Educational Transitions after COVID-19- Maximizing your child’s learning potential in an online learning environment

Parents and students have many questions about how Covid-19, school closures and online learning will impact their future education, college applications, acceptance into private schools and more. That’s why we decided to host the PrepOnline webinar series… bringing parents and experts together for conversations that support their children, maximize learning potential and connect families to resources.

Charmaine Hammond and Joanna Severino talked with guests Amanda Dervaitis – Executive Director Ontario Federation of Independent Schools (OFIS) Frank D’Amico – Trustee, Toronto Catholic District School Board Ward 6, and Kimberley Langen – CEO & Founder, Spirit of Math Inc. and Releasing the Genius Inc. about the timely and difficult topic of dealing with educational transitions after COVID-19.

You can access the recording to the webinar here (free):

One of the first questions we explored on this webinar was about What happens next happens now – Discussing the current situation with COVID and its impact on education. Our guest shared that the situation happened so abruptly the education sector had to quickly get information out to families and educators on how to learn remotely. While this shift/transition and move to online classrooms and virtual learning has been challenging, our guests talked about how students and families are learning global competence skills through self- directed and independent learning, agility, adaptability.

The guests also talked about how milestone events such as graduations and celebrations will be handled in this virtual environment, and some tips for parents to best support their children and family resilience during these times we are all navigating through. Some other key take aways from this webinar was the importance of reaching out and asking for help and wherever possible creating and maintaining some routines. Connection and collaboration is more important now than ever.

At the end of the webinar, our guests each shared a take away tip or reminder for families, here they are:

• Joanna – two words helped me through my own journey as a cancer survivor – mindset and resilience.
• Kim – Agility and curiosity.
• Frank – To the parents out there, if you’re struggling contact the teacher, principal or superintendant and someone will help you out. Let’s get through this together.
• Amanda – Patience, confidence, and deep breaths. Hang in there.

You can access this webinar recording to the webinar to learn more from the guest panel here (free):