Crisis Schooling, With Superintendent Matt Landahl

Young people are hugely affected by the coronavirus situation. This week on Beaconites!, superintendent Matt Landahl talks about the closure of the district’s six schools and what teachers and administrators are doing to help students through it.

Matt says the first week of the shutdown was all about coordinating the meal program. Now attention is shifting to online learning and supporting kids’ learning needs.

“One of our biggest worries was putting an enormous amount of class work on students right from the jump, and burying them and not thinking about how they might be feeling right now,” he says. “People are in a lot of different places of stress right now and we’re worried about just some basic well-being for everybody. And so we’re trying to figure out as a district, as a bunch of educators, how to navigate all of that.”

Matt’s biggest concern is mental health of students and the wider community of educators and district staff. He shares a story of going to Key Foods right after the schools were closed.

“It was early evening and there was a group of teenagers just kind of standing on Main Street,” he says. “They all just looked so sad, and it broke my heart. And now they’re obviously not even doing that with the changes that are taking place.”

In this episode: Protecting the most vulnerable. The impact on school budgets. Are online “office hours” here to stay? “Home schooling” vs. “crisis schooling”