Policies & Guidelines

in-person/ Virtual ClassRoom General Procedural Guidelines

Purpose of this General Procedural Guideline

Our church abides by the rules and guidelines provided by the St. Thomas Syro-Malabar Catholic Diocese of Chicago, Office for the Protection of Children and Youth towards the Social Media policies to honor the privacy of others, taking responsibility, keeping boundaries, protecting privacy of children, and hence achieve the goal of effective Faith Formation. This guideline is to ensure the above said purpose.

For Parents

• Submit signed parental consent form while registering for the program. 

• Virtual faith formation program for 2021-22 will be conducted in a hybrid mode. All the children are required to attend both in-person and virtual mode of sessions. Students are divided into 2 groups. Every group will have an opportunity to be in-person every other week.  

• All the children scheduled for an in-person class are required to submit their Health Screening form before attending the classes.  

• There are no exceptions allowed for not attending an in-person session other than the health screening requirement.

• Groups which are not scheduled for an in-person session will be attending the Virtual classes scheduled for 2 to 3pm.

• Success of a virtual faith formation program entirely depends o the support of the families, which is the “domestic church”. Virtual session will be running through your child’s google class room framework. Your child must login to the session using the church provided email account. We expect your child to use a laptop or chrome book or ipad, or any similar devices, but not through a phone. If any exception is needed for any reason, please let your child’s teacher know the need in advance.

• Monitor child’s online activities. Any issue e.g. bullying, inappropriate content, comment, chats must be reported and addressed promptly.

• Encourage and advise your children to follow the safe environment guidelines during their virtual classes.

• Pay attention and encourage children to practice the wisdom providing by our faith formation program teachers periodically through your emails.

• Encourage family prayers – morning/evening prayers, rosary, liturgy of hours, daily mass readings etc.

• Support and facilitate with the teachers and students to have a safe fellowship time utilizing our church facilities besides the virtual program.

For Students

• Every registered student is assigned a church gmail account which is needed to access their respective google classroom.

• In-person students are required to wear face-coverings all the time. They will be verified with their health check forms and a temperature check prior to entering the classes.

• Virtual faith formation program expects a registered student to use a laptop or chrome book or ipad, or any similar devices, but not through a phone. Exception is allowed only if the parents had taken a prior approval from your teachers.

• During a class session, “Video camera” should be TURNED ON all the time. If you want to tak a short break for any personal matters (less than 3 minutes), you can turn off your camera and while coming back, you need to turn it on.

• If for any reason, you cannot TURN THE CAMERA on, need to take prior approval from your teachers.

• Students are prohibited in taking videos of your class sessions through any digital media while teachers upon discretion could record the session contents for church/diocese reviews.

• Students are always expected to be in their best attire for the session. They should consider each session as if like they are present in their class rooms.

• Students logging in at designated times, staying present for length of class and actively participating in class are requirements for gaining attendance credit.

• Your google class room holds the session information and will be the same all throughout the year.

• Please read the teacher instructions and watch the videos/complete the assignments prior to attending the sessions.

• Online version of textbooks to be made available in google classroom. Hardcopies may be available later.