Demand for full-time online learning surges for Saskatoon Public Schools

Support staff, administration and teachers are preparing this week and next, for what is going to be a very different school year because of COVID-19.

Parents and students will have the option of attending classes full-time in person, online, or part-time as well.

While the total number of cases in Saskatchewan right now remains below 100, many parents are still worried about what might happen over the coming weeks.

Superintendent of Education, Colleen Norris, says they expect numbers to fluctuate, but right now more than 2,000 children from Kindergarten to Grade 8 have been registered for full-time online learning.

At least 455 students from Grades 9 through 12 have done the same, along with hundreds of other part-time students.

The Greater Saskatoon Catholic School Division is also seeing a surge in demand for information about online classes, although the process to register children in that division is slightly different.

Norris says it means re-organizing what some teachers are doing this year.

“At this time we are redeploying teachers from our schools due to demand. So, just based on the demand for the online learning centre, we’ve had to move teachers from other schools and have them teach online instead.”

She can’t say, however, exactly how many teachers have been redeployed, or how many additional teachers have been hired on so far.

“We will work to mirror the face to face experience,” explained Norris. “They will have one teacher that will be assigned to a group of students- approximately 25 to 30 per class. That teacher will reach out to the class and we’ll have… face to face on video or virtual learning, and that will occur for a set amount of time each day.”

It will total about 150 minutes per day, or 2.5 hours. The other part of the day will be spent completing work in the whole group learning time and asking questions of the teacher if necessary.

The collegiate Grades 9 – 12 will mirror the “block” model, in case the student decides to come back to school in person, or needs to transfer to another school.

“A Grade 9, 10, 11, or 12 student would have two online classes that are occurring at once, and they would have a teacher for their morning class and a teacher for their afternoon class. And then, after the first block is over, it would switch to two different classes with two different teachers.”

All Saskatoon Public Schools will post a school plan Aug. 26 for parents. Online students will be getting more information on technology requirements in the first week of class when students are being grouped into their cohorts.

So much work is going into offering the online courses, Norris hopes when parents decide to choose the online option, they stick with it – barring any situation where a student may need to transfer to a different school.

“There is a lot of planning that goes into staffing our schools, so we’re hoping that families make the decision to commit to online learning for the year… for their own child’s experience, that stability is really important.”