During a closure, contact with our students and parents is essential to the learning plan. The district must be able to clearly communicate with the school community. Administrators must be able to clearly communicate expectations, needs, revisions and feedback to instructional staff, support staff, parents and students. Instruction staff (teachers, teaching assistants and teacher aides) must have a clear understanding of their roles and responsibilities during the closure, they must be able to determine how to support students and parents and how to communicate support. School counselors and social workers must have ways to continue to support students with mental health needs as well as to support the needs of colleagues, parents and students during the closure.
Numerous tools are available to support communication:
- Telephone contact
- Email communication
- Google Classroom/Seesaw
- Google Meet video conferencing
- School Messenger (phone, email, text communications)
- District Website
- Social Media
For most students, Google Classroom/Seesaw and its video conferencing features will allow face to face contact, in many cases, on a daily basis. Students who are unable to be contacted via the internet are contacted via telephone. Based upon access and availability, students and parents are pointed toward resources via email, cellular access to the website and social media.