A Quick Shift to an Online Start

In American English, there is a saying, “This isn’t my first rodeo.” 

What this means is that someone already has experience in a field, and nothing is taking them by surprise. So when we learned that we would have to start the school year with Home Based Learning, we rolled up our sleeves and said, “This isn’t our first rodeo.” 

Of course, we would have loved to have our students on campus and enjoy the expanded spaces that we have on the 3rd floor. 

But for now, we want to give you a peek at the work being done behind the scenes to prepare for our virtual Orientation Fair and the start of the 2022-23 school year! 

One of the hallmarks of XIS is having physical textbooks. But when our students can’t come on campus, we have to find ways of collating the books our students need and distributing them! 

Ms. Sheresa and Ms. Athena make adjustments to their class so they can smoothly meet online. 

Ms. Niu double-checks the Marco Polo class list for online meetings.

All of the planning comes down to the first day of school, which we call our Orientation Fair!  

We separated our Orientation Fair into two sections: a morning section for elementary students and an afternoon session for secondary students. 

Ms. Jessica and Ms. Li attend the online meeting together. They have intentionally made their classroom into a more relaxing environment, welcoming students to stay and learn. 

Fang Xuan attends the secondary meeting in his homeroom classroom.  

Mr. Wendler welcomes our secondary students to the new school year and tells them about our vision for the school year. 

Mr. Dan listens as our Head of School, Paul Wendler, welcomes our secondary students to the 2022-23 school year.  

Listening in is Bulbasaur. Bulbasaur and other Pokémon are valuable resources as they represent “fake students” for us to try new things with our administration tools without fear of messing up real student records. 

Ms. Papendorf has her classroom all ready to go for when students arrive. 

And let us take a peek behind the curtain that makes all of this possible – our tech team! 

Mr. Papendorf monitors the online meeting to help facilitate, solve issues before they become problems, and monitor the quality of the meeting. He works closely with Mr. Dan & Mr. Gavin. Notice the THREE devices he is using to monitor the meeting! 

Here, Mr. Dan is working on some backend automations for Microsoft Teams. Without Sycamore, WeChat, Microsoft Teams, and our amazing tech team to deploy and implement all of these technologies, we would be unable to have our Home Based Learning!