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COMMUNITY | Schools

School Superintendent urges families not to change learning models

By Jennifer L. Grybowski Community Reporter

WESTBOROUGH - The Westborough School Committee heard a variety of COVID-related updates at their meeting Oct. 21.

Changing learning models

Superintendent Amber Bock told the committee the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) requires the district to offer parents the opportunity to change learning models at the end of the trimester/semester.

“Public educators who are just getting systems in place are not in favor of this,” she said. “I want to be on record in saying that this is a DESE guideline that is causing consternation among multiple districts as we face concerns around a break in stability and a continuity in daily instruction that we are It’s a giant jigsaw puzzle. Current students will get shuffled around and be impacted even though they didn’t ask for a change.

Daniel Mayer

Assistant Superintendent

starting to seeing starting to occur in both models.”

Requests need to be made four weeks before the end of the term and approved K-8 students will transfer Monday, Jan. 4, 2021 while grade 9-12 students will transfer Monday, Feb. 1, 2020. Parents will be given instructions and deadlines for how to request a transfer in late November. However, Bock urged people to stay within the model they originally selected.

“They should commit to the relationships and the decisions you made and the class structure you’ve been given,” she said. “Our faculty prefers that and I want to be firmly on record in saying that.”

Assistant Superintendent Daniel Mayer agreed, saying there is no doubt there will be some academic loss for those who transfer. This is due to the fact that when students transfer, they are going to be dropping into new classes as if they just moved to town.

Bock and Mayer also pointed out that if too many students request to come back into the building, grades and classes will have to be configured, and that parents should consider the effects of their decisions on the entirety of the student population.

“It’s a giant jigsaw puzzle,” Mayer said. “Current students will get shuffled around and be impacted even though they didn’t ask for a change. We will do the best we can under the circumstances to accommodate but we want to flag very clearly to the whole community how the impact of your decision if they move in massive numbers are going to have on disrupting our mid-year.”

Bock said she realizes that some students are having a difficult time working remotely, both for academic and social-emotional needs.

“But I want to emphasize the importance of instructional stability for students and the models they are in,” she said “When you selected to be remote, you have to commit you can sustain that level of screen time all year. If you want to switch because your student is beginning to fatigue doing that much learning on screen, you’re still going to come into a new classroom setting where they are going to have to plug into what’s going on and figure out how to make up what’s in between. It’s an important family decision that really needs to be thoughtful.”

Mayer also said that if people are thinking about going fully remote due to rising cases, they are encouraged not to switch because if infection rates become unsafe the school will go fully remote.

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Local music educators adapt to unique COVID-19 challenges

By Dakota Antelman Contributing Writer

NORTHBOROUGH - Eric Vincent needs to buy buckets.

A music teacher at Algonquin High School, Vincent’s plans for the year have been upended by COVID-19, which has shrunk class sizes and created odd challenges for music educators.

When weather permits, Vincent and his colleagues can take their students outside where they can sing or remove masks to play wind instruments safely. But, when it rains, frosts or snows, the doors stay closed, and the masks stay on.

Therefore, needing to get creative to fill time, Vincent and the Algonquin music department plan to launch a new unit this winter focused on the kind of “bucket drumming” popular as a street performing act in many cities.

“It’s a weird year,” Vincent said.

Virtual classes started in mid-September. But students didn’t return to Algonquin in person until Oct. 6.

As other academic disciplines wrestle with their own restrictions, music departments at Algonquin and across the region have had to make perhaps some of the most drastic changes to their instructional plans.

Large ensemble classes, which often seat more than 30 students, are nearly half the size this year.

Split hybrid cohorts are wreaking havoc for teachers trying to organize performance pieces around the students they have in front of them at

Eric Vincent leads the students.

any given time.

Meanwhile, state regulations have banned the playing of wind instruments indoors altogether.

“[The restrictions] require, right now, that we basically revamp everything that we do,” Vincent said. “I’m willing to do that, but it is different.”

Vincent said he and other music staff are working harder, now, than they ever have before. They’re putting in 12hour workdays and preparing activities both for in-person learners, and students studying at home. They’re physically reshaping their classrooms all while revising and outright replacing huge swaths of long perfected curricula.

The day before in person

The students practice outside on the Algonquin lawn.

PHOTOS/COURTESY MICHELLE SHEPPARD

classes started this month, Vincent was outside with a 100-foot tape measure and a can of spray paint marking a grid for students to space themselves out during outdoor classes.

Elsewhere on the Algonquin property, a colleague teaching a chorus class was setting up shop under a large overhang that she hopes will allow her to teach and have students sing even when it rains.

“You could say it’s a pain,” Vincent said of these adaptations.

Through the frustration, Vincent stresses, however, there is a silver lining. That aforementioned bucket drumming unit represents a chance for students to practice rhythm, Vincent says, in a way they have not previously.

Likewise, the loss of traditional major ensemble performance opportunities takes the pressure off students and teachers to learn elaborate large group compositions. Many students, now, are developing their improvisational skills.

“As terrible as all this is, it does present us with some unique opportunities to do some things that we may not have time for,” Vincent said.

Unaware of what the rest of the semester will bring amid the ever-evolving story of COVID-19, Eric Vincent says he remains dedicated to his students, pushing onward in circumstances few saw before March of this year.

“I’m just trying to give my students a quality musical education and something worthwhile,” he said.

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