MAGNIFICAT’S PANDEMIC RESPONSE
Educating and Creating Community During a Pandemic Planning for a 2020-2021 school year in a new COVID reality had a single focus: how could we safely bring students, faculty, and staff together? Making in-person learning possible was of the highest priority for Magnificat’s Leadership Team and Board of Directors—and it was a priority that would require ingenuity, perseverance, and patience.
Building Excellence Together Campaign Investments Make In-Person Learning Possible When phase three of the Building Excellence Together campaign got underway during the summer of 2019, no one knew just how important the new HVAC system—which provided air conditioning to the first and second floor classrooms for the first time ever—would turn out to be. Not only does the new HVAC system heat and cool the building more efficiently than the old boilers, it also has an air purification system that cycles through old air and cleans it before recirculating it, a function whose importance became more pronounced when trying to mitigate exposure to a virus that can spread via droplets in the air. Additional changes to the physical spaces in the building included a significant investment in plexiglass barriers to be used in areas where social distancing could not be accommodated, such as smaller classrooms and art studios, the Marian Commons, and the Performing Arts Center lobby. Streaming technology, including smartboards and webcams, were installed in every classroom so that every class, every day is streamed.
Magnificat Faculty Model Lifelong Learning for Students Magnificat faculty faced a new challenge this school year, translating their traditional in-person curriculum into a curriculum that could be truncated into a shorter school day and accommodate both students who were learning in person and students who were learning virtually. This would require leaning into Magnificat’s core value of Lifelong Learning. Supported by Associate Dean of Curriculum and Instruction, Mrs. Colleen Greller, Magnificat faculty have delved deeper into the Google Suite for Education, taking advantage of features they hadn’t used before and learning about new tools such as Screencastify, Dualless, Webpaint, Nod, and Poll Everywhere to create an engaging learning experience for students whether they attend in-person or from home. Marine Biology teacher Mrs. Beth McBride ’90 connected students to Zak Slagle, a wildlife biologist from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources who works out of the Office of Coastal Management in Sandusky, Ohio via Zoom. He spoke about what his daily job entails, projects he works on, Lake Erie and its management, as well as the seiche that had formed on
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MAGNIFICAT MAGAZINE | A MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNAE AND FRIENDS OF MAGNIFICAT HIGH SCHOOL | WINTER 2021
