The Covid Learning Express
Aoife Collier-Clarke
Anna Curran
Aya Helaly
Shreya Modi
Who We Are
Shreya Modi: As an individual I am quite creative, outgoing, and dedicated to anything I choose to put my mind to. When it comes to leadership and organization, these are skills that with practice over the years have helped me become a better part of the community I belong to and bring my best efforts forward. I enjoy working with others and taking responsibility for my own actions and try to be the best version of myself. I am never afraid to learn and grow off of my mistakes as they push me to work harder and tackle possible setbacks, and am always up for a challenge.
Aya Helaly: The only reason I moved to the United States from my home country Egypt, was to get the best education possible, and I think everyone around me should have the same chance too. When COVID-19 came around, many students lost their chance in having a good learning experience, so I thought my group and I could think of a way for every student to have the best learning experience, even when there is a world crisis. I would say some skills I have is that I am very outgoing, social. Being social can help our group if we are having interviews that would help us gather some information about our project. I like to put all my effort into something I think is going to benefit the community/our lives. Putting effort into something important like this project will result in us having a big effect not only on our community, but eventually on the whole world. Having good effort will motivate my group and I in presenting our project.
Aoife Collier-Clarke: I am organized, and very attentive to the details of any project. From my work experience, I have learned and grown a lot in my communication skills and ability to multitask.
Anna Curran: I am very good at communication as I am very personable and talkative. I have great leadership skills, and I love to plan meetings accordingly in order to stay on track and organized. I am also very precise on how a project looks, and I always try to make sure it looks as professional and presentable as possible.
Why We Chose to Work Together
As a group we wanted to focus on and create a project which was very relevant and that needed attention, and together we decided to focus on the global pandemic that just hit and the damage/issues that have arisen. With us all being back in school, remote or hybrid, there have been many challenges or difficulties that we have talked about. We brainstormed as a group to work together to create something resourceful, influential, and interactive that can hopefully be a part in supporting the lives of students and teachers.
Our greater goal is that we can help and reach others that need the support, beyond our community as the education system has really changed and suffered.
Goals
Improve the ways students are receiving their education this year, and provide resources and support to better benefit the overall 'new' education system
To improve the quality and increase the amount of one-on-one teacher-student interaction time
To improve the quality and increase the amount of hands-on learning and activities
To supply materials for hands-on activities (i.e. labs)
To create a space for students to de-stress
To compile resources into one easily accessible and navigable website or document
To create more independent/task-related work; to get students offline
To create equitable access to all the aforementioned resources
Community Partnership
We have been working with the high school administration (primarily Mrs. Bottomley) as well as with the counseling department, as mentioned above under Progress.
We are looking forward to connecting and working with other students to understand the community needs.
Progress
Since starting our project, we have been focusing on getting a survey approved by administration to be sent out to the entire high school student body. We have communicated via email with principal Mrs. Bottomley and assistant principals Mrs. Archambault and Mr. Cook. We met with Mrs. Bottomley on November 2nd to discuss and clarify her feedback on our survey, which helped us to clarify our next steps of reaching out to Mrs. Ross in the school counseling department. Along with the rest of the department, Mrs. Ross was able to provide us with questions on mental health and general feedback. On Monday November 16th we received our final suggestions from the counseling department, and on the 18th we shared the latest draft of the survey with Mrs. Bottomley in hopes of being able to send it out to the school within a few days.
Because of the administration's workload (made larger this year especially because of COVID 19), it is taking longer than we expected to be able to send out our survey and receive the data we need to move forward with our plan.
We are working to plan our future steps as much as we are able to without the information we hoped to have by this point from students.
Get Involved!
We created a survey, our goal being to see what students think education is currently lacking, and how we as a group can provide these factors to our community through our website. If you are student at the highschool, keep an eye out for the survey, and make sure you fill it out!
We are currently working on a website to share resources with both our school and the larger community. We hope to address the issues students mention in the survey, and make positive changes in the learning environment.