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Distance Learning A Great Success
 Friday, May 15, 2020 
On March 16, without any prior notice, Alameda County announced a mandatory shut-in order just before lunch, and the school was required to close the following day. In less than 3 hours, administrator purchased a year Zoom subscription, and conducted impromptu training sessions on the online service for older students and teachers. Literally, the next day, Ile Omode held its first ever online class, and the school continued from there with almost zero loss in instruction.
It wasn't an easy transition, but it was a powerful example of the school's ability to pivot and respond to a sudden new crisis. Baba Jahi Awakoaiye, the school's director said, "we were committed to ensure continuous instruction for our students".
Online classes were conducted daily for every student from preschool to 8th grade, and it was especially gratifying to see the preschoolers adapting as easily as the older students to remote instruction.
By the second week, the staff published its "Distance Learning Handbook" that described, among other tasks, how to create a suitable remote learning environment at home, and created a laptop/tablet loaner system to provide devices to any students in need. The school held meetings weekly: (1) 8am staff meetings every day, (2) administrative meetings twice a week, (3) staff training session twice weekly, and (4) increased family meetings from monthly to weekly (initially). It was a concerted effort to continue training everyone in real time, while ensuring every person in the school community remained connected.
According to parents it was a success. An elementary parent commented that, "all parts of distance learning worked for our family".
It was certainly not a transition without any shortcomings, but a number of families saw some interesting gains in the shift. There was an adjustment to the schedule. Rather than instruction from 8:30 to 3:30 (not including before and after school), classes were held from 8:30 to 12:30, with office hours with teacher daily from 3:30 to 4:30. One parent found the change in schedule refreshing, and commented that, their child "did better being in class until 12:30pm vs all day until 5pm like we were doing at school". And others, enjoyed being able to have a better view on their child's school work.
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