Greetings from Peabody School, where we hope you all are well and staying safe in these uncertain times. We wanted to give you a quick update on what’s been happening here in our new online educational community.
At the end of the day on Friday, March 13, Peabody sent all of our students home with their learning materials and devices (PreK-2 with iPads, 3-8 with Chromebooks) to prepare for the launch of our online learning program, which we piloted the following week. Suffice to say, it is not easy to put such a highly interactive program into an online format, but our teachers are some of the most creative you will find, and they achieved some remarkable things in a short period of time!
On March 17, our Head of School Rob Orlando sent our community the outline of our remote learning program via his email, which you can read HERE. This explains our overall educational philosophy and how we are proceeding moving forward.
On Monday, March 23, we were officially up and running with Phase 1 of our new schedules and overhauled curriculum. Starting after Spring Break on April 6, we began Phase 2, which is now fully synchronous learning. So far, we are pleased with how things are coming along, and our students seem thrilled to be able to see their classmates and teachers every day!
While Governor Northam has closed school buildings for the rest of the year, Peabody construction on our new wing is almost done, and we plan to open ALL our doors on schedule this fall to welcome students for the Fall of 2020. Our new music center, tech lab/maker space, classrooms and outdoor sport court await!! We miss all of our students and cannot wait for things to return to some normalcy. We will certainly keep you posted if anything changes, but on-time re-opening is the plan at this time, as long as it is safe to do so.
While we are nearly full for next year’s enrollment, the Covid crisis cut our admissions season a bit short, and so we do still have a few spaces left in our 2nd and 3rd grades. If you are still interested in Peabody, please know that we have arranged for applicants to take the WISC evaluation online, and we are conducting student visits online as well – please reach out for more details. We also still have some financial aid available for next year, as we know this economic crisis has impacted everyone’s finances. Please contact admissions@peabodyschool.org for more information.
Please feel free to follow us on Facebook HERE, where we are regularly updating what our students are up to while they work from home. A sample online teaching schedule can be found HERE along with the detailed instruction document HERE to give you a sense of the online program. All links in the documents have been deactivated for privacy purposes. We hope this update is helpful – please keep practicing social distancing, and stay safe!