Danville District 118 has made the decision to go virtual for all of its pre-kindergarten students between now and Christmas break; due to both staff and bus driver shortages thanks in large part to COVID illnesses. But as assistant superintendent John Hart explains, going virtual with children this young does not mean putting them in front of a screen for a long time. Instead, it’s a matter of keeping some continuity going, with occasional contact with their pre-K teachers.
AUDIO: So usually you look at about ten minutes of screen time at a time at a setting. So typically teachers will have the kids get on once, sometimes twice, during the school day. And then a lot of times they’ll have paper packets that are made to go along with the lessons that they’re teaching. There’s teachers that will actually reach out to students one-on-one, via their tablet. So if somebody was receiving speech and language services, you know, they can continue with those services.
As for the K-through 12 District 118 students, Hart says the bus route changes for now that they needed to be informed about seem to have gone okay.
AUDIO: So far, so good. I think we did a pretty good job in communicating. We wish we could have communicated a little bit earlier, but we did get the information out. You know we really, really did not want to do this, this was not our preference. Slowly but surely they’ll have more drivers back, we’ll have more teachers back.
The final day of school for District 118 before winter break is Friday, December 17th.
