Dear UP Community,
The sudden shift to our “normal” has been swift for all of us. The things we have always balanced may have tipped in totally unexpected ways. Maybe now you are balancing learning at home while caring for family members, or educating your own kids at home while figuring out how to continue educating the students from your school. Maybe you are dealing with limited human interaction, or you might be trying to get up to speed on the latest technology to stay as connected as possible. Everyone’s “normal” has shifted and now our personal resiliency is being called upon like a human superpower. Personal resilience is important because it helps us adapt, manage stress, and handle challenges.
UP for Learning is committed to supporting you and all of our teams during this time.
We commit to:
- Communicate! Keeping in touch with all of our UP school teams during the school closure is our priority. We can do this through Zoom (see the picture above from our Friday Zoom with the Vergennes PLP Team), FlipGrid, phone calls, letters, etc. We are here to respond to all of our UP partners with compassion, support, kindness, and creativity!
- Reschedule all of our retreats/meetings and work sessions when school buildings reopen. This might look different from our initial plan, but we are flexible and ready to adapt!
- Support the facilitation of connections with teams and between teams. Consider UP the facilitator of connections!
- Reimagine what could be different about schools when we return. The UP team is reflecting on these questions: What does this experience reveal about the opportunities that will emerge? What have we learned? How can we use our learning going forward?
Here are a few resources that have helped us this week:
Please reach out to us if you want to connect, need resources, support, or guidance.
Warmly,
Lindsey
Lindsey Halman
Executive Director
