Jeff Cummings plans to start the week with a recorded video conference, including a PowerPoint presentation, and then assign his students a case study or some kind of analysis. He’ll continue to connect with them online during the week as they complete their assignments.

The Grade 12 teacher had a feeling before the March break that classes may not resume because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so he asked students to connect that week on the online platform he uses, “to normalize the experience of being in a virtual learning environment.”

Now, if students have a question, they’ll ask it virtually — and Cummings might send back a video tutorial in response. He’s waiting for some direction on live video conferences, given security concerns, but said they can be done without images so students’ faces would not be seen.

“For me, it’s a great challenge,” said Cummings, who teaches Canadian history in Guelph and who spent a number of years working as a technology expert within the Wellington Catholic District School Board. “It’s not ideal, obviously — it’s a scary time — but we can do a really good job … and at the end of it I want my students to say they had a great learning experience.”

Starting Monday, learning gears up across the province for some two million students who have not been at school for two weeks following the March break because of school closures that will last at least until May 4.

As boards and teachers prepare for the massive change in the way education is delivered, concerns have been raised about equity, given that not all families have computers or access to the internet.

To that end, on Monday, the Toronto District School Board will start delivering 28,000 laptops and iPads to students. Some of the iPads have built-in Wi-Fi for families who need it.

It will take the board just over a week — until Tuesday, April 14 — to finish distributing them using their in-house courier.

“We are trying to do all kinds of work to move some mountains to get kids back to some learning soon, by Monday,” said John Malloy, director of education for the board, one of the largest in North America.

Educators in Toronto will mostly use the online platforms Google Classroom and Brightspace.

Example of a student checklist View document on Scribd

Boards have been directed to provide five hours of instruction per week for students up to Grade 6, 10 hours for those in grades 7 and 8, and three hours per course per week for students in high school.

But boards are being flexible about how that instruction is delivered: there’s no specific way each class will look, as teachers determine how best to reach their students. There will be some paper packages for students who don’t work well online.

“We can’t replicate what school usually looks like,” Malloy said.

“There is an expectation that there’s some engagement and interaction,” Malloy added, “but it’s not going to be a Zoom (video) conference that starts at 9 and ends at noon or 3. It can’t be that, and it won’t be that.”

The Peel District School Board has said that it would like students to try to keep to a routine and do their best to finish their work on time.

No students’ marks should drop below what they were before the March break and they can improve for the final report card in June.

At Hickory Wood Public School in Brampton, principal Della Lataille-Herdsman held a virtual staff meeting last week in which she told teachers they need to support one another and look after their students, but also themselves and their families.

“It’s important that we are all humane in all that we are dealing with right now,” said Lataille-Herdsman, noting she is shopping for her own elderly parents because they can’t get to a grocery store.

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She said her message to staff is that “regardless of me being a principal, I am in this with you. I get it. I don’t want to distance myself from reality.”

She’s also volunteering her time to deliver food to families from her school who are in need.

Bev Fiddler, who works at a high-needs school in Oshawa, said she has been teaching for 24 years and “this has been a learning curve for me.”

“I can create an assignment and watch students online doing it,” she said. “I can connect to Google Classroom, and, if there are problems, I can check in with them. They can ‘click’ to put their hand up.”

She’s also urging her Grade 4 students to practise their times tables every day, and for families who don’t yet have access to technology, she’s encouraging reading or activities such as finding favourite recipes or drawing pictures of animal habitats.

There could be families who don’t have paper at home. She’s told them to find anything around the house to draw on the back of.

“For the Grade 4’s, the position is about an hour a day — even 45 minutes where they are focused” would be good, she said.

She worries about kids in the Durham District School Board for whom “school is their only refuge, the only place they can go and they are not dealing with some of the issues that go on — poverty, or there’s not enough food in the house today.”

Shannon Smith, who teaches at Jack Callaghan Public School in Lindsay, in the Trillium Lakelands District School Board, said the principal and vice-principal will drop by the homes of families they weren’t able to reach over the past two weeks — keeping a safe distance when they do.

“We have a few families without internet access, and the board is working hard” to fix that, she said. “But what we’ve invited parents to do (in the meantime) is to come to any school parking lot (where they can access the school’s Wi-Fi) and download what they need.”

She said teachers can also text information to students or parents.

John Ippolito, an education professor at York University, said “it’s not going to be perfect” and “we have to realize some students will be disadvantaged by this” because of differing access to devices and parental support.

“This should be offered as a resource and learning to keep students motivated and interested and thinking,” he said.