North Judson-San Pierre students may get a couple planned eLearning days next school year, to give teachers more time to work on curriculum. Superintendent Dr. Annette Zupin recently told the school board that while the existing Bluejay Collaboration Time is helpful, it isn’t enough, according to last fall’s curriculum audit.
“We need more than two hours two times next year for teachers to meet – and I’m going to give an example – for Mr. Gappa who’s in Math to be able to discuss Math with all of the high school Math teachers and the junior/senior high, but they also need some time to find out what the fourth grade, where Mrs. Harper’s teaching, what they’re doing. We need times for them to talk.”
To solve that problem, the school board will be asked this month to update the 2019-2020 school calendar, to convert October 28 and January 20 from “BCT days” to planned eLearning days. “Those days, teachers will be here, and part of their time has to be answering questions and helping the kids but part of the time can be on those meetings,” Zupin explained.
She added that plans are in the works to help prevent bus drivers and other support staff from losing wages because of the extra eLearning days. “Our intent was never to save money on this,” Zupin said. “So I believe what the supervisors are looking at, ‘Can the bus drivers have professional development?’ ‘Can the teacher assistants have professional development?’ So I don’t have a concrete answer as to what they will be doing, but we will do a better job of that.”
Zupin added that teachers and students did a great job during N.J.-S.P.’s first year of eLearning, but said there are some things that the school corporation needs to do better. She planned to send out an eLearning survey to parents, students, and staff, to get feedback.
