Park Forest, IL-(ENEWSPF)- Thanks to the number of you who stuck with us the last several months — and that number is a large one. When the pandemic hit, when the first lockdown began last March, all of our lives were upended. From wearing masks, social distancing, and “COVID counts,” everything about our lives changed.
That happened in a big way with teaching, my “day job.”
I can’t claim any special circumstances since everything about everything changed, but our path to teaching every day, to reach every student every day, changed dramatically. No one among us had been trained on how to teach using the hybrid model we adopted — successfully, I might add — at Marian Catholic. The oft-overused metaphor that we were “building the plane as we flew it” was appropriate and still rings true.
Except now, most of us have a handle on how to teach to two places at once: students in the classroom, students participating remotely, plus taking into consideration that our “Scholars with a Soul” are dealing with quite a bit on their own. Some are running the house while Mom and Dad are working, from home or otherwise. Some of our Scholars are caring for loved ones who are sick or who need attention.
Our students have been amazing through all of this. Simply amazing.
But everything about everything we ever did has changed, and that means all assignments come in remotely, all submitted electronically. So grading has shifted incredibly as well.
Nothing I’m writing is new. It just took me almost until now to adjust. The first two months at least meant going home and falling asleep, or coming close to falling asleep, with little or no time for original reporting and writing.
Consider those days behind us, unless everything changes all over again. As many times as I tried to say, “We’re back!” in the past, I think I can now say, with a couple of good weeks behind us, “We’re back!”
What to Look For
In the short term, look for the following:
- a new system for logging in to read content,
- a new look for eNews Park Forest.
Going with the second point first, we’re overdue for replacing our theme, bringing it up to date. Our current theme works well, but we decided it important to give our tech person, Manon Altier, some serious work to do. Manon has a keen eye for detail and will be moving soon to install a new look plus a new framework for us under the hood at eNews Park Forest.
I trust her completely.
Regarding Premium Logins
Ever since we rolled out premium logins for content, there have been those who had difficulty logging in using the system we adopted. The system came with many recommendations, but may be more “geek-friendly” than “user-friendly.”
So, we are moving to a new system that will allow for logins using social media accounts and Gmail. Your screen will look something like this:
Clicking on SUBSCRIBE will bring users here:
Users will be able to connect with Facebook, Gmail. Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts.
I’m looking forward to seeing all of this roll out in the next couple of weeks. For those who subscribed, your account information will transfer over completely to the new system. You will likely only need to update your password as we have no access at all to your chosen password, here or in the current system.
So, thank you again for sticking with us! And enjoy the journey as we continue to cover Park Forest and Beyond!