Dear SBCA Parents,
I hope you are enjoying your time with your family. The staff and administration at South Baldwin Christian Academy (SBCA) met today to finalize our plan for eLearning. I think it’s important for everyone to remember that this is going to be something new for teachers, students, and parents. We will all need to learn new things and be gracious with one another as we move through this time in our school’s history. I believe the SBCA community can be a leader in delivering a high-quality, Christ-centered academic experience for our students using technology.
As we proceed with a tremendous amount of prayer and grace, we will be using several online platforms with our students to make this transition. The first platform we will be using is a product called Zoom. It is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars. This will allow our teachers to host office hours every day from 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. It will also allow our teachers to host small group instruction, one-on-one instruction, and parent meetings. Your student’s teacher will be sending you an email invitation to a Zoom meeting on Monday so please make sure to check your email inbox.
The second product will be using is Google Classroom. Google Classroom is a free web service developed by Google for schools that aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments in a paperless way. All of the students 4th through 12th grade have already created a Google Classroom account. If you have questions about their login information please contact your student’s teacher.
ClassDojo is an educational technology communication app and website that connects primary school teachers, students, and families through communication features, such as a feed for photos and videos from the school day. Our PreK – 3rd-grade teachers have already been using this all year and will continue to communicate with you using this platform.
Our expectation for students is to log in to Google Classroom or Class Dojo at least once per day to receive daily assignments or turn in completed assignments. Students will also be responsible for communicating any questions they have to their teacher using email or Zoom.
Our expectations for teachers are to be available from 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. to answer any questions students may have about the assignments they are responsible for completing that day. Teachers may also schedule instructional times on Zoom. Zoom allows for those lessons to be recorded and available to students even if they cannot participate during the scheduled time. Teachers will be collecting and grading assignments as well as providing feedback to students through Google Classroom or ClassDojo. Teachers will also be available for private parent Zoom conferences by appointment.
Our intention as a school is to keep this process simple and effective. We are committed to student learning and are looking forward to continuing to partner with parents in the education of their children. Please be in prayer for students as they navigate this new approach to learning, for teachers as they discover new ways to teach, and for the other SBCA parents as they support this new educational process.
Blessings,
William “Buzz” Lance
Interim Head of School
