{"id":26497,"date":"2020-05-07T18:18:24","date_gmt":"2020-05-07T22:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26497"},"modified":"2020-05-07T18:18:32","modified_gmt":"2020-05-07T22:18:32","slug":"pickering-college-moves-full-speed-ahead-in-new-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/pickering-college-moves-full-speed-ahead-in-new-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Pickering College moves full speed ahead in \u201cnew normal\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Pickering College has marked many firsts over its 177-year\nhistory, but last week they marked a first nobody in the independent school\u2019s\ncommunity anticipated just two short months ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every two years, all independent schools need to be\ninspected by the Ministry of Education. This year, Pickering College\u2019s turn\ncame and the Newmarket-based school was the very first in all of Ontario to be\nreviewed virtually by the Ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewers liked what they saw as Pickering College has\nembarked on a new journey to deliver its key programming from Kindergarten all\nthe way through Grade 12 seamlessly online to its students at home and abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this regard, Pickering College had somewhat of a head\nstart. The school initiated a Global Online Education Week in 2018, coinciding\nwith March break and Easter. Instead of having boarding students return to the\nschool early, they asked students to stay in their home countries to take part\nin four days of Global Education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had some experience with this before, but we didn\u2019t\nanticipate this would ever happen long term, under these circumstances,\u201d says\nJanet Downer, Assistant Head of School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just before March break of this year, students and\nteachers were asked to bring home what they would need to get up and running\nshould operations have to go virtual in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and,\nthanks to their experience in 2018, Pickering College teachers were able to get\nonline the day after their scheduled return from March break after a day of\ntraining to make sure they could indeed hit the ground running. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere has been a progression of synchronous lessons,\u201d\nexplains Ms. Downer. \u201cThat first week when we were online, we started\nasynchronous lessons to give teachers the opportunity to develop and learn\nsoftware and also to give students and families a chance, too, to get caught up\nwith everything that is going on. As our teachers became more adept and\ncomfortable with the technology, they started to increase the number of\nsynchronous lessons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur goal was to have a number of synchronous classes for\nthe Junior School students to support parents  \u2013 otherwise they become the home schoolers and\nthat is a challenge to juggle everything else they are managing, as well as\nteaching their children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pickering College is not a school that relies on standard\ntextbooks, adds Kim Bartlett, Senior Director of Teaching, Learning and\nStrategic Partnerships, and that also helped ease the transition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have been teaching with a variety of tools for\nyears,\u201d says Ms. Bartlett. \u201cThe difference [between the grades] is we tried to\nchoose the most suitable tool for each division. With Grades 6 \u2013 12, we\u2019re\nusing Microsoft Teams which is actually a fabulous interactive platform and\nwe\u2019re able to record our classes so when students are overseas, they can watch classes\non demand. We have instant messaging with our students so we can quickly\nrespond to any questions they have, and it is a pretty interactive platform.\nWe\u2019re able to have discussions and white boards and debates, and all kinds of\nthings using Microsoft Teams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed, Pickering College debating students recently took\ntheir verbal bouts online, covering such diverse topics as child beauty\npageants to crimes committed over social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ms. Downer served as a judge for this new approach to\ndebating and said while students weren\u2019t able to feed off the energy and\nfeedback from live audiences, they confidently stepped up to the plate. The\nsame can be said for Grade 9 students who, as part of PC\u2019s Global Leadership\nProgram, are plugging away on their Puma\u2019s Den projects \u2013 a uniquely PC spin on\nDragon\u2019s Den.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach of us have been given a problem in the world to\ntackle and we\u2019re supposed to create a product that will help us tackle this\nproblem,\u201d explains Aurora student Ella MacAlpine. \u201cMy group is looking at\ninvasive species, so we\u2019re creating a product that will help the issue of\ninvasive species.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGetting settled in [to the virtual school] was the\nhardest thing, but once you got used to it, it was pretty smooth going.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deanna MacAlpine, a Grade 11 student, agrees, adding that\nbeing able to keep the school\u2019s routine of morning meetings and advisory groups\nhas helped to adjust to the new normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was a little bit difficult just to get adjusted to online learning and not seeing our friends every day, but because our school was mostly paperless to begin with and all of our classes and programs that we use have already been online, it was just getting used to talking to your teachers via video chat. It is good for us to still have our morning meetings and advisory groups, so things still feel familiar. We talk about how we\u2019re doing academically, our situation at home, and it helps make everything feel a little bit more normal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pickering College has marked many firsts over its 177-year history, but last week they marked a first nobody in the independent school\u2019s community anticipated just two short months ago. Every two years, all independent schools need to be inspected by the Ministry of Education. This year, Pickering College\u2019s turn came and the Newmarket-based school was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/2020-05-07-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6Tn","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 07:12:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}