When Living Rooms Are Classrooms, Teachers Bring the Joy

Leave it to teachers to make a difficult situation a learning experience.

These days, masks are a daily reality to help contain the spread of COVID-19.

For the few weeks that Rochester Prep was open in October and November, masks were a must for all staff and students. And while masks were a new and necessary challenge, teachers helped students embrace this new reality from a sense of strength and hope.

The teachers told students that superheroes also wear masks and that they were superheroes for wearing their masks. The students drew self portraits wearing their masks. Underneath their masks, the students wrote three character traits that best described what makes them so special.

“The students shared their traits with the classroom, letting their classmates know that there’s an awesome person underneath the mask,” said Rochester Prep Elementary School teacher Katelin Carrasquillo.

“Our masks keep everyone safe and healthy by stopping the spread of germs,” Carrasquillo said. “These masks give us superpowers.”

Rochester Prep launched the school year fully remote in August and reached one of the highest attendance rates among public schools.

“We came up with a model where we have live instruction daily and also recorded instruction and every day live instruction starts with an exciting 30-minute community building moment,”
Paul Powell, the assistant superintendent at Rochester Prep told News 8 WROC Rochester.

Since the beginning of the year, Rochester Prep’s average attendance rate has been around 85 percent. In October, the school brought students in for a hybrid model in which participating students attended two days a week and alternated with other students to reduce the number of students in the buildings. Students with special needs attended four days a week.

Unfortunately, Rochester Prep returned to fully remote learning in late November based on area data on the rate of coronavirus spread in the community.

Still, families are reporting that their children are still learning from the dedicated teachers--even if they can’t be inside of school.

“Although everyone has been forced to change their traditional way of teaching, Rochester Prep has created an environment that makes it easy for your child to learn and do their work outside of the classroom,” said Ebony Dukes, whose son, Todd Douglass, is in seventh grade. “From providing the physical needs such as chrome books, to assisting with meals for each scholar, advisors have been extremely helpful to parents who may need a little help with this transition.”

“The health and safety of our children and staff is our first and foremost concern and we are monitoring the situation very carefully every day,” Powell said. “Our commitment to provide a great education for our students remains unchanged, regardless of whether they are at home or in school.”