Students will spend two days a week in classrooms and three days a week learning remotely at home at Animas High School as the charter prepares to open Monday for the second school year affected by the novel coronavirus.
All AHS staff members have taken COVID-19 nasal swabs and antibody tests to form baseline data about transmission of the virus, and Head of School Sean Woytek said no one tested positive.
“We value teachers as designers, and we often had students on different learning platforms in each class. I think we realized last year that communication is much more difficult online than in person, and we’d like students to have only one or two different learning platforms for the coming year,” Woytek said about the software teachers use to administer their class websites online.
For the coming semester, teachers have been asked to minimize the different software used for online class management to keep the learning curve down for students and to aid in communication.
The learning platforms are where students get daily assignments, and where readings, videos and other learning supports are posted and where students, parents and teachers can communicate and check on progress and grades.
When school starts, freshmen and sophomores will meet in their classrooms on Mondays and Tuesdays, with remote learning, principally online, Wednesdays to Fridays. Juniors and seniors will meet in class Thursdays and Fridays with remote learning offered Mondays to Wednesdays.
To limit their person-to-person contacts, students will be grouped into cohorts, groups of students they will spend their time with while they are attending classes in person.
The freshman class will have three cohorts, while the sophomore, junior and senior classes will each have four cohorts.
Cohort size will range from eight to 15 students, and when students are attending class in person, the cohorts will be split into separate rooms to further reduce the contacts students have with each other.
Woytek said splitting the cohorts into separate rooms means a student will have contact with only three to five other students in addition to their teacher while attending in-person classes.
Like Durango School District 9-R students, AHS students will be required to fill out a daily self-certification form to assure the school they do not have COVID-19 symptoms: fever, chills, cough, shortness of breath, body aches or fatigue, loss of taste or smell, sore throat, running nose, vomiting or diarrhea.
Students with symptoms are asked to stay home and will not be allowed at school until they are healthy and have had a COVID-19 test.
Durango School District 9-R Superintendent Dan Snowberger said the first line of defense for schools is for parents to keep their children at home and not send them to school if they are exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms. By keeping students at home, everyone at their school will be protected from transmission.
“We’re going to get students back to school sooner if they stay at home if they are exhibiting a symptom. If they come to school, there’s a possibility they will have to self-quarantine for 14 days and anyone they come in contact with might need to self-quarantine as well,” he said.
Snowberger said the district is working with pediatric providers in Durango to ensure students can be rapidly tested if they are exhibiting symptoms, with results back in 36 to 72 hours. That should minimize the amount of in-person learning time students miss if they are exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms.
AHS, like District 9-R, is partnering with Cedar Diagnostics, a medical laboratory in Durango, to provide COVID-19 nasal swab tests to teachers and all staff members during the year.
One distinctive COVID-19 casualty of AHS is the traditional camping excursions it holds with classes and the annual ropes course freshmen go through to build their friendships and boost their relationships with teachers.
Because of viral transmission dangers, those trips have been canceled for the upcoming year.
Based on lessons learned last year, parents may be getting more telephone calls from teachers this year, Woytek said.
“We were sending a lot of emails that may take 30 seconds, but we’ve discovered a phone call is more effective and goes a lot further in building communication than a quick email,” he said.
The importance of face-time teachers have with students in class was also something illuminated by last year’s necessity to go to all-remote learning.
“I think a huge thing we learned last year is the importance of the day-to-day interactions, the little moments teachers have with students that help develop relationships,” Woytek said. “There’s a lot of data out there that students with good relationships with their teachers are more likely to thrive academically.”
parmijo@durangoherald.com
