April 17, 2020
The Lord has certainly captured our attention this Spring as we all do our part to confront the coronavirus. We have had losses - Hyme Park and Hanel Choi lost their grandmother to COVID - and others have family and friends battling the virus. Even as we grieve with them we give thanks that so many in our community have been safe and healthy so far. There is a real sense in the air that we are all in this together.
I am thankful also to our faculty for making the change with characteristic growth-mindset, professionalism and creativity. Many of our teachers are working very hard at teaching, while also taking care of their own children at home. Brenda and I have our 2 college children home and 2 Wilberforce students, scattered through the house doing remote learning, while we work, plan and keep the supply of food, clean laundry, and wifi bandwidth flowing.
Yesterday, Governor Murphy announced that schools will remain closed through May 15, but further suggested June or July is the likely timeframe for reopening the economy. Thus, it appears unlikely that we will be able to reconvene our school physically this spring. If something were to dramatically change to enable us to re-open in May or June, we will let you know immediately, but we do not expect that. That is certainly difficult news, especially after 5 weeks of staying at home.
With this in mind, we continue to work at making Wilberforce's remote delivery as robust as possible. By early June, our students will be very tired of being at home, but they will be prepared to advance to the next grade level. We are also thinking through events that we normally would have done this spring, and devising ways to re-construct these events within social distancing guidelines. For example, for graduation for the class of 2020 we are considering online scenarios or delaying the event until later in the summer. For all of our spring events - Junior Project Defense Presentations, Fine Arts Day, Class 5 Send-Off, Class 8 Recognition - we are working on ways to conduct these events online as scheduled.
Phase 2 We also have good news: We plan to resume physical gathering at school in the fall. The White House just published guidelines for re-opening in phases. https://www.whitehouse.gov/openingamerica/ Schools will be able to open in Phase 2, and we expect New Jersey will meet those criteria by September. That gives our state 4 months to put adequate testing and tracing in place, which is reasonable. Note that some colleges are talking about waiting until January 2021 to re-start on campus instruction. Colleges (and boarding schools) have a different set of circumstances to reckon with than K-12 schools such as ours. We plan to start in September on schedule.
Some additional good news comes from the CDC. The data accumulated to this point is very reassuring regarding school-aged children. Across the world, pediatric cases of COVID have generally been very mild. The rate of hospitalization for COVID cases of children under 18 is less than 1 in 100,000. https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/covidnet/COVID19_3.html (And in that group the predominance of serious infections is in < 1-year-old children.) That means that most school-aged children, unless they have underlying health issues, are at low risk of severe illness from COVID 19. The risk remains of children carrying the disease to their homes and outward from there, and we must manage this risk diligently, but it is very good news to know that most of our children are in this low risk category.
What we value and strive towards is teaching the whole child. This is a process of formation that shapes their thoughts, beliefs, relationships, desires and ways of relating to others and to God. Students at Wilberforce are known by their teachers. Teachers mentor, disciple, and speak into their strengths, weaknesses, quirks and habits; this level of relating is not fully accomplished online. We invest in the deliberate formation of habits; the habits of attention, reconciliation, kindness, civil discourse, public speaking, and leadership; this formation is much harder to cultivate online. Our school is the ideal environment for risk-taking, trying new things - trying out for the musical, joining an athletic team, and competing in debate. These are some of the things we really miss when we are not together. It has been a joy to see our teachers and parents re-creating uniquely Wilberforce activities remotely - morning assemblies, House competitions, boys and girls discussion groups, PTF prayer meetings. But these are provisional substitutes for the real thing.
There are two take-aways from these observations: First, we can deliver essential aspects for continuity of learning remotely for a season, when needed. Second, many of the things we value most about our school are best done in person. As we look to next year, we will work hard to deliver for our students who have to be off-site for a season. We are examining our methods and exploring technology tools to improve at online delivery in cases where it is needed. However, we do not have plans to become an on-line school or a "University-model" school. We operate best as a hands-on, face-to-face community of learners.
And we will look forward to being together again soon.
Staying Safe at Wilberforce When we are back together, here are some of the procedures that our Health Task Force has recommended to be put in place. We will modify our approach based on guidance from health experts and conditions in our area, both of which will evolve over time.
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