The October SVRTC meeting was held virtually with 26 members from 12 partnering school divisions: Amelia, Brunswick, Buckingham, Colonial Heights, Cumberland, Danville City, Dinwiddie, Halifax, Lunenburg, Mecklenburg, Petersburg City, and Prince Edward
The professional development segment of the meeting was led by Mr. Walker, of Prince Edward County Public Schools. Mr. Walker described his county’s, Practice Virtual Day. He explained the goal of the Practice Virtual Day was to allow students and teachers an opportunity to run through everything that would have to be done in order to have a successful virtual day at a moment’s notice. For example, students practiced logging into Zoom and teachers practiced logging into their LMS (Canvas or Google Classroom). The day was meant to be fun and engaging to take away the fear of having to make a change in delivery of instruction to students. He stated schools may find this helpful, not just because of the pandemic, but there could be other reasons such as a snow day that would need remote learning. Mr. Walker also said the day was a good test of the division’s network.
In order to prepare for the day, teachers were given notice to include a practice day in their lessons. They were also given a checklist as a guide of tools they could try. When reflecting on the day, teachers feedback suggested the experience was valuable in seeing where their students needed more instruction.