As Rock Point School staff and students have spread out across the country, we have had to get creative with ways to connect with students and find ways for them to connect outside of the classroom. We have recently turned to a program called Discord. Many communities use Discord as a platform to connect, share media, organize events, video/voice chat, and a lot more.

We have prepared an amazing on-campus summer session full of fun, healthy connections, and learning.  This is set to run from July 6 to August 13.  We have planned activities on our campus (academics and credit recovery, art, crafts, cooking and baking, gardening, bee keeping, hikes, swimming, boating and more) and throughout Vermont and New England (camping, fishing, an amusement park, festivals).  While our strong preference is to have Summer Session our beautiful campus, we are not able to make that decision alone.  We will be looking to the CDC and the Governor of Vermont, as well as to best practices, to determine whether our on-campus summer program will happen. We will need to hear that it is safe and prudent to bring students, coming from many states across our country, onto campus.  We hope to have more clarity by the end of May or early June.

Rock Point School staff have been using some of their time at home to read! Here are some books staff have enjoyed lately:

We are offering a digital space for Rock Point School alumni to connect during this time of physical distancing (we can still be social!). It will be a great opportunity to catch up with old friends, share stories about RPS, and support each other.

We are all new to Distance Learning and there has been a certain amount of trial and error to the process. We wanted to share these answers to Frequently Asked Questions about how we are teaching our students remotely in hopes that it will help people invision what is now becoming the norm across the country for this school year. 

Like most schools, Rock Point School has temporarily suspended our on-campus activities due to COVID-19. As we made arrangements with families to get students home safely, we also started to make plans with our staff about how we could best support our students and their families at this uncertain time. While we know it is necessary to be physically distant at this time, we also know it is crucially important to stay deeply connected to our community.

While students are engaged in distance learning, as part of our history classes, they are being asked to keep journals in order to create primary sources for future generations. These journals include documenting their own experiences (through writing, art, and music), documenting the experiences of the people they live with, and documenting (through remote Question & Answer) the weekly experiences of two people with whom they do not live. Students also will record a "news item of the day" and a photo of the day. We hope this assignment will help students reflect on their own experiences during the pandemic and see how their own experiences fit in with the larger trends in society at this time.

Rock Point School teachers and staff have been working hard to shift learning online while we all stay home and stay healthy during this crisis. Teachers are meeting with each of their classes for 30 minutes a day via Google Hangout and will continue to receive work and give feedback in Google Drive. While things like Chemistry lab will have to be changed pretty dramatically, we are confident that our students and staff will rise to the challenge and continue learning as best we can during this time. As C.J. likes to say, "We will not let the perfect get in the way of the good!"

We are so encouraged by everyone doing their part to stay home, self-distance, wash their hands, and avoid public places. It's a service we can all do to help the hospitals from getting overwhelmed with patients and to protect the vulnerable members of our community. As we are all staying home more, we thought we could share some ideas of things you can do to keep your mind, body, spirit, and heart active and content.

On March 15th, the Executive Committee and Administrative Team met regarding updates about COVID-19.  The situation is rapidly evolving and recommendations have changed. On that Sunday, the Governor of Vermont issued a mandate that called for Vermont schools to be closed by Wednesday. This has changed our thinking about the plan for keeping Rock Point open. In order to follow best practices happening around us, and lessen the risk for all people in the face of this virus, we have decided to suspend on-campus programming at Rock Point effective Monday, March 16.