Schools hand out remote learning materials

LACONIA — The parking lot at Elm Street School was mostly empty Friday morning, but a steady stream of vehicles pulled up to the front entrance as parents came to pick up their children’s course materials for remote learning which will begin Monday.

The city’s 2,000 public school students, like those around the Lakes Region and across the state, will be attending class at home through April 3, as schools have been ordered closed in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19 which as of Friday had infected 39 people in the Granite State.

School Principal Tara Beauchemin stood outside in a cold drizzle with some other school staff members as cars drove into the pick-up, drop-off line. As soon as they identified the parents, they used two-way radios to tell other staffers inside which specific students’ lesson folders to bring out.

Ashlynn Arnst said her two boys — a second-grader and a fourth-grader — were anxious to find out what remote learning would be like.

“They’re getting rambunctious,” she said.

While waiting for the formal remote education classes to begin Monday, Arnst said her children have been using online lessons offered by Khan Academy, which has a set of online learning tools.

Andrea Young, who has children in first and second grade and in pre-K, believed that the remote learning experience would have its plus side.

“I think it can bring us together. We can focus on being together as a family,” she said.

Most Elm Street students (pre-K through fourth grade) will be learning at home with written lesson materials and assignments. Fifth-graders, however, were issued laptops for online, one-on-one instruction.

Amanda Andriski, while agreeing there will be more family time, acknowledged there would be challenges as well.

Not only is Andriski watching her four children (grades one through eight), but she will also be teaching her first-grade class at the Woodland Heights School, where she is on the faculty.

“It’s going to be a hard dynamic,” she said with a chuckle. “I’m going to have to figure some things out.”

She said it would be a good time to work on fundamentals with her own children. Cooking as a way to give instruction in math is a good example, she said.

“Yesterday it was cookies. Today we’ll be making brownies,” she said.