B.S. School Principal's Letter

“ There’s a fear down here we can’t forget…”
 
‘It’
I spent a lot of my youth reading Steven King novels. I was amazed at how his stories would frequently start with a regular person going through a regular day, but then something strange would happen. And then that strange thing would lead to more strange things until this regular person found themselves in the middle of a strange and frightening world. Unfortunately, it seems like we are all now stuck in one of his novels. We are all living with an unseen, mindless, pervasive fear. It affects our families and our careers and our futures and our lives in ways that we still cannot fully comprehend. There is a return to normalcy but when? This level of persistent anxiety weighs on all of us and has staggering affects. We mostly respond with grit and ingenuity and optimism, but sometimes we can’t keep it up and we feel defeated and the person staring back in the mirror is not the reflection that we want to see. So, we turn to faith. We turn to a loving God who will not give us more than we can bear. We turn to a God of wisdom who understands even when we don’t. We turn to hope, that the change will come sooner than anticipated. But...we still live with that anxiety.
 
Parents
Parents consistently strive for what is best for their children. It is one of the reasons that we send our children to Blessed Sacrament. Yet, many of the parents are now dealing with circumstances well beyond what is ‘typical’. Some have lost employment. Some are working 14 hour days to keep alive a dream that they started a few years ago. Some are health care professionals who expose themselves every day to the risk of this disease. Some walk into empty buildings and piece together a work day. Some sit at a kitchen table turned into home office. Many are part of the sandwich generation and taking care of their parents and their own children. All, are desperately striving to keep their homes as safe and productive and ‘normal’ as possible for their children. And they wonder why teachers can’t better understand the situation they are in and why they aren’t doing more. And each morning they wake up to another day of piecing together as normal a pattern as possible for their family and themselves.
 
Children
Children wonder what this world has become. They are resilient and adaptable beyond our wildest imaginations, but the older ones read the news and wonder about the future and the younger ones wonder why everyone is acting differently and why everything has changed. They ask questions that their parents can’t answer. And, suddenly, with a couple of days’ notice, they are expected to become educated in a foreign way. They are expected to access and use new technology and while learning the technology they are also expected to be learning content. And, they have to do all of that without the physical presence and emotional support of their teacher, that person they have built a bond with this year and trust to lead them on their educational journey. They are trapped at home and denied the joys of a game of tag or a walk to the store with a group of friends.
 
Teachers
Teachers relish the daily interaction with young minds...but not just young minds, young people. While a significant portion of our society wonders how people can choose to spend their entire days with children, teachers live for it. That interaction fuels them, and now it is denied. And now they are expected to create that same learning experience while being denied the access to the children. So, they do what they always do, they put their nose to the grindstone and learn on the fly and their heart breaks a little because they know the kids that need them the most are the ones that are going to suffer the most because of this. And they worry about their own children and they care for their own parents and they spend more time and energy than they have ever spent trying desperately to serve the children with their hands tied behind their back. And they get feedback from parents and mostly they get praise, but the criticism still stings. And they wonder why parents can’t recognize that they weren’t trained for this and why they can’t understand what a challenge this is. But the larger pain is about those kids...those kids who they know need them the most.
 
Distance Learning
We’re doing the best we can. We are using the resources that are available to us to continue the education of the children. Our teachers know the content, our teachers know how to connect with children (in person and they are learning how to in this new environment) and our teachers are committed to helping every child be as successful as possible. Please realize that we had no time to prepare for this and we are doing our best to be successful with it. On March 13, we had a two week plan because we were working on the best information available. Now we will readjust and look at accomplishing distance learning until April 24. If we need to adjust again, we will. We will continue to use online resources (frequently Zoom) for face to face interaction but we will not try to replicate a school day. It is simply not possible. We will work on being more structured and things should become easier as teachers and students become more familiar with the technology but it will be a different model for each grade level.
 
A number of parents have commented on what other places are doing and there may be some misinformation out there. Montgomery County has done no instruction for two weeks and will not really begin interactive distance learning until April. We are essentially three weeks ahead of them. DC began ‘distance learning’ this week but it is not of the level and quality that ours is. Apparently some private high schools have adopted a more rigorous approach than we have. That is because they are private high schools. We will continue to work to refine and improve our program but I am very comfortable that we are succeeding in our efforts (and I am very proud of the faculty for the way they have taken on this challenge).
 
 
The Work
Each child is expected to make reasonable attempts to complete work and attend teacher sessions. Teacher sessions will most frequently be processed through Zoom. (Parents please be aware that children should NOT be setting up Zoom accounts. They may participate but not initiate.) These sessions may be small groups or whole class. They will not be daily. Teachers will most often notify you of the sessions through email invitations. Other work may be assigned packets, online assignments, IXL sections, etc. If a child is feeling overwhelmed, please tell them to take a break. We want to provide instruction with a level of rigor but we do not want to cause additional stress. If your child is seeking additional challenges there is an internet full of games and puzzles and instructional web sites (Khan Academy) for them to find challenges. If you need suggestions, we are happy to help.
 
Calendar
We are transitioning from 3rd to 4th quarter as of March 27, however we are not producing 3rd quarter report cards. All of the work will be maintained and will be used to determine a grade for the second semester. This situation is unprecedented and we wanted to see how the year plays out. We are going to make every consideration to give our students the benefit of the doubt but we are also going to continue to assign, collect and grade work to demonstrate academic progress with our students.
 
We will have Easter break. During the time on the calendar that is listed as our break, no daily work will be assigned. There may be a book to read or something similar but ‘classes’ will stop. We are aware that Montgomery County is altering their break calendar, but they just had two weeks off, we are well ahead of them in instructional days.
 
The Future
And so another day begins, and we all do our best to manage through it, and the next one and the next one until ‘it’ ends. It will, eventually, modern science will find a vaccine. Things will not always be this way. The future may not be the same as the past but it will not always be like this. Until then we all need to do our best to learn and grow and support each other.
Parents:  Please understand that our teachers are working harder than they have ever worked to continue to provide a quality education for your children.
Children: Please understand the adults are struggling to make sense of this strange new world, just like you are. We love you and want you to succeed but we’re not perfect and we are faced with significant new challenges in our efforts to serve you.
Teachers: Please understand that the parents do appreciate and respect the work that you are doing but they are facing challenges that they would never have imagined either. Every family is stressed in different ways but, everyone is stressed.
Everyone: Let’s keep the commitment to each other to never believe that we can understand what another person may be going through. I have had enough communication with divergent members of the school community to know that we need to be respectful and mindful of challenges that others may face of which we are completely unaware. Recognizing that ALL of us are affected by this insidious ‘it’, let us all vow to not let it change our sense of community and our commitment to love and support each other. To help with this, we are actively working on ways to celebrate and support each other. We know that an integral part of this journey is our trust in God and our trust in each other. We will continue to glorify our Savior and treasure our Blessed Sacrament community. We’ll send more information out as things develop. We can come through this stronger. We can come through this with more compassion. And, we can come through this with a stronger educational model for our school. Let’s build that together!
 
"You gotta have faith…’"