfast and lunch in classrooms and social distancing measures. 

On the virtual side, teachers are opening themselves up to parents like never before. It is common to have well over half of your parents tuning in to your live Zooms, whereas last year at this time one would be concerned if half of a teacher’s parents showed up to school every day. Just like the teachers, parents and students are having to adjust to a virtual platform and the parameters that go along with learning remotely.

An unintended benefit of this pandemic will be how much our teachers have grown with the use of technology in the classroom. We are a technology-rich system compared to other public and private schools within a 100-mile radius of us. Our teachers have done an exceptional job at all four campuses using new technology and software to engage our students impacted directly or indirectly by COVID-19.  When this is all over, we will continue to use these new tech-savvy skills in our delivery of instruction.

After two full weeks of school we have only had a limited number of confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 or 14-day quarantines due to “close contact”.  Our employees, students and parents have done an extraordinary job following the new procedures and protocols we have in place. 

However, I caution everyone to make good decisions over the three-day Labor Day weekend so we can keep the positive momentum established so far.