We all have experienced an interesting twenty six weeks. We have learnt many things about ourselves and others.
We have asked all staff (where possible) to make sure they have a week of no school work.
We acknowledge that for some staff, they have not had a break from working or planning school learning opportunities and programmes for twenty six weeks.
We understand that there is a perception that teachers have all 'these' holidays. We also appreciate all of you who understand and appreciate the time and energy that is put into learning programmes, when your children are not at school and understand that we call the holidays "non-contact time" as a result.
Since Jan 20 Staff have been planning learning opportunities, understanding evaluations and assessments with regard to your child / children. We do this as teachers to ensure we know where best to pitch the learning opportunities for each individual child to provide opportunity and guidance for progress.
Of course back in January we had no idea that the COVID-19 Pandemic was going to impact Aotearoa and more explicitly Inglewood Primary School in the manner it did. As the news hit the weekend of March 21 - 22, when it was announced we were moving into Alert Level 3, we firstly had to have conversations with our parents of health compromised, vulnerable children and also staff members, who were advised not to attend school.
Tuesday 24 March we were informed that we were moving to Alert Level 4 complete lockdown starting midnight 26 March and that the school "holidays' had been moved forward starting the following Monday 30 March.
These actions as we know, were made in the best interests of the country.
Never before had any educator experienced an event such as this and as a Staff and BoT we navigated the vast information coming to us from Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education.
Overall we are proud of the way we communicated throughout this time.
We are proud of the way our staff worked tirelessly to prepare online learning platform for parents and children to access, kept the school administration operating and providing support for families with assistance from agencies and staff.
We are proud of the way we ALWAYS remained true to our values and asked whanau to ALWAYS put Hauora first and if learning at home became stressful or cause anxiety then NOT to do it, Health and Wellbeing was more important.
Over this time as staff we learnt about Zoom and responding to online requests through Seesaw and Google Classrooms. Our teachers, Middle and Senior Leaders learnt about Zoom fatigue - which we now understand is a real thing. We appreciate our Board of Trustees for their continued support and also learning about Zoom.
From tonight, we are asking staff to pop a note on the bottom of their emails for this break, stating they are having a digital break and will get back to you just prior to the start of Term 3 starting Monday 20 July.
As a staff we are appreciative of the many and varied ways you, our community, have and continue to support our school. We as a staff of Inglewood Primary feel VERY privileged to work within such a supportive community. We are also ALL very grateful we are in a business sector where our jobs have remained safe, unlike some of our own and school community families.- thank you all.
