Jason Young is the director of education for the Northern Lights School Division. (Derek Cornet/larongeNOW Staff)

By Derek Cornet

school division

‘We’ve dealt with challenges before’: Learning opportunities available for northern students

Apr 7, 2020 | 5:00 PM

Staff with the Northern Lights School Division are working every day and are presented with new problems they’ve never faced before.

That’s according to Director of Education Jason Young, who said administrators, teachers and support staff are working together to create solutions for students to succeed despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Teachers returned to work last week at home and are now focused on educating students virtually through distance learning.

“The biggest piece for us is offering supplemental learning opportunities to kids,” Young said. “If students… choose to re-engage in supplemental learning opportunities, their mark will go up by virtue to the fact they are working on their assignments.”

As it stands now, Young noted every student will receive at least a mark of 50 per cent and nothing less. Those marks can be increased through the supplemental program and teachers are still reaching out to students at this time. Young added teachers have had some difficulties with students responding and it would be too early to tell how many will participate.

If parents would like to have their children involved with the supplemental learning program, they’re encouraged to reach out to the principal of the school their child attends. Young said some of how the program will be rolled out is still being determined. Most of it, however, would likely be done through online learning.

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“One of the assumptions being made with that type of delivery is that everyone has access,” Young said. “That has been a challenge for us to try and engage all students regardless if they have access to that technology. That would mean then print materials and that’s something we’re grappling with.”

While worksheets could assist those students without the means to do online work, there’s challenges in both sending and receiving the material. For instance, staff wouldn’t want to unknowingly spread COVID-19 to students in the process of sending it out or receiving it back for grading.

Last week, the board of education met several times to discussing the ongoing pandemic. The next regular meeting is scheduled for April 17, which Young noted would be done mainly through teleconferencing as another anti-virus measure to avoid groups.

Young also said he is proud of the work being done at the central office in La Ronge, as well as from teachers and support staff. He believes everyone has really stepped up to create new ways of learning amid uncertainty.

“As a school division, we’ve dealt with challenges before,” Young said. “The challenges we’ve dealt with include the wildfires and that was more during the summer, but it sure affected our operations. We’ve had floods and we’ve dealt with a school shooting. Those crisis situations we’ve dealt with help us then to know how to plan for dealing with a crisis situation.”

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derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno