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Daily 056: School Meeting - Online Enrollment Discussion

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Summary

School meeting discussed enrolling online-only students with welcoming committee. Extending school year into June discussed - vaccines may help by May/June. Ashley's makeup tutorial Wednesday, Kwanzaa introduction Thursday. Article Club on Libya firefighters. Talk About Tuesday on Sudbury critiques.

Transcript

0:00 Welcome to ANI In The Air Online and Around Baltimore, your daily podcast briefing of
0:05 all the goings ons, in the rounds, arts and ideas, Sunday School.
0:10 So today was Tuesday and we had school meeting.
0:18 There was no rule motions or approvals.
0:27 We did have a couple of discussions.
0:30 One was on a discussion about the idea of enrolling some students online, those who
0:41 might be really capable of doing so, very interested and self-motivated and willing
0:50 to try to make connections from a distance.
0:55 And so we were thinking that it would be helpful if there was some kind of welcoming committee
1:04 for these students.
1:08 We generally don't do that for new students in person, but it can be pretty hard to make
1:13 connections on something like Discord.
1:20 We also talked about extending the school year into June.
1:24 No one raised any objections, so that was good.
1:29 Few students were very enthusiastic about it and most in attendance were just kind of
1:37 mute about it.
1:39 But the idea would be just it's kind of compensating for this time online and the hope is that
1:49 with the vaccines about to be distributed, that by May or June, we might really be more
1:59 or less done with the pandemic.
2:01 That might be a little optimistic, but there's hope.
2:05 Certainly, we should be in a better position than we are now, and June is still often cool
2:19 enough to still be outside comfortably for a lot of the day.
2:25 July and August get to be pretty hot, but June is often pretty good.
2:31 So yeah, we'll probably take it up in an assembly.
2:40 It's a tricky issue because it's not really clear whose decision power it is to make this
2:49 change.
2:50 Our school calendar is defined by school meeting, but you really need the buy-in of the parents
2:57 and the students.
3:00 We really want it to be if we extend the school year, it will be everyone still being there.
3:05 So we really need buy-in from everybody for that purpose.
3:12 So we'll see.
3:20 Then, what else happened today?
3:29 Well, let's see, there are, well, I guess on Wednesday, oh yeah, this was announced
3:41 at school meeting, Ashley will be holding a kind of a makeup, I guess, tutorial at three
3:52 on Wednesday, and then on Thursday, Ashley plans to hold kind of an introduction to what
4:05 Kwanzaa is, so that's cool, Wednesday at 10 a.m., I plan to hold an Amazing Tales session
4:16 where we, you know, kind of create a story with some dice.
4:23 It doesn't, I don't think it scales all that well to having a lot of people participating
4:27 at a time, but you know, maybe we can run some quick short stories if there's a number
4:34 of people being present, but maybe it's just about introducing how to actually do these
4:43 things and then maybe they can do it, you know, on their own or something, it can be
4:52 fun.
4:53 All right, oh, let's see, I guess on Thursday, there'll be Article Club, which, let's see,
5:10 it is, it's a YouTube video about battling the flames after Libya's revolt, so it could
5:27 be an interesting video to watch and to discuss, so we'll see about that, and I guess that's
5:44 pretty much it.
5:45 I think yesterday and Monday, there was a really good turnout for Creative Writing Club
5:51 and some really interesting pieces of writing that are posted there, so be sure to check
5:58 that out if you haven't and think about participating.
6:03 All right, and I think with Minecraft, there have been a couple of technical glitches with
6:10 the new server, but otherwise it seems to be going well, so that's cool.
6:22 All right, I think that's enough from me for now.
6:25 It is talking about Tuesday, so I did record a little piece about kind of facing the critiques
6:39 in Sudbury School, so check that out if you like, otherwise I will talk to you all later.
6:47 Bye-bye.