PRINCEVILLE — When Kaua‘i’s North Shore public elementary schools took their spring break, March 13, the Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay was beginning its process to select the Teacher of the Year for this 2019-20 school year.
Little did anyone know that Kaua‘i’s school students would not be physically attending until fall, when school starts again.
Principal Tony Sines from Hanalei School and Principal Sherri Gonsalves of Kilauea School were catapulted into the world of distance learning, and both watched in amazement as the transformation began.
“The first thing we had to do,” said Gonsalves, “was make a connection with all students and families to let them know what was available, and that our school was there to support the students and their families in whatever way they needed. Fortunately, with the support of Aloha Angels and the Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay, we had enough devices for each child to have their own device if they wanted it.”
The efforts of the teachers to share their skills and experience with tools like Google Classroom and Google Forms, Class Dojo, Flipgrip and Zoom, was inspiring, the principals said.
People enjoyed cross-training each other. The teachers put in extra hours every week, uploading their lesson plans to share with other teachers and preparing instructional kits for families that did not participate in the distance learning, they sid.
Many teachers stretched to embrace all these new digital tools, which had to be assimilated in an accelerated fashion. Gonsalves shared her appreciation for all her staff and the Kilauea community for coming together for the benefit of their students.
“Change is almost always difficult,” Gonsalves said. “Being flexible is important, and gratitude, like flexibility, is a very valuable skill. It is not about the things we have, but how we use them and share with others.”
“Having gone through the transition to a more-virtual learning environment, we had to take a deep dive to look at the educational standards and identify goals within those standards,” said Sines.
“Younger students have limited attention spans. So our strategy is to get in and get out with our virtual sessions,” he said.
”The circumstances also provided families with the opportunities to spend more time with their kids, and students were given interactive projects to do with their families, like interviewing their parents to learn more about their family tree,” Sines said.
As the Hanalei Bay Rotary’s vocational chair Margie Bennett approached each principal for a recommendation for the teacher award, Sines had a suggestion. In light of all the extra time and effort teachers made to adjust to the new educational paradigm, engaging in lots of training sessions to learn tools and software unfamiliar to them, Sines suggested giving every teacher a teacher of the year award.
“What a great idea,” Bennett said. “Each teacher went above and beyond to create the curriculum that provided the education and social and emotional support, despite the responsibility to be social distancing,” said Bennett.
“Where there’s a will there’s a way. Our vocational-services group has a limited budget, so we found a private donor to help match our monies so that we could give the awards to each of the teachers.”
The gifts provided were sourced from Kaua‘i businesses. Included was a special thank you letter to each North Shore public elementary school teacher. And so, the Rotary Club of Hanalei Bay was able to present all 54 faculty members at Hanalei and Kilauea schools with Rotary Teacher of the Year Awards.
Sines summed up the response to this recognition: “This is a wonderful message that places great value on what our teachers do day in and day out. Thank you for all that you and each Rotarian does for our community.”
Source: The Garden Island
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