The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Bidding adieu to unique school year
35-mile parade welcomed summer break, end of distance learning
DURHAM — It may have been a drizzly, overcast day, but spirits were high Friday for the more than 170 Regional School District 13 teachers and others who gathered at the high school for a massive and joyful procession to mark the end of the academic year.
The parade, leaving from Coginchaug Regional High School on Pickett Lane, made its way around 35 miles of streets in Durham and Middlefield. The event also was marked with moments of poignancy, because the transition to online learning during the pandemic meant an
abrupt end to in-person classes.
Teachers, who could only see their students via virtual means during the last three months of school, missed their young charges, many of whom are moving on to the next grades in other schools.
They joined food service workers, administrators, paraprofessionals and members of the Board of Education who waited excitedly for the procession to begin.
“It’s amazing being able to see other people that we haven’t been given the chance to see. We always unite for kids. It’s the first time they’re getting to see people they recognize,” said Johanna Schmidt, who teaches fourth- through sixthgrade music at Memorial Middle School in Middlefield.
“We know human connection is everything in schools. Getting to see them and build that connection is huge,” she added.
June 16 is the last day of school.
Leslie Kilroy teaches fifth-grade math to about 70 young people at Memorial school, which serves fourth- through sixth-graders.
“It’s a little tricky, but we’re doing our best to incorporate lots of videos, just so they can see our faces and hear our voices — trying every way to keep connected to them was our priority,” Kilroy explained.
The transition was not necessarily an easy one. “As a group, we kind of divided and conquered, so I collaborated with two other teachers for consistency. We really looked from where we were in March to the end of the year — as far as priority standards for the fifth-graders, who just came from the lower grades, and will move on to sixth grade.
“During distance learning, it takes 10 times longer to learn one concept because it’s got to be chunked and scaffolded so much throughout the week,” Kilroy explained.
She kept in mind brevity, which aligns with students’ attention spans, and made sure her videos were 10 minutes or less in length, similar to the classroom, where she’d spend about that amount of time on a lesson, Kilroy said. “We really thought about what could be targeted to get the most out of it.
“We don’t know what the next year will bring. Where do we start off for kids so there won’t be gaps?” she added.
The district also includes Brewster and Lyman elementary schools, as well as Strong Middle School.
Bridgette Schlicher is a kindergarten through fourth-grade digital learning instructor at Lyman and Brewster.
Before the parade began, Schlicher acknowledged the morning would be filled with heartbreak, in part because her secondand third-graders are moving up to the intermediate school. “I’m excited to see former students, current students, and let them know we are thinking of them.
“We miss them, and wanted to give them a sense of community. We feel badly for the students who are going to miss that closure,” Schlicher said.
Friday, she served as parade captain for one the seven routes, where 25 cars lined up behind each bus.
Brewster kindergarten teacher Jennifer Canning said the district came up with a special plan for their youngest students.
“We’re doing home learning activities that didn’t involve synchronous (simultaneous) learning, as we call it, but asynchronous learning. We designed and developed what they did on their own,” she said.
Online education sessions on Google Classroom, Seesaw and other platforms prepared staff for what was ahead during the first two weeks after schools were closed by the governor in mid-March.
After that, Canning said, “we got to see the kids face to face, even though it had to be through the computer.”
The 5- and 6-year-olds were overjoyed to reunite with their first schoolteachers on Google Meet. “We would send them off on scavenger hunts: ‘go find something red, go find something purple or a circle; something you eat with.’
“They’d go running off and come back. I’d ask them to find similarities and differences between what they found and something else they saw a friend found,” Canning added.
The point was to form social connections with their peers, many of whom were miles apart from one another.
“They were so missing that, and craving that, and so did we,” she said. Staff also kept in constant contact with parents along the way.
“It’s definitely different, but we had to do something, and this was the best something we came up with on no notice. There’s so much uncertainty about what will happen in the fall,” Canning said.