Reviewing, Planning & Learning

Dear Casa di Mir Families,

You know who isn’t following the governmental ‘shelter in place’ orders?  Hummingbirds, bluejays, fruit blossoms, and the monstrous bean plants in our raised beds on Lower Campus.  They have no regard for such official declarations!  Honestly, I couldn’t be more grateful to see them, and to be reminded that the world is still rotating on its axis, as usual (humans aside).

Over the past week, our administrative team has been reviewing, planning, and learning how to better our systems during this era of COVID-19.  I recognize that these systems are not infallible and I want to stress that we’re doing our best to evolve with the times and context.  Many of you have reached out and offered suggestions, guidance, and have even offered to help – especially in regards to using technology.  One of the most frequent discussion topics is our use of the on-line meeting platform, Zoom. Over the past month, they have been hit with a number of challenges with so many schools using their tools.  Because of these concerns from schools, they’ve made changes and have stated official guidelines for institutions like Casa di Mir.  While there will be more challenges to meet, these guidelines will help us all be safer and have more effective meetings together on-line.  Please understand the steps we’re taking for best practices using Zoom:

1. All meetings are defaulted to waiting rooms, so the host has to let each person in.  This requires some patience, as the teacher will need to let you in- so hold tight!
2. All student and parent names need to be recognized, otherwise, you will not be let in.
3. We will disable ‘annotation’ as our default, so that students aren’t writing on the screen, etc.
4. Teachers who are using their meeting ID # for Zoom meetings will require a password now. Moving forward, for all of our faculty, this will be the first name of the teacher (Ex. Tyler).

During our Continuation of Learning period, what is logistically reasonable and successful at home is going to look different for each level, family, as well as child, yet we can promise that we are continuing to study how to improve, where needed. Thank you for your ideas, creativity, and energy!

Take care, Tyler Bourcier Head of School