The start of the year at Yale brought many challenges and successes. As you heard from teachers at the last board meeting it’s been difficult to engage with some students and families and teaching remotely lacks the interpersonal connection teachers strive to create. However, there have been some silver linings! Our teachers and paraprofessionals have persevered more than I ever thought possible, they’ve learned new technology tools and they’ve endured change after change. I couldn’t be more proud of them.
We managed to assess each student with iReady and Acadience both remotely and in person during intake conferences to inform our core foundational reading groups and our LAP interventions.
In the past couple weeks, we have put a few new programs in place. First, a virtual library checkout system has been implemented and students are beginning to utilize that resource. In addition, we had 7 students not able to engage for several different reasons. We have invited them into our gym to do their remote learning with assistance from paraeducators. Making these programs successful wouldn’t have been possible without help from North Fork paraeducators, Shannon Barnett and his transportation team, Scott Landrigan for setting up safety protocol and providing PPE and Steve Rippl for getting internet capability in our gym.
Yale staff is excited and working diligently to prepare for students on Nov. 3rd.