Since transitioning from in-person school and afterschool in March, the leadership at Arts and Athletics have taken a hard look at our mission and how best to serve our community in these new and rapidly changing circumstances. Central to that response has been to the embrace internet and media technologies to reach families and children whom we otherwise could not.
The visible product of these efforts is our new video server which currently holds over two hundred videos which have been viewed well over a thousand times. The number of videos, the selection of video subject-matter, and the platform by which we share them are all things that we take pride in even while we strive to improve them. But this visible evidence is still just part of the work that Arts and Athletics has undertaken over the last three months.
What’s also impressive is the talent and intelligence and energy and problem-solving power of our staff, and I am quite happy to brag on their behalf! Behind the scenes, the Arts and Athletics crew has been working to learn these new skills–remote learning, lesson planning, and video production–while contemplating how they can best and most effectively serve our community in the future.
The afterschool team is smart and talented to be sure, but they are also courageous and deeply committed to the work to promoting educational opportunity.
The current crisis has revealed that the harm caused when schools are closed and life is disrupted is not visited equally upon all children, but disproportionately affects those without the latest technology, who come from lower socio-economic situations, and who rely more heavily on their school. As we build out our distance learning capacity, then, it is with an underlying belief that new educational solutions have the potential to do tremendous good where there is the greatest need.