Families, teachers navigate 'weird' first week of SVVSD online learning

Tens of thousands of students returned to school in St. Vrain Valley School District (SVVSD) last week for what will undoubtedly be an unprecedented academic year. First graders through high school seniors started school on Aug. 18, with kindergarteners following suit on Aug. 20. Instead of first day high-fives and fist bumps, students greeted their classmates and teachers through a computer screen.

SVVSD has a handful of learning modes for this year. The majority of students are following the district's reopening plan, which will be 100% online until at least the last week of September. At that point, administrators will reassess the safety of bringing students to some degree of hybrid instruction, with time split between in-person and virtual learning.

Programs like St. Vrain Online Global Academy, an alternative high school program that had in-person components in the past, are also virtual for the time being. The only schools deviating from the district plans are charter schools, including Twin Peaks Charter Academy, which is implementing hybrid learning and cohorting to manage student interactions.

Starting this fall, students and families have yet another option: LaunchED Virtual Academy, where students technically stay affiliated with their previous school, but take completely separate classes from their non-LaunchED peers. Both options are free to families, with the usual caveats for situations like AP class fees. Both have live learning time in addition to asynchronous self-study. Like the COVID-19-adaptable plan, LaunchED is available for all grades.

Any family in the district can choose LaunchED for their child; roughly 3,000 students are enrolled. For Elizabeth Scott, who has one high schooler and another child that graduated recently, she chose LaunchED in large part for a more consistent school experience. She said her kids struggled, even in pre-pandemic times, to keep track of the multiple platforms that teachers and the district use to post assignments, grades and announcements.

In contrast, the LaunchED program will be held entirely on one platform called Schoology, which Scott hopes will minimize any communication confusion between her kid and teachers. The district does not use Zoom for classes, avoiding the software's widespread outages on Monday.

"It struck us that going online and knowing when teachers are available, where assignments are posted, it would help our child focus on the academics rather than administration of classes," Scott said.

The student had a schedule for brick-and-mortar school before switching to LaunchED, and the initial LaunchED schedule didn't have all of the classes the student needed to stay on track. Scott said it was only through an administrative fluke of sending her kid's change-0f-schedule request to the wrong counselor, who forwarded it to the correct one and thus put her name "on the top of the pile," so to speak, that she got things sorted out.

Despite making the switch to LaunchED as soon as it was announced, Scott says her kid's class schedule changed as recently as last weekend, after school had already started. Scott considers her child lucky; one of the counselors told her they had hundreds of similar emails in their inbox of families trying to sort out schedule issues.

"This is the scenario we've always been afraid of," Scott said. "Staff are doing absolutely everything they can, but they've been thrown into a system that's disastrous for kids and nerve-wracking for parents."

With barely two weeks before classes started, the district announced it would start its students entirely online. Scott said that even though she had committed her child to LaunchED before, that announcement came as a big relief. She feels like virtual learning is the safest option for the community's health, at least until a vaccine comes around.

In the classroom without a class

While Niwot High School students are starting the academic year entirely online like their LaunchED peers, teachers and administrators are working out of the school building, with attention to health precautions like mask-wearing. Principal Eric Rauschkolb noted that, save for a minor glitch with updating the Webex platform, "It's been a more positive experience than expected." Teachers underwent professional development over the summer to help them adapt to virtual class, and Rauschkolb said he hopes that will make this semester much smoother than the transition to online last spring.

But the building is quieter without its students. U.S. history and AP government teacher Sarah Demmel called it "weird and different" to be in the classroom without students physically present. Still, it's much better than the alternative.

"If we were at home all day, we would be having all these struggles trying to figure out how to do these things, and we couldn't pop next door to ask other teachers for help and troubleshoot together," Demmel said.

When school shifted online in the spring, Demmel already knew her students pretty well. But as with every school year, she's starting this fall with a completely new roster, and she knows it's going to take longer than usual to get to know everyone. She said she's grateful to be teaching in real time for at least part of each class, to try and bridge that gap.

"Building connections and relationships, that's one of the most important things to me," Demmel said. "If I didn't have to do live instruction, I wouldn't know them at all."

As they ease back into the workload, Demmel says she knows some of the students are overwhelmed, "and that's valid." She's trying to start each class with some good news, to remind the kids that this too will pass.

"Of course we're exhausted, stressed, anxious about what's going on in the world, but we need to take care of ourselves and do things that rejuvenate us too," Demmel said. "It might be a long time before we're back in class, and that has to be okay, even though I desperately want to see [the students]."