March 27, 2020

Dear Holy Ghost Prep families,

It was important to make a rapid and effective transition to cyber teaching and learning given the uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 and the importance of social distancing. Once in place, the early feedback on our virtual education platform was largely positive. We also knew that we had to seek constructive criticism regarding our approach and be willing to be nimble and thoughtful as we considered potential enhancements.

Over the past week, we surveyed our students, held multiple Zoom faculty
meetings and senior chats, heard from parents, and even had administrators reach out to individual students. Throughout, our goals were to see how students and faculty were doing and feeling, identify what was working, and ask for their suggestions on improving our cyber learning model. We also gathered input from key universities, such as the University of Pennsylvania.

During the course of these discussions, three common themes emerged as
suggested modifications to the original cyber learning plan:

Decrease the intensity of the workload and better set and manage
expectations
Create more structure to each school day
Increase the amount of face-to-face interaction

With these three themes as our guideposts, we have adjusted our plan to reduce the stress level of our students, while increasing personal contact and pastoral care. We have also introduced added structure in a simpler model while being more flexible and intentional in our overall approach.

Here are a few highlights of the plan which will be instituted this Monday, March 30:

Students will be given course work for three courses each day which will include weekly virtual meeting with teachers. This is similar to a collegiate model of learning and allows students to focus on fewer courses each day. See link below for more details.
Friday is an advisory day in which students will be able to meet virtually with Counseling, College Guidance, and their teams and clubs. There is also time for AP seminars and online tutoring from teachers. This will be a "no homework" day.
Co-curricular classes (Art, Computer Science, Drama, Engineering, Guidance, and Music) will be given a weekly assignment posted on Schoology by their teachers at the beginning of each week.
Faculty will post their instructional plan for the entire week on Sunday evenings or during their class day, between 8 and 9 a.m. There is now a universal 8 p.m. deadline for assignments across all classes. We feel strongly that this universal time helps ensure the timely submission of work, distributes the workload more evenly across days, and enables students and faculty to disconnect every evening.

To access the detailed cyber learning plan, click here.

We believe these adjustments to our cyber learning plan will reduce the stress levels on your sons and on you as parents, while also providing more structure to each school day and more interaction between our students and faculty.

We will continue to ask for your feedback in the days ahead, and the next
communication update to all Holy Ghost Prep families will be Sunday's "Happenings at HGP."

In One Heart and One Mind,

Gregory J. Geruson '79

President

Kevin Burke

Principal