I don’t often receive urgent calls from a school teacher so early in the morning, but I did get one from a Catholic High School (CHS) teacher.
Let me digress with a brief background of the events leading up to the call.
Over the past 2 days, six of our Empire Code Education trainers have been conducting micro:bit & science workshops for Primary 3 pupils at CHS, using what we call a “Hybrid classroom” mode. What’s this? It involves one trainer teaching via Zoom with another trainer assisting the pupils in the classroom. This was in place due to the priority of CHS management and staff to protect their students from Covid-19. Yes, it’s “thanks” to Covid 🦠🦠 again! The hybrid classroom would keep pupils safe, by minimizing their contact with external instructors, and understandably so, the safety of our own Empire Code students is top on our priority list too!
Don’t get me wrong. Our team has conducted MULTIPLE successful sessions using both online and hybrid classroom modes since the pandemic. The coding workshops at CHS are different and consist mainly of challenging science experiments. Thus, students require more attention and hands-on involvement from our trainers. For example, students have to test which material enables a micro:bit car to move at the fastest speed. The pupils get to create their own encryption device from scratch! How I wish I were a student again…
CHS school teachers have tried their best to help and we truly appreciate that, but there are limits to how much they can help since they are unfamiliar with the micro:bit coding platform: Microsoft Makecode.
After two days of intense pressure on both trainers and teachers of CHS (which tested our capacities to adapt), I am super relieved (as are all parties involved) to hear that the school principal has agreed to make an exception for our workshops, and allow all our trainers to be physically present in classrooms moving forwards. 🙏🏻🙏🏻