RES News - Tutoring Team Education at Dr. Walter Cooper Academy, during the Pandemic… With a “No Visitors” policy in place at all Rochester City Schools, the RES Tutoring Team will not be able to resume its good work at Dr. Walter Cooper Academy (RCSD School #10) (DWCA) in the foreseeable future. The original plan for the Fall 2020 re-opening of #10 School was for a “Hybrid” protocol (two “cohorts” of students (“A” & “B”), each attending inperson two days a week and at home in a virtual learning environment, the other two days). However, due to Covid-19 safety concerns for students, faculty and their respective families, this plan was changed, early last month, to one in which all learning, at all grade levels in the RCSD will be virtual, for the first ten weeks of this school year. So, for the next few(?) months, we will be presenting a series of articles on “Education at Dr. Walter Cooper Academy during the Pandemic”. You may already know what’s happening in your own home school district, via your children and grandchildren, this series is intended to keep you enlightened and informed on what’s happening at “Our School” and also in the Rochester City School District. On my way to gathering information for the first few articles in this series, I reached out to Dr. Lia Festenstein, the new Community School Site Coordinator at Dr. Walter Cooper Academy. She took time from her busy (first week of school) schedule to respond to several questions I posed on the #10 School student body, their access to the hardware & software necessary for virtual learning and the expectations for student participation in this “new” learning environment. My sincere thanks to Dr. Festenstein for these thoughtful responses…
We have had a number of “drops” where students are unenrolled and enroll in another school, but this typically because the family has moved out of the City of Rochester. We have not had any children change their enrollments to Home Schooling. Homeschooling is a specific enrollment so they would no longer be DWCA students if they chose to enroll in homeschooling.
How many DWCA students have the necessary equipment, and internet access, to allow them to participate? All K-6 students have been assigned a Chromebook. If they shared that they did not have internet access they were also provided a MiFi by the district. On 9/11/20, DWCA held a “Meet and Greet” for parents to stop by the school and pick up a “Learning Bag” for their student. Each Learning Bag contained the assigned computer if they did not already have one, a MiFi if requested, and materials prepared by their teachers for the first ten weeks of school. This varied by teacher and grade, but typically contained items like workbooks for the ELA program, math manipulatives, etc. Each set of parents came during their “assigned time” so that it was possible to remain socially distant, and the event was held outside in the parking lot. Parents and children were able to meet their new teachers “live” at this event, and could ask any questions they might have had. Follow up… Are any additional “meet & greet” events between teachers, families and students being planned for this Fall? Parent Teacher conferences are entirely digital this year. Due to guidelines around social distancing there are no other events planned at this time.
What is the size of this year's DWCA student body, by Grade level?
How many of these students have been "regularly" participating in the remote learning process?
Total Enrollment: 320
We are only in week #1 of remote learning, so it is difficult to actually gauge what long term participation will look like. Also, we are still getting Chromebooks to some families that either had broken ones, or were unable to pick up one at School, for whatever reason. Over 70% of our Cooper Scholars have logged in during this first week. I anticipate that the numbers will change over the next couple of weeks, as we get into a routine.
Pre K 3 yr olds - 14
Grade 1 - 55
Grade 4 - 53
Pre K 4 yr olds - 14
Grade 2 - 53
Grade 5 - 47
Kindergarten
Grade 3 - 49
Grade 6 - 66
- 40
Follow up… How many DWCA students are currently not attending and instead being “home-schooled”, “pod-schooled”, or just not schooled at all?
Follow up… Have you been able to monitor remote learning to determine if there’s been any improvement in remote learning participation, since week #1? Yes. Teachers take daily attendance based on work completed off line
8 | The ROCHESTER ENGINEER NOVEMBER 2020
res news - tutoring
