Dear GUS Community,

The end of spring break has arrived and our time to join the global experiment in world-wide online learning begins this Sunday! I am a little daunted, but mostly excited, by this opportunity.

From all I've been reading, the two most important ingredients for success over the next few weeks are PATIENCE and COMMUNICATION. This journey we're about to take on Sunday, together, will require infinite patience and presumption of positive intent. Teachers are trying their best in a new situation with only a short window of preparation time, understanding that students may be in different time zones and may be unsupervised at home because parents are working and nannies are busy with siblings. Students are trying their best to engage with content, friends, and teachers online, navigating independent learning and significant screen time, while dealing with the loss of school, however temporary. Parents are trying their best to balance work, family-time, all this "new fangled technology" and online learning, while dealing with the stress and concern about how world events are affecting finances, lives, etc. We must find the time to give each other grace and extend patience.

We also need to communicate. Not only will there be more e-communications than usual from teachers and leadership, but it will be important for each of us to read carefully and attend promptly to the information in those communications. Please ask questions of the teachers and the leadership team. We've tried to anticipate many questions and provide answers up front, however, it's inevitable that we will have missed things. We will be asking you for feedback, as well, so please take a minute or two when asked to let us know how we're doing and how we can improve. Intentional, kind, thoughtful, responsive communication is crucially important. For each of us.

I am confident that we, the GEMS US community, will rise to the challenge ahead of us. We have been sharing resources, teachers have taken online courses about designing and delivering online courses, and we're ready. Will there be glitches? Yes. But Panthers are resilient and we fail forward. WE are CURIOUS LEARNERS; we don't mind making mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward. We find INSPIRATION from others as we learn to rethink teaching and learning. We REACH BEYOND, by extending more patience than we thought we had, communicating more than we think we need to.

Energy in!

Kate

PS: Click here for a welcome video.