Newsletter, Number 10, 13th May, 2020

Dear Parents and Caregivers, As you will all be aware the school will be open to all our students again under Level 2 restrictions from Monday18th May.

The school is currently working through the planning stages for this and we’re all very excited about heading back to school.

During Level 3 we ran three separate family based bubbles. In Level 2 we are allowed to revert back to our standard classroom organisation. Please keep an eye out for more information regarding our school wide organisation via email by Friday at the latest.

Until then we can confirm the following:

The school will be strictly following Ministry of Education/Ministry of Health guidelines.

We are keen to make tracking and tracing as easy as possible for all, so we are requiring families to drop their children off at the gate on Heath Street, or at the alleyway on Spring Road and that parents don’t enter the school grounds. As always, there will be some exceptions, for example coming in to pick up sick children or new enrolments.

We will have teachers at the gate to help welcome any anxious children. Please contact your child’s teacher if you feel your child may be apprehensive about coming onto the grounds by themselves on the first day/week to organise a time to meet the teacher at a specific time and place.

If your child is sick then they shouldn’t be at school. At Level 2 this is even for the common cold. Please don’t send your child along on the off chance that everything will be fine from the school’s point of view. We will be asking parents to come and pick their children up even if they have a cold. This is the same requirement for our staff, we will also be telling them to stay away if they are sick.

This is a good time to make sure that your child/ren has all the stationery that they need replenished. It’s important that everything is named and easily identifiable as people won’t be sharing their stationery at all during Level 2

The school will be following many procedures, but the most important one will be for all to practise gold standard hygiene practices. We will all be washing our hands frequently, when moving in and out of classrooms and moving around the school. School provided sanitiser and soap washing facilities will be available for everyone throughout the school.

School lunches will again be available to purchase from Wednesday.

If you are not planning to send your child/ren back to school during Level 2 for whatever reason please contact the school office and let us know.

We are hoping that our school roll will remain stable tomorrow and Friday as we head into Level 2. We are expecting there to be 27 students at school and we have made plans for these students. The school isn’t open to new students technically until Monday, but we certainly can make exceptions - as long as we know. Please email me if you can’t look after your child/ren on Thursday and Friday due to new work commitments and you would like them to attend school; stevez@gleniti.school.nz

During Level 2 we won’t be requiring parents to come into the school for parent help … whether it be reading groups or helping run PMP etc.

Finally, a huge thank you to all families and whanau for the work and support that you have given our community over the last seven weeks. I have been so proud of what we have all achieved together in these difficult times. No doubt there will be more difficult times to come, but for a brief moment we should stop and reflect on what we’ve all done – together. It’s amazing. Ngā mihi

Regards

Steve Zonnevylle

Congratulations to all our Principal Award recipients last week!

About a month ago Simone Caspritz and the school were asked to help out a German journalist for the Zeit newspaper. The journalist was keen to write a story about the differences between New Zealand and German schools during lockdown. It makes for a surprising read! https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/schule/2020-05/homeschooling-neuseeland-deutschland-schule-online-unterricht-probleme/komplettansicht?fbclid=IwAR2e3RhyHRyUQnltMXqQWdLamKcyvuRlhJDfFiD8H-wm58e98L3wd5fk130

Unsurprisingly the link will take you to the article in German …ask google and it’ll be translated for you, or take a read of Simone’s German translation. Why is Germany so slow when it comes to digital teaching? Home classes in Germany fail due to worksheets and the GDPR. New Zealand is completely different: where children get laptops and TV stations broadcast lessons. Homeschooling: The conditions for homeschooling are not optimal everywhere. Monday morning, eight-year-old Leo sits at the laptop and sings the school song - together with theprincipal, whom he sees on the screen in front of him. The principal shows chords on the guitar, his dog Daisy jumps through the picture, the principal speaks, explains and encourages. He does is every day since New Zealand has been locked down and school kids have to stay at home.

Where in Germany is there a school principal who does this? As there is a compulsory schooling for pupils, there is also a teaching obligation for teachers. And even if there are of course many teachers who work significantly more during the lockdown than usual: Overall, the teaching obligation is massively neglected. This is mainly due to the fact that Germany lacks any systematic approach to school closings. The state must provide enough laptops In New Zealand, where we currently live, our children have a lockdown schedule. It says exactly when you need to sit on your notebook for which online lessons. Before the first class, the teachers sent the rules around (turn off the microphone until one of the teachers calls), the second time my daughter thought of the water bottle that should be next to her. And after her last English lesson, she immediately started the book review she was supposed to write. She had no questions for me, the teacher had already explained everything. In the following days, the students shared and discussed their reviews in their digital classroom, a learning platform where they could upload files, photos, videos and communicate with each other. This is standard in New Zealand, and the ministry has laid the foundations by licensing all schools for digital applications and making recommendations for video conferencing systems. In Germany, on the other hand, since the school closings in mid-March, not even half of all teachers have put tasks on a learning platform, and only 14 percent have held video conferences with their students, according to a Forsa survey commissioned by the Robert Bosch Stiftung in cooperation with ZEIT. I can't understand that. Online lessons should be mandatory in these times