OPERATIONS: COVID-19
Update: April 6 2020
With Childreach being our backbone and relying on their excellent leadership, we are following suit and remaining closed to the public until May 4th. Meaghan, Michelle, and I will continue to work from home.
In terms of Spring planning, I wanted to inform you of our plan which is supported by CR Leadership and has been endorsed by our Advisory Committee. Even if our world returns to “normal” on May 4, we want to be sensitive to folks anxiety and priorities when they return to work. After much deliberation, we think it would be best to suspend all in-person professional learning until the Fall. Our plan is to refund and cancel all current in-person Strive offerings and reschedule for the Fall calendar. There are a few previously scheduled sessions that will run via Zoom instead – emails will be sent accordingly.
We have compiled a list of no cost Professional Learning opportunities (external from Strive) for the community and continue to add to it. https://striveswo.ca/our-news/professional-learning-while-social-distancing/ Strive also has many excellent offerings on our member platform (https://striveswo.ca/member-login/) including the keynote speech from the Literacy Conference by Karyn Callaghan. We are continuing to add to the platform and have recently included new material from All Kids Belong.
On top of the PL opportunities mentioned, we are exploring facilitators that will able to deliver live online webinars for our community over the next few months. We are also considering tapping into emerging leaders from local organizations to facilitate community debriefs of external online PL. We are looking forward to hosting our first community of practice in an online format later this month and continue to grow that practice.
This is a very unique approach for Strive and the community – together we are navigating these uncharted waters.
We thank you for your continued support.
-Ally
Update: April 2 2020
We are continuing to closely monitor the situation affecting our world. In order to keep the Strive team and community partners healthy, safety and well, we will remain closed until May 4 2020. This is after careful consideration and support of our leadership team at Childreach (for their full update, visit: https://www.childreach.on.ca/blog/all-childreach-programs-cancelled-until-april-5)
We understand the impact this has on your professional learning plan. We assure you we are continuing to work on offering unique and innovative approaches to support you. If you are currently registered for any of our remaining events, original or rescheduled dates, a Strive Team member will be in touch in the coming week with the latest information. In the meantime, we have currated a list of online professional learning, check it out here: Professional Learning while Social Distancing
Thank you for your understanding and commitment to keeping our communities healthy and safe!
-Ally
March 16 2020
In light of all the most recent information regarding COVID-19, we wanted to assure you that Strive is monitoring the situation closely and, along with our Leadership Team here at Childreach Centre, will continue to make decisions in the best interest of our team as well as the community.
Strive will close to the public from March 14 – April 5, 2020 inclusively.
The Strive team will continue to work on rescheduling professional learning opportunities planned within that time frame.
If you are currently registered for Let’s De-Mystify Succession Planning (March 24), The Pedagogy of Loose Parts (March 25), Resilience Informed Caregiving (March 25), or the Infant Community of Practice (March 31), we will be in touch next week with new dates.
We will also be working on providing additional online learning experiences for Educators over the next three weeks.
The Strive Team can still be reached via email Michelle – michelle@striveswo.ca, Meaghan – meaghan@striveswo.ca, and Ally – ally@striveswo.ca.
We thank you for your continued support and understanding during this time. We know that the risk still remains low in London, Middlesex and Elgin, however, we are committed to ensuring the safest and healthiest possible environments for facilitators, team members, and the early learning community.
Thank you,
Ally Scott, Project Manager