The teachers and I had a productive meeting this week and we talked about one of the biggest challenges to the start of the school year for all of us - building a sense of community for the kids.
The start of the year has been tough - certainly not the way we wanted the students' high school careers to begin. Meeting new people and creating connections is really difficult through Zoom. The sense of community that we wanted to build in Jasper is not where we want it to be so we had an idea ... let's start thinking of ways to build community in ways beyond academics. The result - we just created "mini clubs" to give Jasper students opportunities to do some things they might find interesting, fun, and not necessarily anything related to academics. This gives us an opportunity to get kids together based on common interests and passions. A course was just created in Schoology called "Jasper Learning Initiative" and it's where general Jasper things will exist. For now, each "mini club" is a discussion post. Students can read a short description and if they're interested, they can just reply to the discussion. It's that easy - and it's completely optional and voluntary. They can do as many as they'd like. I looked back in my notes from the summer conversations I had with students and tried to come up with some ideas that would appeal to a variety of interests. I'm sure more will be added in the near future, but here's a sneak peak of the 6 mini clubs being offered to the students currently in Jasper:
These were just launched a few days ago and the "mini clubs" will evolve. Maybe there will be ways soon to get the "Outdoor Adventurers" together for a socially distanced hike in the near future. We already had some of the kids get together with teachers for a fantasy football draft this afternoon. Again, the point is start building a sense of community in Jasper in these circumstances that are so challenging for teens. Comments are closed.
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January 2021
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