D i sta n c e L e a r n i n g By Dan Meester, High School Principal “Normal” is the wrong word, but we have all become more used to the global pandemic’s impact on our lives over the past four months. Back in March, however, the changes in our daily routines were coming fast and furious—forcing businesses, organizations, and families to quickly rethink their day-to-day activities and operations. K-12 schools were among the agencies that needed to adapt to a landscape that was suddenly different, and those adaptations went beyond teaching and learning to include transportation, food service, counseling services, end-of-year ceremonies, college admissions, and more. Here in Gallup, Rehoboth Christian School stood out in its creativity and quick response to ensure its students and their families continued to receive the education they deserved. United by a strong sense of mission and a set of common beliefs, the faculty, staff, and administration at Rehoboth knew that a few key principles would need to guide their response to the pandemic. Students would need to be able to continue to receive a high-quality academic education, and the transformative Christian aspect of that education would have to shine through. The rest was details, and so the staff went to work over the week of Spring Break to ensure that the Rehoboth student body could take on the fourth quarter with confidence. In this age of technology, the easy answer for many schools was to shift to online learning. Rehoboth enrolls students from an area covering 3,000 square miles, much of it on Navajo Nation lands, and somewhere between 30%-40% of the school’s families have either limited internet access or no ability to connect to the
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web. Combine these accessibility issues with the fact that many families had no computer at home, and the technology puzzle got even more complicated. To begin, the school leveraged its significant number of on-campus laptops and was able to provide devices to families who needed them for the duration of the school year. Students and parents signed user agreements as they picked up their devices, promising to return them in the same condition they received them. But just having a laptop doesn’t provide internet access, so teachers also created files of their lessons and assignments, including videos of particular teaching points, directions for activities, and much more. Those files were then copied to USB thumb drives and sent out to students along with hard copies of their assignments in case it was easier for students to complete them by hand. Using the normal afternoon bus routes, Rehoboth bus drivers brought these materials to families who needed them, collecting completed work and USB drives every two weeks and replacing them with new ones. But school isn’t just about academic learning. The relationships and mentoring opportunities that grow between teachers and students are a key part of the mental and emotional health of young people as they form the identities, self-images, and value systems that will impact them for the rest of their lives. With face to face contact suddenly gone, the Rehoboth faculty became creative, frequent communicators in other ways. For students with reliable internet, large group meetings through Zoom or Google Hangouts became weekly rituals; but the ones without that same technology in their homes could not be left behind. Instead, teacher phone calls and text messages served as means to keep alive the deep connections that Rehoboth families appreciate
