ANNUAL REPORT 2020-2021
Elementary School Report
Matthew Woodward Elementary School Principal
Ryan Hopkins-Wilcox Elementary School Assistant Principal
T
he 2020-2021 school year has been unlike any other before. Understandably, we faced many challenges with COVID-19 and its impact on building a schedule and program to support all learners. Our teachers worked to build responsive units, connect both virtually and on campus, and gather materials to send home, just to name a few things. Our students attended numerous Zoom meetings and longed to be sitting alongside their peers in the classroom. Yet through it all, resilience was evident from our students, teachers, and community. We continued to gather feedback, listen to suggestions and adjust where it would help position us to better support learners. We prioritized the student voice in our communications this year, as well as by allowing them to have ownership over their learning, such as on Day 8/Wonder Wednesday. There is so much to celebrate and be proud of in the elementary school. We would like to take this time to highlight a few of these. As we prepared to launch the school year, we leaned on the great feedback that students, teachers and parents had provided from the previous year. Knowing that we would launch in our DDL program, we developed a set of guiding principles by which to plan.
12
Guiding Priciples
Goals
ISK’s DDLP is guided by our Mission, Vision and Educational Aims: creating, communicating, soliving, learning and acting. We ask all of our community to remember we are all here to support children and the communities they (and we) live in. We aspire to craft distance learning experiences that continue to encourage experiential, integrated and personalized learning. When our DDLP is activated die to a community crisis requiring school closures, we must also be mindful of and responsive to the diverse challenges that our educators and families may be experiencing.
oo Provide engaging, meaningtul & equitable learning experiences for all learners that fosters independence oo Cultivate a sense of belonging, connectedness and wellbeing oo Create simple and predictable routines for our students and families oo Design an approach that is responsive to our students’ and families’ needs in this unique context oo provide the flexibility that our current context calls for, including communication of units and materials, and helping provide tools for our learners oo Be mindful of screen time, and deliver a distance learning experience that incorporates core (reading, writing, math and inquiry), specials and personal discovery (learning to play an instrument, STEM, outdoor play, etc)
