Dear LFS Families,
As we finish up this first week of our return to distance learning, we remain deeply connected to your children and fully engaged with them in the learning process. We see them picking up where they left off and managing this transition very effectively overall. They understand the technology and the online routines, and we're pleased with how the revised DL schedule is working thus far. We welcome your feedback as well, as we've tried to strike a careful balance between offering a robust online program that mirrors in person learning without overloading kids on Zoom each day.
Your help as parents has been instrumental, and we know it isn't easy to support your children's learning at home while also managing your own work and other responsibilities. We appreciate the way parents are helping reinforce the schedule and daily routines we have established for attending classes and meeting school work expectations. Children also have benefited from having a consistent work space at home. We also see parents successfully guiding their children's schooling from home while at the same time letting them "take the reins," as their age and stage allow. We know this looks different in Pre-K than it does in 6th Grade, but the process of guiding while also letting the children incrementally "take charge" is the same.
We're also pleased to be able to welcome your children to campus for their weekly outdoor sessions. I found it amusing but not surprising how absolutely elated they have seemed to be here with their teachers and with one another. One boy kept jumping up in the air and falling down into the leaves, as his excitement seemed to overflow! We believe that balancing our online learning with these times for socializing and connecting will help make our distance learning program that much more successful over the coming weeks.
I wanted to share a few reminders about these outdoor times.
1. Health Screening Forms: Please continue to complete these forms for the days in which your child will be on campus.
2. Drop Off and Pick Up: For these outdoor on-campus sessions, we'll use a similar process where children are dropped off and picked up from Stewart Avenue. We'll have admin staff and teachers on hand to help make this a smooth process. Pre-K and Kindergarten parents are welcome to walk their children in, but please don't congregate, and keep a safe distance from other children and parents.
3. Waiting on Campus: If it would be more convenient for you to remain on campus while your child joins his/her cohort, you may access our "LFSguest" wifi. The password is: "LFSguest!". You can pull onto the parking lot near the Meetinghouse, or, if full, park on Stewart Avenue. For now, we're asking parents to wait in their cars to help keep us all safe, rather than setting up a sitting area.
4. Unable to Participate?: We recognize that for some families, the logistics of these sessions simply does not work. Please don't despair, but let us know if this is your situation, and perhaps we can brainstorm possible solutions to make it possible for your child to attend.
And, finally, I've saved some additional good news for last. After weeks of searching, we hired Benjamin Rubin to be our PE teacher for the rest of this school year. Benjamin comes to us from Perelman Day School where he also taught PE classes, and from Cheder Chabad School, where he has been teaching 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade language arts. For the past few years, Benjamin also has taught religious and Hebrew classes at Kol Ami Synagogue. Benjamin earned a bachelor's degree in English from Temple University and also is a graduate of Penn Charter. Thus he brings experience with distance learning, with Quaker values and practices, and with physical education. Benjamin led two very strong demonstration lessons during his visit to campus a few weeks ago. His references praised his energy, his technological skill, his organization, and his ability to connect with children of all ages. One told me simply that "kids love him!" Given the timing of this hire, we will open up a search for next year's PE teacher later in the spring. Please join me in welcoming Benjamin to LFS. Please also join me in thanking Tr. Alec and Tr. Brad for their incredible work this fall teaching PE classes. They stepped in beautifully, keeping the kids active and engaged.
Questions? Please reach out and let me know, as always.
Stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you on the screen and/or when coming by to drop off or pick up your children for their outdoor sessions.
Sincerely,
Tr. Neal
