THUNDER BAY -- Students at Thunder Bay high schools will be in class for half days during the first semester -- and it may stay that way for the entire school year.
Both the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board and Lakehead Public Schools on Wednesday announced an alternating week blended learning model that will see students in class for a morning course, then home in the afternoon for online delivery of their second course.
Michelle Probizanski, superintendent of education at the public board, said the move was made at the behest of the provincial government as a way to limit the number of contacts for students, who have not been in the classroom since the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March.
"It's still a quadmester schedule like we had originally planned, but now it is going to be blended learning," Probizanski said. "Each course, there will be two per quadmester, will be delivered in a blended way.
"What it will look like is students will take one course in the morning and will take it face to face with their teacher at school, and then will leave over lunchtime, either take the bus or walk home and then get ready for their afternoon course, which will begin in the afternoon virtually. The next week, those two courses will switch."
Students in the second week will have the opportunity to see their second-period class teacher face-to-face in the morning and then in the afternoon, their first-period course from the prior week will be delivered online at home in the afternoon.
Probizanski said the board looked at a variety of different models to come up with the latest plan, which they've known they had to devise for about the past two weeks, when the Ministry of Education made a request for change.
"I think with new information that came, the ministry decided they wanted to limit the number of contacts a week that secondary students were having."
That number is to be no more than 100 direct or indirect contacts. .
Under the previous return-to-class plan, students would have returned to full classrooms and would be potentially intermingling with a far greater number of their peers.
J.P. Tennier, superintendent at the Thunder Bay Catholic District School Board, said he thinks students will adapt fairly easily to the new system, but it will take time to get used to the new way of doing things.
"We've never had a model like this. There's a lot of learn-at-home instruction, at 50 per cent. The school day ends at noon, or 11 o'clock for us because we have an earlier start. So it's a big change," Tennier said.
Some courses will work better with the blended model than others, he added.
"Our non-traditional technology classes, the ones that are more hands on, are a challenge. But with this model, half of their instruction is face-to-face, so they can do it conventionally," Tennier said.
"So all of our programs are still running."
Given the ministry's new guidelines, Tennier said the blended model is the only viable option available to provide the high-quality instruction students and their parents expect.
Local high-school students will take each course for approximately 44 school days, before switching to the next quadmester.
"This is really, given the size of our schools in Thunder Bay, really the only viable option,' he said.
Tennier said he anticipates hiring more teachers, which will largely be dependent on the size of the virtual school the board is creating.
"We'll have to see what the staffing needs are there."
Special needs students will be in class five days a week for the full day. The new plan does not affect elementary schools.
