As our cohort heads back into the virtual classroom and I prepare to get back into blog posting again, I found myself looking back at one of my previous posts, Remote Kindergarten. It was a bit of a rant about the overwhelming nature of what has come to be called Emergency Remote Learning or providing Learning Opportunities for our students. What is coming for the next school year in September, however, is not supposed to be more of that same model. It is supposed to be something more sustainable. I hate it when I hear the word ‘sustainable’ because it implies that this COVID-19 situation is going to last a long time. That is unsettling by itself. In B.C., the ministry’s plan is to say nothing of the plan until the third week of August. I can’t decide if this is a good or bad for me. Not knowing means I can do little about planning for September. On the other hand, it means I can do little about planning for September. Yes, I repeated myself. I can’t decide if I would like to know now and have multiple contingency plans in place or if I would rather have something somewhat more definitive later and not stress over it through the summer. I am leaning toward the latter because I am confident in my ability to put together a good program on the run. This is especially true as my kindergarten colleagues and I were able to work very well as a team. The hardest part will be facilitating the social learning.

In the concluding paragraph of my aforementioned post, I said, “In the end, the most significant thing we can do is talk with them, connect as much as possible, and facilitate connections between them.” This is a big concern for me because unlike this past school year, this coming September I may have to do this without ever meeting the children. Last year’s group and I had a good rapport before the onset of Remote Learning.  How do I create that relationship with children who may never sit in the same room as me? Kindergarten has the disadvantage that, other than younger siblings of older children in the school, most of the students are new. They don’t know or trust me.

I am excited about the resource that our cohort is working on in in our Learning Designs course. I think it is a great idea and I am, of course, gravitating toward how to create social relationships with and between my students (and their families). I hope I am able to find some great ideas. I hope we are able to make a resource that is truly helpful for ourselves and our colleagues. I wish we had more time. The course is done at the end of July and there is so much to talk about!