With the new school year starting up, distance learning has resumed at SCVi Charter School in Santa Clarita, and plans are in place to transition learners back to on-site learning at the first possibility.
“We are in the height of the back-to-school season,” said Matt Watson, host of SCVi’s “Eye on the Valley” on KHTS. “Everybody’s been asking me about SCVi — what are you guys doing this year, what’s going on, are you guys open, are your campuses open, are your kids coming back, are you guys doing distance learning? So let’s get it on the record and let’s hear what’s going on with SCVi as we lean into this new school year.”
A group of SCVi/iLEAD administrators accompanied Watson during the show to discuss Fall semester plans and the ways in which facilitators have been getting ready for the new year.
Though on-campus learning is not currently an option because of state guidelines related to the coronavirus, administrators noted that once Los Angeles County is removed from the state’s “monitoring list” for 14 days, learners are expected to be allowed back on-site.
After this takes place, facilitators and administrators are “ready and prepared” for their return back to the campus, officials said.
Until then, last spring’s distance learning model is back and “even better” than before, utilizing a schedule that aims to help learners “move fluidly” from distance learning to hybrid learning based on “changing conditions.”
Although many other area schools started their Fall semesters a few weeks ago, staff from SCVi/iLEAD have utilized this time to undergo intensive training using a new learning management system.
Every summer, facilitators take two and a half weeks to deepen their understanding of social-emotional learning and project-based learning, in addition to various specific subject areas and the seven habits of highly effective kids.
However, this year delved deeply into how to utilize SCVi/iLEAD’s curriculum with distance learning by giving facilitators the chance to experience it themselves through asynchronous and synchronous learning.
For facilitators, this involved logging into courses of their choosing that they believed would help them the most, with office hours provided with executive team and Maker team experts to check in on the things they had learned.
“Things have changed and it’s not just going digital,” said Watson. “We can’t have classes the way we normally do when kids are on-campus… That’s great that (SCVi/iLEAD) staff has been able to not only plan for that, but experience that from the learner side so that they have a deeper understanding of what it is to be that student on the other side of the screen.”