Adapt and Proceed

by Wade Hall, Tri-County School Principal

We have just begun the sixth week of school this year! Things are running well here in the building and all of the new procedures are starting to feel second nature at this point. Staff and students have been flexible and willing to follow new procedures, even when some of those procedures change from one day to the next. It is a blessing to be able to have our students back in the building and I can assure you that our staff is putting in hard work to provide all of our students with the education they deserve.
Going into the school year most people think of students doing the remote learning but this past week showed us that remote teaching can be done, too. Rachael Cook, the high school Business teacher, had to stay home to take care of a family member who was advised to quarantine due to possible exposure to Covid 19. I asked Mrs. Cook what worried her about remote teaching when she realized that she would be taking on the task? ” We live in rural Missouri my biggest fear was a lack of connectivity. Signal isn’t always the best and I had to insure my students could communicate with me.“ I then asked Cook what she had learned from the remote teaching experience and how it might impact her teaching moving forward should the need arise again and this was her response. “Due to the nature of the pandemic you make plans and hope to never put them into action. Having set my classes up online I was prepared for this experience, but as with all things you can never fully prepare. Learning to communicate differently is my biggest takeaway from the experience. Making sure verbal and written communication leaves no room for individual interpretation. It will take time and effort from both students and teachers to streamline the process. We’ve began focusing on our communication and enhancing it so before the need should arise again we will be prepared. Open communication and trust is a key component to the success of online education. Trust that students feel safe to discuss what they don’t understand and feel comfortable enough to openly communicate to their teachers about it so a solution can be found.”
I also decided to ask four of Mrs. Cook’s students the following question:
How do you feel the remote teaching experience went while Mrs. Cook was gone?
Isaac Torres Sanders – Sophomore
“Weird but pretty good too.”

Aliya Tanner – Senior
“Honestly a little awkward in a good way.”

Matthew Manning – Freshman
“It was kind of just like how class operates, you just couldn’t see Mrs. Cook. I had no issues with it.”

Noah Tomlinson – Junior
“It went fine since a lot of the work wasn’t hands on. Questions were delivered through Google Classroom and were answered by Mrs. Cook through voice chat.”

The overall feeling was that the remote teaching was well received but also different. All of the students mentioned that they could get their questions answered by Mrs. Cook even though walking them through a computer program took a little longer than usual. The one comment about the downside of remote teaching was brought up by Noah Tomlinson when I interviewed him. Tomlinson mentioned, “not having the ability to ask questions as freely as usual was a downside.” Even though it was not ideal circumstance for either party, it was encouraging to see that Mrs. Cook had the ability to deliver remote instruction and provide feedback to her students.
Due to Covid 19, we have had to enact our Alternative Method Instruction (AMI) plan earlier than we had hoped. Our students got an early taste of remote learning, and I am pleased to report that several of our students successfully completed all of their work by the due dates. After reflection over our AMI plan and figuring out and addressing issues that arose during those days we have determined that our AMI plan works, but it is also a work in progress. Even though we have been impacted by Covid 19 there is still no indication that any virus transmission has occurred in the school buildings. I want to thank and encourage all of our families for symptom checking their students before they come to school and for leaning on the side of caution should their students be symptomatic. This helps us keep our school environment as healthy as possible for student learning.