{"id":3690,"date":"2020-04-06T12:07:01","date_gmt":"2020-04-06T17:07:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/?p=3690"},"modified":"2020-04-06T12:07:48","modified_gmt":"2020-04-06T17:07:48","slug":"virtual-grace-thoughts-on-the-first-few-days-of-zoom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/virtual-grace-thoughts-on-the-first-few-days-of-zoom\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Grace: Thoughts on the First Few Days of Zoom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Typically around the end of March, students and their families start making their way back to the New York City area to get ready to return to school after a long and restful Spring Break. This year, everything is different. Due to the spread of COVID-19 in the United States, and specifically New York, the Grace community has gone virtual. On Friday, March 13th, Grace ran a \u2018practice\u2019 day on what is now our home for the time being: Zoom. Students and teachers gathered and shared a few good laughs on this digital platform and tried to get comfortable with the software. Then, everyone said their goodbyes and went on their way to Spring Break, which, this year, meant staying home as much as possible to limit the spread of the virus. Since returning from Spring Break, Grace has re-opened its doors, but for now, that remains on Zoom. After the first full week of online classes, there are mixed reviews on how it\u2019s gone so far.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like it’s been a lot of screen time,\u201d said Evan Sarno \u201821, \u201cit gets very repetitive at times and I feel like the learning isn\u2019t the same as it was in person because we\u2019re not actively contributing in the same way.\u201d He continued on to say that, \u201cit\u2019s much harder to focus on a whiteboard on Zoom than to an in-person lecture.\u201d Evan was just one of the many students who expressed their concern with the way things had gone over the first week of online classes. Paul Carey \u201823 said \u201cI don\u2019t like it so far. It hasn\u2019t been very productive and the classes feel way too long.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

When Head of School, Mr. Davison was asked about the first week of classes, he shared some mixed reviews. \u201cI think people are happy with how things have gone in a general sense.\u201d He admitted that it will take some time to get used to, saying \u201cit\u2019s a very different animal from regular teaching.\u201d When asked about the difficulties that both students and teachers have faced while making this adjustment, he said that \u201ceverybody is suffering from eye strain and it\u2019s going to be something that we have to take into account in terms of the pacing.\u201d As many students expressed, the classes have felt way too long, and Mr. Davison agrees: \u201cThe read I get is that 80 minutes is too long for this particular medium, so the teachers need to adjust what they\u2019re doing. We have the time to get this so that the teachers feel confident and so the students feel engaged.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, this will mean making some changes to the schedule, which Mr. Davison is very open to. \u201cI think you\u2019ll see that we are going to make at least one day in the week end at 12 pm, getting rid of the last block and the arts blocks\u201d He continued, saying \u201cwe\u2019ve gone back and forth on the number of advisory meetings, but I would assume you\u2019re going to see fewer of those and I think we\u2019ll see other changes to Wednesday.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One positive that he noted was the engagement and preparedness of the students during these strange times. \u201cI\u2019ve heard, generally speaking from teachers, that they\u2019re very pleased with how cooperative and how collaborative the students have been, that all the students are taking this very seriously too.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lastly, he expressed his desire for our community to get something out of this challenging experience. \u201cI hope it makes everybody appreciate each other in person much more. With my 9th grade class, we were talking about it, and I heard people say \u2018it\u2019s school without the fun of school\u2019 and you know, teenagers dread school to some extent, that\u2019s normal, but there\u2019s lots of fun stuff that goes on at school that people really miss, and I hope that they come back with a sense of valuing the fun of school.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He concluded with a message that he wanted to share with the community: \u201cKeep smiling, keep safe. When you smile, it releases an enzyme in your brain that calms you and focuses you so if you just remember to keep smiling, it\u2019s going to help us go through this.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Obviously, this has been a tough experience for all, but at the moment, few other options present themselves. Perhaps with time and a few adjustments, Grace will be able to make the most of Zoom School.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Typically around the end of March, students and their families start making their way back to the New York City area to get ready to return to school after a… Continue reading “Virtual Grace: Thoughts on the First Few Days of Zoom”<\/span> <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":3692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[200,7],"tags":[180,256,673,669,650],"appful":[],"class_list":["post-3690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recent","category-school","tag-featured","tag-grace","tag-online-school","tag-social-distancing","tag-zoom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9uEnr-Xw","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/IMG_3570.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3693,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3690\/revisions\/3693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3690"},{"taxonomy":"appful","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/appful?post=3690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}